Hays Native Key in Bringing New Catholic Chapel to K-State Campus

Salina Post ^ | 3/5/23 | Diane Gasper-O'Brien

[marshmallow]

Father Gale Hammerschmidt was a junior at Thomas More Prep-Marian High School in his hometown of Hays when the Academy Award-winning movie “Field of Dreams” was released in April of 1989.

Like most folks who have seen Field of Dreams, especially sports fans, Father Gale probably well remembers the movie’s thematic phrase, “If you build it, they will come.”

That reference was to building a baseball diamond in the middle of an Iowa cornfield, which attracted ghosts of baseball legends to emerge from the cornfield to play ball.

Now a Catholic priest in the Diocese of Salina, Father Gale helped build a Catholic church in the middle of the Kansas Flint Hills.

The new, spacious St. Isidore’s church in Manhattan offers much more room for Kansas State University students to worship, making Father Gale’s reward much greater than an Academy Award.

An inside view of the new St. Isidore's Church. Photo by Clark Architects Collaborative

Father Gale, the chaplain at St. Isidore’s chapel on the K-State campus, would be the first to tell you that students were flocking to St. Isidore’s long before he even became a priest.

[Man from Oz]

The church is beautiful. I walk by it quite often while I am putting in steps.

MFO