These were the seeds which first gave life to Holy Redeemer by the Sea parish, and which continue to sustain it today. Formal Catholic worship on the Outer Banks began around 1929, when Helen Norbeck Lawrence, a well-to-do and devout Roman Catholic, agreed to make her new home here only if she would be able to continue attending Mass. With no Catholic parish in the area, Helen and her husband, Harry C. Lawrence, were able to enlist the help of Father Howard Lane from Elizabeth City, who agreed to travel at least once a month, via ferry and miles of unpaved roads, to the Lawrence home on Bodie Island to say Mass for the Lawrence family and a handful of Catholic neighbors. Helen’s love of the Eucharist was the first step in the history of the Outer Banks Catholic parish.

As a growing infrastructure of roads and bridges allowed greater access to the Outer Banks, the area became a popular vacation destination for residents of northern states including Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Ohio. Many of these seasonal Catholics needed a place for weekly worship. The Diocese of Raleigh, recognizing the growing desire and demand for regular worship on the Outer Banks, assigned Father James R. Jones as the first pastor of Holy Redeemer by the Sea Parish in 1955. He served in that capacity until 1957, living first in modest accommodations attached to the Church and then in a rectory built under his direction in 1956. He also began saying Mass in Buxton around that same time. Father Jones was succeeded as pastor by Father Peter Denges who saw the parish through the Ash Wednesday storm of 1962. Parishioners remember how Father Denges, faced by rising water which had breached the rectory, fled to higher ground taking the Blessed Sacrament with him.

A population explosion on the Outer Banks, of permanent residents as well as seasonal visitors, necessitated the expansion of the Church building on the Beach Road in Kill Devil Hills. Significant renovations were designed by architect and parishioner Donald Olivola. Although this project was completed in 1976, the congregation’s growth outpaced the physical space offered even by the expanded Church building. It was not unusual to have an overflow of hundreds of worshipers attend Mass in the parking lot even as the Liturgy was celebrated inside the Church filled to maximum capacity. The Easter Mass of 1995 was celebrated at the Lost Colony Theater and by some estimates as many as 5000 people attended. With numbers like this, it was inevitable that plans for a new and much larger church building would begin to unfold.

In preparation for the construction of a new, much larger church building to serve the Holy Redeemer congregation, a piece of land was acquired in Kitty Hawk, just a few miles northwest of the Kill Devil Hills church which had served this parish since 1937. Fund raising efforts began as architects and engineers designed a space which could accommodate the six or seven thousand worshipers now gathering at weekend liturgies. However, tragedy struck in June 1998, when a fire, believed to have been arson, destroyed the church years before the new building would be ready for use. With heavy hearts, the congregation gathered in August 1998 for the final liturgy ever to be celebrated at the Kill Devil Hills site. They left committing this holy ground to those who would ultimately lay to rest the church building which had held them in worship for more than half a century.

In 2003, Joseph Morrissey, Father Provincial of the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, accepted the request of Bishop Joseph Gossman of the Diocese of Raleigh to assume the administration of Holy Redeemer by the Sea Parish. He assigned Reverend William Walsh, OSFS, PhD as our first Oblate pastor. He celebrated his first Mass here on July 12, 2003. Since that day, his journey with the Outer Banks Catholic community was often challenging but also rewarding. Building on the maxim of the 2nd Vatican Council he emphasized that “the Eucharist is the source and summit of all the Church’s activity”.

These words are the foundation of our Outer Banks Catholic parish then and now. By the grace of God and the work of many hands, we have grown from just a few believers gathered in a private home, overcoming challenges of water and fire, to a burgeoning community gathered each week to fill our magnificent worship space with our prayer and praise. Truly, this is the temple of the Lord and blessed are we to be called to gather here to love God and serve one another in faith and love.