DICK CASE
POST-STANDARD COLUMNIST

Florence is a small, sweet town at the edge of Tug Hill in the northwest corner of Oneida County.

Folks who live there mention two landmarks, both in the hamlet of Florence: the bridge above Little River built around a keystone and the "church on the hill," St. Mary's of Mount Carmel.

The old stone bridge seems fine. The church - the oldest in the Syracuse Diocese and a senior among New York state churches - is threatened by demolition.

During a visit to Florence last week, it was hard to measure the danger. Last October, the diocese released a letter from Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Costello that the old house of worship has "structural deficiencies which appear to be beyond repair" and that "demolition appears to be indicated."

The letter went out to certain "friends of the church," including a group of fans of the building. Shortly, they teamed up to save St. Mary's, which was built as a Baptist seminary on a very high hill that looks down on the community.

It turned into a Catholic church in 1845 and was closed by the diocese as a parish in 2003, continuing for a time as a mission of another church in neighboring Camden, then becoming a "devotional chapel" to be used for baptisms, weddings and funerals.

"The bishop's letter was a real wake-up call for us," according to Dorothy Fey, a member of the group. "St. Mary's is an irreplaceable historic building. While we realize there never will be a Mass here again, we want to save the church."

The committee aims to gather a restoration/preservation fund of $250,000. Meanwhile, it's commissioned an architect's report, which is in hand. There will be a meeting to discuss that this week. Meanwhile, the group is laying plans to make money, including revival of the annual Florence Picnic this August, selling Christmas ornaments and mailing its own letters to people who know and appreciate the church.

St. Mary's is not part of the current diocesan restructuring. It's already been closed for regular services.

"We have a long way to go," according to another supporter, Mike Clark, who lives in Florence in a rebuilt version of the hotel his family once ran on the main street below St. Mary's. The Clarks are unofficial church sextons, shoveling snow, mowing the cemetery that surrounds the building and generally "looking after" the local treasure.

Mike's read on the condition of the building doesn't lean toward tearing it down, he told me as we looked at the basement. "Our main work is to shore up the basement," Mike's saying as we look around.

Walls would be reset and some timbers replaced. Upstairs, it's a matter of a coat of paint and fixing some of the windows.

"Moisture and humidity have done some damage here," Mike said. The committee is obligated to cover costs of insurance, lights and heat.

This group considers Bishop Costello a special friend of St. Mary's. He draws a full house when he says Mass at St. Mary's. The bishop grew up in Camden and has a great-grandfather, also Tom Costello, buried in the Florence cemetery, which seems to be filled with Irish immigrants who came to Oneida County in the 1830s to '50s. Many gravestones were etched with the person's birthplace in Ireland.

"Irish Ridge, we call this," said Mike's sister, Monica, an athletic young woman who "runs up the hill" almost daily as part of the family oversight. Mike, Monica and Matt, another brother, created an outdoor Stations of the Cross around the edges of the burial ground, dedicating it to their late mother, Helen, who called Mount Carmel her "holy hill."

I rode to Florence with a Syracuse friend, Kay Ellis, who shortly started counting cemetery monuments. Her grandparents' house, where she used to spend summers, remains, although it doesn't seem to be occupied. The first O'Mara came to Florence in the mid-1800s. Her grandfather John was the village blacksmith.

Kay's a long-distance member of the church support group, along with Amollia Grossman, of Canastota, who confided to me that "all roads lead to Florence" and "everybody came from Florence." It's a statement that seems to have a ring of truth to it.

We talked over lunch at the Florence Hotel. Dorothy Fey, across the table, shares a grandfather with Amollia. "We grew up knowing we all came from Florence," Amollia says.

St. Mary's has some peeling paint in the choir loft but not the look of a church in distress. It seems, in fact, as if the congregation just stepped out and will return. Vestments hang neatly in a sacristy off the altar. There's a sign for the archives: "Sunday Mass, 11 a.m."

"When they opened this, the smart people looked down the road 100 years," Monica Clark is saying. "We're the smart people now."

Dick Case writes Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. Reach him at dcase@syracuse.com or 470-2254.