DETROIT — St. Jude Parish has seen many changes over the past six decades, but one constant has been Frank Stanco.

Stanco, 85, is now beginning his 60th year of serving as an usher at the northeast Detroit parish.

“I’ve been a member of the parish for 62 years, and joined the Ushers Club in 1953. It was a grand group of guys; at one time there were about 120 of us, but now we’re down to 10,” he said.

As with many other city parishes, St. Jude has been adversely affected by the demographic shifts of the past few decades. Once among the largest parishes in the archdiocese with 5,000 families, membership is now down to about 350 families, Stanco said.

He recalled the old days, when St. Jude’s Ushers Club was very active, hosting activities such as picnics on Bob-Lo island, the former amusement park in the Detroit River off Amherstburg, Ontario.

The club is still sponsoring parish events, even if not on the same scale it once did, he continued, citing a steak roast planned for this summer.

Stanco was born in what is now Eastpointe (it was then called Halfway Village). He grew up in Assumption Grotto Parish and attended the parish grade school before going on to attend St. Joseph’s Commercial College, a business-oriented high school formerly near St. Joseph Church near downtown Detroit.

Drafted on V-J Day in 1945, Stanco served in the U.S. Army in occupied Europe, then came back to Detroit with plans to go to college.

Those plans hit a snag because he needed additional credits to get into the University of Detroit. So he took a job, then wound up going to trade school instead to learn auto body repair.

He married his wife, Patt, in 1949 and began to raise a family. They stayed married until Patt’s death from cancer in 2004.

“I had a real good wife. If it hadn’t been for her, I never would have made it,” Stanco said.

They had seven children, and Stanco now has 15 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

After doing collision work for the Detroit Fire Department and then for private collision shops, Stanco started his own collision business on Houston-Whittier in Detroit, and continued to run it until retiring at age 72.

God has blessed his family over the years, Stanco says. “Every time we had a new baby, I got a better job or started making more money. I believe God took care of us,” he said.

And even during Patt’s 14-year battle with cancer, Stanco said God was able to use her to comfort other women suffering from the same disease.

“The doctors at St. John’s said most of the women with breast cancer were so bitter, and they would get her to talk to them,” he recalled.

“There was another usher whose wife had it, and was very bitter. I suggested he let Patt talk to her, and later he told me, ‘I don’t know what your wife said to her, but she’s been a changed woman,’” Stanco said.