Like a Russian doll, Anthony J. Bovenza’s
replica of St. Michael’s Church sits within that church on North
Clinton Avenue. It is a meticulous model,
including everything from stained glass windows constructed out of cellophane
to tiny bells inside the church steeple.
Seated in a coffee shop in Chili, Bovenza’s
niece, Kathleen Acton, wipes tears from her eyes. Her uncle, who died six years
ago from cancer, was a deeply religious man, she says. Not that he talked about
it — or talked much at all, for that matter. Suffering from a severe stutter
and excruciating shyness, Bovenza never married,
never learned to drive, and never spoke to those outside his large family. “He
was afraid of his own shadow,” says Acton. “And so innocent.”
Once, she says, when her uncle was with his older sister,
Theresa, a prostitute propositioned him. Bovenza
froze. His sister, just 11 months his senior and his lifelong protector, was
furious. She rolled down her car window and hollered, “He doesn’t want you. He
wants pizza!”
Acton’s memory
is like an old family album. She can replicate her uncle’s speech, his
mannerisms, his uncanny ability to memorize lines from
television sitcoms. But nothing, she says, captures her uncle’s essence more
than his love of churches. He had a photographic memory, she says. He would go
to St. Michael’s Church and observe it, and then go home and duplicate what he
saw using scraps of wood and a razor. The family can’t understand how he did
it. “He had very chubby hands and everything,” Acton says.
Nor was St. Michael’s Bovenza’s
most difficult project. That title belongs to his 4 by 4-foot replica of St.
Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. Bovenza, who
never visited the Big Apple, would take the bus to Rundel
Library and analyze picture after picture of St. Patrick’s, committing each pew
and window and architectural nuance to memory, says Acton. Her uncle never
completed that almost four-decade long project. He got sick before he could
shellac the wood, Acton says.
Three years ago, Acton’s
family donated the St. Michael’s replica to the Rochester
church. St. Patrick’s, however, declined to put that model on long-term
display, and Acton’s family is still looking for a suitable home for it.
So for the time being, St. Patrick’s remains in Bovenza’s old home, surrounded by his supplies, filing
cabinets chock full of newspaper articles, and his rosary and Bible. This, says
Acton, is her brother’s “unfinished symphony.”
This article appears in May 17-23, 2006.
