An $18,000 lighting system gives the Franco center steeple a glow

LEWISTON – The Franco American Heritage Center added its green spire to the nighttime cityscape Tuesday, illuminating its steeple to applause and gasps.

More than 100 people filed out of the center about 9 p.m. to glimpse the metal steeple, which rises above the former St. Mary’s Catholic Church to become the highest point in its Little Canada neighborhood.

Even in the twilight, it glowed.

“We’ve been talking about this for more than two years,” said Rita Dube, the center’s executive director. Like the center itself, the steeple stands as a “monument” to the immigrants who made lives here, she said.

Donors, volunteers and other organizers behind the center attended the invitation-only event, which was run as a duel celebration.

Dube unveiled a pair of original indoor murals, too.

One wall-sized artwork pictured the state of Maine as a backdrop for archival photos showing the several Lewiston landmarks, the railroad and nearby Quebec.

The other overlapped three antique photos: a WW I-era panorama of Franco snowshoe club members in front of Lewiston City Hall, a turn-of-the-century scene of nearby River Street and, at the center, a family portrait.

The works were created by a team of local artists – Annette Bourque, Joyce Bisson Coyne and Rita Cloutier Perreault – who culled through every photo they could find.

“It’s a very deep passion of ours to preserve the history,” Coyne said. All three women had grandparents who came here to work in the mills.

So did Dube. The family portrait at the center of the latter mural belonged to her. It was her mother’s family around the turn of the century. The image showed her grandparents, Pierre and Mari, and their 10 children.

It sits at the center of the mural, in a oval-shaped custom wooden frame, like an antique cameo.

“I didn’t plan this,” Dube told the crowd as her voice cracked with emotion. “Nobody was bringing me pictures. I said, ‘OK. I’ve got this one.'”

Like Dube, Bourque said she too was nearly moved to tears when she saw the installation mounted in its place above in the center’s lobby.

“We’re trying to understand what brought the people to Lewiston, how they came and how they lived when they arrived,” she said.

She hoped both murals would hint at the story.

Moments later, she walked out the front of the former church to gaze at the steeple, now visible for miles in the night sky.

As the group stood there, cars slowed along Cedar Street to glimpse the addition.

Among the attendees were the folks who paid the bills – a combination of more than a dozen private and commercial donors. Dube estimated the cost of the lights to reach about $18,000.

She said the ongoing energy costs were negligible.

“It’s beautiful,” Dube said.