Reviving the Rosary

TEUTOPOLIS, Ill.

erena Brumleve feels driven to make rosaries. She sits in her comfortable brick home in Teutopolis and watches TV while her hands, on celestial autopilot after 10 years of doing this, fashion the Catholic prayer beads from recycled car seat covers.

"It's those beaded covers that are supposed to be more comfortable," explains Brumleve, who looks doubtful. "But who'd want to sit on a bead?"

Lots of people want to pray with them, though. "One woman went out to Wal-Mart, bought 10 seat covers and said she'd take 30 or 40 rosaries when I got through," says Brumleve. Our Lady of the Beads averages about 17 of the yard-long rosaries per cover and can churn them out at the rate of 17 an evening before her 8 p.m. bedtime.

At last count, she estimated she had made 5,000 seat cover rosaries and given them all away free to whoever wanted them. She has sent them all over the world, too, to missions and churches and wherever there is a need for prayer.

"I can't help but want to do this," she says. "The Lord has blessed me, and this is what I feel he wants me to do."

It all started about 1993, when a friend showed her the ropes and Brumleve learned how to string small rosaries. She still makes those, too -- fashioned from plastic beads -- and estimates there are more than 30,000 of them out there helping the faithful beseech God.

Brumleve keeps the production line humming with a little help from family and friends. Daughter Kay Jansen buys all her plastic bead and string supplies, while seat covers are usually donated. Son Don takes care of the mailing costs as Mom's handiwork is sent on a wing and prayer all over the planet.

Paul Schmidt, a friend of Brumleve's neighbor, is an amateur woodworker who handcrafts the walnut crosses, ranging from 4 to 5 inches long, that are attached to the car seat rosaries. Schmidt's been part of the production team for three years, and Brumleve, who sings his praises, estimates he has made more than 3,000 crosses for her.

"It's nice to be involved in something you feel is doing some good," says Schmidt, 68, who lives near Effingham. "I think these rosaries make people happy."

Part of the rosary prayer goes, "As it was in the beginning, is now and forever shall be, world without end, Amen." Brumleve is comfortable with the knowledge her personal string of beads can't go on unbroken.

"I say my rosary every night in bed, never miss," says the 88-year-old widow. "I've lived a good life, I don't have a worry in the world, and if the Lord wants me to go home, I'm ready."

In the meantime, she enjoys eating out, playing cards, spending time with her five children, 13 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren and making rosaries as fast as her nimble fingers will fly.

"Oh, I'll make them until I die," she adds with finality. "My rosaries are my legacy."