‘It’s my mission I guess. I love doing it.’
By Rachel Kettner | For On Mission
MARINETTE – “I figured at 93 years old, maybe it’s about time that I retire while I’m ahead of the game,” said Lois Pristel, a parishioner at Holy Family Parish.
Pristel first started playing the piano at Mass when she was 15 years old.
“When I was a teenager, I sang in the choir at church and the lady who played the organ needed to take a maternity leave,” she said. “My director knew I played, so he said one day at choir practice, ‘Lois, get over there on the organ,’ and so I started and I’ve been playing ever since, off and on, for all these years.”
Now, 78 years later, she is retiring on Divine Mercy Sunday on April 27.
“It’s my mission I guess,” Pristel said. “I love doing it. I loved playing. I love my choir, all dedicated, wonderful people. I’ll miss it. I could be tired, but when it was time to go to choir practice, it would refresh me.”
Pristel was born and raised in Marinette. Although she said she would have loved to pursue music or other studies in college, her family couldn’t afford it so, instead, she went into the workforce after her high school graduation.
“I was a secretary in the office of the high school principal at Marinette High (for) five years, and then I decided it was about time I graduated from high school,” she said. “So I became a secretary at Scott Paper Company and I worked there until my marriage.”
She and her husband have four children, all of whom are musically inclined, she said.
“I have a son and three daughters, and the son plays the accordion and all the daughters play the piano,” she said.
When their children were little, Pristel and her husband made sure she could still play at Mass as often as possible.
“He would just stay home with (the children) while I had to play, or else he would be in church with them himself,” she said.
With multiple churches in town and various closings and openings, Pristel and her family attended several different parishes before ending up at Holy Family (Our Lady of Lourdes site).
“I started at St. Anthony’s Church in Marinette until after I was married,” she said. “After we built our first home, we moved across town and then we were closer to Sacred Heart Church, which happened to have been my husband’s home church, so then we joined Sacred Heart Church,” Pristel said.
“Years later, Sacred Heart Church was closed and we went to Our Lady of Lourdes because they had just built a new church and they wanted to fill it up,” she said. “So they divided Marinette into sections and told everybody what church they should go to. I played at St. Joseph’s eight o’clock Mass for a long time and then I played (at) Lourdes and I’ve been doing that ever since.”
While she won’t be playing at Mass every Sunday anymore, she said she will still play for funerals and maybe fill in if the need arises.
“I will miss it,” Pristel said. “It’s a good feeling when the music compares with the readings and everything flows together well. It’s always good when you can feel that the congregation is one with you in the whole Mass. It was always special.”
