Mass at Our Lady of the Pines will look a little different now. After about seven years serving as a father and son acolyte team, Martin and Brent Nash will be going their separate ways as Brent will be graduating and heading off to college.
The pair began serving as acolytes when Brent was about 11, and they serve at several Sunday Masses a month. When Martin began serving with his son, his hope was to encourage and motivate other fathers and sons to do the same. He didn’t realize then the father/son acolyte team would last seven years, until Brent was to be graduating from high school.
Brent ranks ninth in his Warren graduating class of 68 students and is a National Honor Society member. In high school, he lettered four years in basketball (his favorite sport), three in football and four in track. He plans to attend Lamar University to study kinesiology and wants to be a basketball or football coach.
At Our Lady of the Pines Brent has been a member of the youth group and recently took charge of training a youth acolyte class. This past winter he helped insulate water pipes under the home of a church member dying with cancer.
Brent comes by his love of church and service to others naturally. His father, Martin, is the son of Pauline (Polly) Enderle Nash and M.F. Nash (now deceased). Polly Nash was the sister of Msgr. Marvin Enderle and Msgr. Martin Enderle, who had both served the Diocese of Beaumont many years, and of Dominican Sister Paula Enderle, who is in Houston.
Martin attended St. Anthony elementary school and graduated from Msgr. Kelly Catholic High School in 1968. He and his wife Claudia moved to Tyler County in 1976, where he was a Southwestern Bell representative in the Wildwood and Warren areas.
Their other children are Holli, 27, who served three years as an acolyte, and Marty, 24, who served as an older teenager. Martin is now a county commissioner in Tyler County. He has served on the Our Lady of the Pines parish council in past years.
And although the duo of Brent and Martin will no longer be serving together, Martin does plan to continue to serve when he is needed.
