Historical Marker Relocated To St. Mary’s Cathedral

Amarillo—For the Andi and Bobby Cochran family, Sept. 12 marked a major day for the family, as they watched their fourth son, Patrick, work on his Eagle Scout Project.

As with his three older brothers, the Eagle Scout Project involved St. Mary’s Cathedral.

The family has been parishioners at the Cathedral for nearly 25 years and watched their three older sons add and embellish the scenery on the church grounds:

“In the Fall of 2016, our son, Colby Cochran, built a nice gate with kneelers to protect the grotto,” said Andi Cochran. “He also did some cleaning of the grotto, which included repairing the lighting. Colby also placed a bench at the grotto for prayer/meditation, or to recite the rosary in the middle of the living rosary.

“Our son, Tyler, in the Fall of 2017, refurbished—sandblasted, painted and created a display area for the original bell of St. Mary’s Cathedral from the early 1900’s and built a display in front of St. Mary’s Cathedral School.

“Then our son Matthew in the Spring of 2019, completed a beautification of the Cathedral courtyard, which included a rose garden planted by the nuns when they lived at St. Mary’s. He also created an area for prayer with a bench and an area for sitting or to enjoy lunch,” she said.

Patrick Cochran’s Eagle Scout Project involved moving the Fray Juan de Padilla monument, which was blessed and dedicated by then-Bishop Robert E. Lucey on June 13, 1937 at Ellwood Park across the street to a slab of concrete Patrick and his brother Matthew poured in late-August (WTC 9/4/2020).

What led Patrick to consider moving the Fray Juan de Padilla monument across the street to St. Mary’s Cathedral?
“As in all Eagle Scouts Projects, the boys meet with the receiving entity and decide on a project together,” said Bobby Cochran. “Monsignor Michael (P. Colwell, JCL, former rector at St. Mary’s Cathedral) asked Patrick to look at this project and see if he was interested. He agreed he liked the idea and proceeded from there.”

With some help from his brother, Matthew; his dad, Bobby; his uncle Robert Tellman; and, St. Mary’s Cathedral parishioners Toby Vincent and Lance Garcia, Patrick and his crew started early on Sept. 12 to uproot the Fray Juan de Padilla Monument from Ellwood Park and move it across the street to St. Mary’s Cathedral.

There is a bit of work remaining on the relocation of the Fray Juan de Padilla Monument before the work can be complete, according to Bobby Cochran.

“We still need to pour concrete around the base,” he said, “and we also need to create a small walkway around the monument.”

According to the diocesan archives and the Texas State Historical Association, Fray Juan de Padilla came to the New World from his native Andalucia in Spain, where he had been a soldier before joining the Franciscan order. The exact date of his arrival is not known, but his signature did appear on a letter from the New World dated Oct. 19, 1529. He was among the friars selected to sail from Tehuantepec to the Orient as part of an expedition organized by Hernando Cortés, but the ships proved unseaworthy.

Fray Padilla was among the select party that journeyed in 1541 with Francisco Vázquez de Coronado to Quivira, the Wichita village in present Kansas. Among other things, Fray Padilla celebrated a Mass of Thanksgiving in Palo Duro Canyon. When the disillusioned Coronado declared his intention to return to New Spain in the spring of 1542, Fray Padilla chose to remain in New Mexico and return to Quivira to continue missionary efforts among the plains tribes.

On approximately Nov. 30, 1544, at a little more than a day’s journey from their home base, they were suddenly set upon by a war party of enemy tribesmen. Urging his companions to flee, the account goes, the friar knelt and deliberately sacrificed himself to “the arrows of those barbarous Indians, who threw him into a pit, covering his body with innumerable stones.” Fray Padilla has been revered by Texans as the first Christian martyr of Texas, and possibly of the United States.

In 1936 a monument commemorating the martyrdom of Juan de Padilla was erected jointly by the state of Texas and the Knights of Columbus in Amarillo’s Ellwood Park. The monument was blessed and dedicated on June 13, 1937 by Amarillo Bishop Robert E. Lucey.