Hello! My name is Norma Powers, and I am the Parish Archivist. I document photos and news about St. Michael’s from our past 50+ years of parish history and creating a timeline of events throughout the years. These will eventually be available for parishioners to view on the parish website.
I grew up in Iowa on a farm and graduated from high school in a class of 25. I moved to Minnesota and graduated from college majoring in Education (Health & Biology). After meeting my husband John, and three children later, we entered the world of Catholic education. As moms do, I volunteered a lot at the school and ended up becoming the school secretary before moving to North Carolina with John’s job at IBM.
We have been at St. Michael’s since! I was hired as the Administrative Assistant at the old beer warehouse and three months later moved to the new campus on High House. I was fortunate to have attended one Mass at St. Michael’s on Walnut St. when my husband and I visited Cary. I have been involved with weddings, new member dinners, bulletin stuffers, and office volunteer activities, and many others over the years. When Fr. Wall hired me, I ran the front office for 10 years. During that time, I met many wonderful parishioners and added volunteers to cover the phones at the front desk. As technology improved, many were trained to do data entry, the bulletin, and some finance work. After that, technology was added and I worked on the database and parishioner information. Over the years I assisted the pastors and parochial vicars. I have enjoyed every position and job given to me, because it involved helping people.
John and I have three children and five grandchildren. Kari's family lives in Summerville, SC and we love to spend time with them. Tony and his family live close to us, and Mimi and Papa love to have overnights. We lost Kelley at age 36 due to breast cancer. Family is very important to us. I also recently decided to get back into gardening.
My favorite song is Precious Lord, and I love listening to the CD's that Wayne Cusher, our Director of Music and Liturgy, and our choir have made over the years. I also love reflecting Matthew 25:21...“His lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.”
If you have any photos of St. Michael’s throughout the years that you’d like to share, please reach out to me! I love talking about our parish’s rich history.