A Six-Gun Prayer for Peace

The anniversary of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral will be observed a little differently this year.

The pastor of the small Catholic church in Tombstone, Ariz., will say Mass for the Earps, the Clantons and all other victims of street violence.

The Rev. Bill Parenteau wants Sacred Heart Church to become a symbol of peace in a town known best for a 30-second spurt of violence 115 years ago today that left three men dead and the town’s image firmly in place.

The gunfight cemented its reputation as “the town too tough to die.”

The Saturday night service is “just a regular Mass, just for those people, for those who did the shooting and for those who were killed,” Parenteau said.

The Mass for peace will also be celebrated “for victims of any kind of violence that’s going on,” said Parenteau, 59, who has headed the 600-member parish for five years.

“I think it can have a tremendous effect, even if a person is not aware that they are being prayed for,” he said.

A long-running feud led to the gunfight in a 15-foot alleyway outside a corral and livery stable all those years ago. On one side were the Clanton and McLaury brothers. Their antagonists were Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan Earp and their dentist friend Doc Holliday.

When the shots ended, 19-year-old Billy Clanton and Frank and Tom McLaury were dead. Billy’s brother Ike, disarmed and pistol-whipped hours earlier by town marshal Virgil Earp, escaped injury after Wyatt Earp warned him to fight or leave. Ike left.

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Interest in the gunfight and in Wyatt Earp heightened after World War II, when it was fed by film and television. Today, 500,000 people visit the Southern Arizona town every year.

One yearly visitor, former New York Police Officer Mike Reynolds, came up with the idea for a peace Mass. Reynolds, a real estate agent from Tarrytown, N.Y., started thinking about the Tombstone phenomenon when he and one of his six children stopped at Sacred Heart to pray.

“It’s such a big part of the West, the myth, the violence. . . . I said, ‘Nobody’s praying for these people,’ ” he recalled.

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He told Parenteau that somebody ought to say a prayer for the people who died in the O.K. Corral gunfight, and for other victims of street violence. Reynolds and Parenteau wrote one another, and Reynolds sent along a few donations. He suggested a Mass in perpetuity, and even trying to make Sacred Heart Church “a national shrine in memory of the pioneers and of those who died in street violence.”

Reynolds’ best friend, a fellow police officer, was killed in a narcotics raid.

Parenteau has not discussed the peace Mass with his parishioners or townsfolk in the community of 1,400, and he expects a mixed reaction.

“Some will like it, some won’t. People just probably will say they’ve been dead for a long time, let them be, no need to bring that stuff up.

“I’m just hoping that a Mass of this type will bring some peace. There’s too darn much violence going on in this world, and that’s all I’m hoping for and praying for. I plan on doing this every year.”