Sharon and Jim Goodno came to take away a stone, but what really brought them were the stories.

Joining dozens of others, the Madison couple arrived Downtown Saturday morning to pick up a piece of the sandstone walls of the demolished St. Raphael Cathedral, the landmark that played a part in the best moments of their lives -- and one of the hardest.

On March 14, 2005, the day the cathedral burned in an arsonist's blaze, Jim Goodno, 62, lost his mother, Mary, who had been a member at the cathedral for more than 60 years.

"The morning we found out it was on fire, the first thing I said was Thank goodness (Jim's) mom wasn't here to see this because that would have killed her,'" Sharon, 60, said.

Demolition done

The Catholic Diocese of Madison opened the site Saturday and will open it again from 8 a.m. to noon next Saturday to anyone who wants a shard of rock as a keepsake.

The stories being told by the people who dropped by 222 W. Main St. stretched back even further than the century and a half that the cathedral stood on the Isthmus.

The great-grandparents of Margaret Cass, 70, were married on the site in 1853, the year before the cathedral was finished. Cass, of Madison, came to get a stone as a surprise gift for her brother, who was named after the cathedral and its patron saint.

Some have questioned the diocese's decision to tear down the walls that survived the fire.

Officials from the Catholic Diocese of Madison have said the fire, started by a mentally disturbed man who is now in prison, destroyed too much to rebuild using the surviving walls. City officials, they have pointed out, also requested the demolition for safety reasons.

Mark Landgraf, president of Landgraf Construction, said the demolition had been accomplished on schedule and without injuries and that the site would be returned to a grassy space by October. Diocese spokesman Brent King said Friday that church officials have still not set a timetable for the rebuilding of the cathedral, which is expected to use the salvaged steeple, stained-glass windows and some masonry from the old structure.

It's the people'

Jim Goodno was baptized in the cathedral, served as an altar boy there, and went to school at the now closed St. Raphael elementary and middle school. As five of his six siblings did in turn, Goodno got married in the cathedral in June 1968 and he and Sharon baptized their oldest son there the following summer.

Goodno's mother worshipped there one last time on the day before the cathedral burned, and was taken after the service to the hospital, where she died of a ruptured aneurysm in her stomach. If not for the fire, her funeral likely would have been held there. The family intends to put a stone from the cathedral at her grave site.

Standing by the pile of stones, Sharon said, "It's not the building that means so much. It's the people."

"That's true," Jim said.

"The priests we knew and the people we knew," Sharon said. "It's less about the building that was here. It's the community."