enlarge Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

Floodwaters from the Fish River flow through the church parking lot Thursday.

enlarge Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

Water is still visible in a pew.

enlarge Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

The Rev. Jim Nadeau is consoled by parishioner Elaine Bossie on Friday at the St. Louis rectory, which will need a new basement.

Read articles from the 1979 flooding at Fort Kent

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FORT KENT — The people of this valley are no strangers to hardship.

Winters come early and stay late. Even in May, patches of snow still cling to the forests and potato fields that many here depend on.

And each year, the threat of a spring flood arrives with the rising sound of the St. John River.

For more than two centuries, the descendants of French settlers here have endured by relying on each other and on the grace of God, spread through the priests and parishes of the Catholic Church.

"The church," said volunteer firefighter Cecil Hafford, "is the heart of town."

As the floodwaters advanced earlier this week at the confluence of the St. John and Fish rivers, eyes turned toward historic St. Louis Parish.

The church, built in 1909 to replace its smaller predecessors, towers over the homes and businesses lining Main Street.

It's in the part of town hit hardest by the flood. A surge of water rolled into the neighborhood Wednesday morning, covering parks, ball fields and abandoned cars.

Inside the church, water crept up the side of the wooden pews, stopped just short of the altar, then began its retreat.

"There was 3 feet in here. It was all the way up to the first step of the sanctuary," said Father Jim Nadeau, the priest known to parishioners simply as Father Jim.

He walked briskly down the aisle Friday morning, carrying wine and wafers for a funeral in nearby Eagle Lake.

Although this week's Masses will be moved to the Knights of Columbus hall, there will be no disruption of the sacraments.

It will take weeks, possibly months, to clean and repair the damage at St. Louis.

The entire basement of the rectory will need to be replaced. Books and papers were destroyed.

But the most important church documents -- baptism papers and records of 11 local cemeteries -- were saved.

"It was so unexpected," Nadeau said of the record-setting crest. "We saved the records, but everything else got ruined."

Nadeau has a keen understanding of the importance of St. Louis Parish to the region. He was raised in Caribou, about an hour's drive south of here. In 1993 he became the youngest priest to ever become rector at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Portland.

Nadeau was sent in the summer of 2005 to minister here and at four other parishes in the region.

About 400 people usually attend the Saturday Mass at St. Louis, and another 600 attend on Sunday. Fort Kent's total population is about 4,000.

"The only traffic jam that takes place in Fort Kent is when Mass lets out," Nadeau said.

As residents began the long cleanup Friday, there was sadness about the damage to the church, and relief that it was not worse.

Jeannette Voisine stopped here during her walk around the neighborhood.

She is 81, and has been a parishioner since she was big enough to sit in the pews.

"It's so sad," she said. "Like everything, we'll get through."

Staff Writer Trevor Maxwell can be contacted at 791-6451 or at:

tmaxwell@pressherald.com