Tradition leads family to same altar

Magner’s maternal great-grandparents, John and Mary Flannery, both from Ireland, were married in St. Lawrence around 1911.

The Gothic-Tudor style church, which is now part of St. Mary of the Assumption Church, was built in 1898 and expanded in 1913. Magner’s other maternal great-grandparents, Michael and Margaret Raftery, were also married in the church, around 1920, the family said.

Magner’s great-grandparents have passed away, but looking on at his and Greenberg’s wedding will be his maternal grandparents, John and Mary “Frances’’ Flannery, who were married at St. Lawrence in 1949.

John Flannery, now 89, said he remembers meeting Frances, now 88, when he took the seat beside her on an American Legion bus trip.

He owned a flower shop on Cypress Street in Brookline from 1948 through 1972, and Frances, while gazing at the altar during a recent visit to St. Lawrence, remembered that the church had been decorated with arrangements from the shop for their wedding.

“It was a beautiful day,’’ she said.

A little over 30 years later, they were attending the wedding of their daughter Mary “Maye’’ Flannery, who married John Magner at the church in November 1981.

Jack Magner, now 56, and Maye, now 53, said their wedding was on an overcast day, but as they were saying their vows the sun came out and rays beamed through the stained-glass windows at St. Lawrence.

“It was a movie moment,’’ Jack said.

Maye said that at the time, she didn’t think much about how she was the third generation of her family to tie the knot in the same church.

But that changed when Ryan, who is Maye and Jack’s oldest child, told them that he and Keri were going to get married in the same chapel.

“I started to think, wow, this is the fourth generation getting married in this church, that is kind of cool,’’ Maye said.

Ryan Magner, who is 27, and Greenberg, who is 26, said they met about seven years ago at Fairfield University in Connecticut when she was a freshman and he was a junior.

In getting to know each other, they discovered that she had grown up in a house in Brighton about a mile away from his family’s home in Brookline. Greenberg said they both used to hang out at the old Cleveland Circle Cinema, near the Brighton-Brookline border, but never crossed paths until college.

The couple said that in addition to the appeal of Magner’s family ties to St. Lawrence, they both like the building’s architectural style, and they don’t think they will have to do much to decorate it for their wedding.

But during Saturday’s ceremony, Frances Flannery said, she will be watching her grandson and his bride and thinking back to her own big day, when flowers from her new husband’s shop adorned the altar.

And she’ll also be remembering something else, she said.

“We have a wonderful family, and we are very, very blessed.’’

Brock Parker can be reached at brock.globe@gmail.com.