Taking a shine to Our Lady

LOS BANOS A Carmelite since her first Communion in 1936, Blanca Bisson knows Our Lady of Mount Carmel quite well.

The 82-year-old said she’s had a number of up close and personal encounters with her — literally.

“She was chipped off different places, the stars fading and everything,” Bisson said, in her El Salvadorian accent. “(I was) sitting in the floor doing the bottom toe, because she’s so heavy.”

Bisson has retouched the statue, found in the chapel at St. Joseph’s church, a number of times over the years. Originally from San Salvador, El Salvador, she became a parishioner in Los Banos in 1962.

The 79th Our Lady of Mount Carmel celebration begins Thursday, and continues through the weekend with food, music and other fetes. The statue was purchased by Italian immigrants living in Los Banos in the 1930s from Grumento Nova in southern Italy, a town that many of the immigrants had called home.

For many years, the statue was a part of a procession and had scars to prove it.

“When they carried (her), they bumping here and bumping over there,” she said.

Bisson studied and became a teacher, with an emphasis on art, before she acquired a green card and came to the United States in 1958. Her late husband, Journet “Jim” Bisson, was an Air Force veteran of World War II and brought his family, including sons Jim and Norman, here so he could work on the San Luis Dam.

She remembers the first time she approached the late Monsignor Thomas Morahan about retouching the Mount Carmel statue. He gave her a smaller statue to work on as a test. When she returned it, he was sure she tossed the old one and purchased a new one.

“He said, ‘You’re lying to me,’ ” Bisson said. “I said, ‘No, Monsignor, why I should lie to you? Look at the bottom.’ “

The bottom of the statue had an inscription with the year and place it was made, she said. From then on Bisson has been the resident restorationist; she’s also worked on the chapel’s Virgen de Guadalupe, St. Joseph and Our Lady of Fatima.

Bisson said the Carmel statue won’t need a refurbishing for another decade.

“She will be ready for someone else, because I don’t think I will be alive by then,” Bisson said with a laugh.

The Our Lady of Mount Carmel Society plans the largest part of the celebration, which draws about 300, on July 15, with Mass at 11 a.m. at St. Joseph’s church, 1516 Center Ave. The Mass is followed by a luncheon, live music and an auction at the DES Hall, 1155 I St. A rosary and benediction culminate the ceremonies at 4:30 p.m.

Tridium Mass at St. Joseph’s church is planned Thursday at 6:30 p.m., followed by a reception. The July 13 and 14 Tridium Mass ceremonies are scheduled at 6:30 and 5 p.m., respectively.

Enterprise reporter Thaddeus Miller can be reached at (209) 388-6562 or by email at tmiller@losbanosenterprise.com.