Putsche, Father Elmer J.

1988, January 16

Date of Birth: 1921

Born in Baltimore in 1921, Elmer Putsche attended All Saints elementary school before he entered St. Charles College from which he graduated in 1941. He advanced to St. Mary’s Seminary and was ordained to the priesthood in 1946. Having become a Sulpician candidate, he was assigned to St. Joseph’s College in Mountain View, California. In the following year he began his Solitude on Paca Street. Upon the completion of Solitude, he was appointed to St. Charles College where he spent the next twenty years in its high school. During those years at various times he taught Latin and Greek, was Prefect of the Juniors, and became the high school’s last principal. In 1968, Father Putsche left the Society of St. Sulpice and took up work in his native diocese, the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Its archbishop, Cardinal Shehan, assigned him to the parish of Our Lady, Queen of Peace. In 1975, on the death of Father Bonomo, the parish’s founding pastor, Father Putsche was appointed pastor of the Middle River church. In his last years he suffered from various cancers. They brought about his death on January 16, 1988. 

Data supplied by Rev. John Bowen.