Requies Cat In Pace I first met him at the post office in the summer of 2012 when I first arrived in Kalaupapa. I believe he felt that he had been called to be the official greeter for the post office and the administration office. He was large and strong, yet very gentle and friendly…
Salute To A Hero Hero! We all have heroes. Well at least some of us do. So it is no surprise that in his most recent reflection one of our Sacred Hearts men in California, Fr. John Roche, told how from his youthful days onward he had a devotion to St. Damien and marveled at…
The Day I Lost My Sole It all started in the morning of April 4 when I went to our Kalaupapa International Airport to meet a plane load of young men and women who were arriving on Saints Damien and Marianne land in order to spend a few days of retreat away from the business…
Ashes To Ashes “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, if the women don’t get me, the drink it must.” It has been fifty years since I first heard those rather irreverent lines spoken by Lee Marvin in the 1969 movie, Paint Your Wagon. Now I am not about to further quote from the gospel…
A Time To Remember I threw on my Savers dark dustcoat, stepped out into the rain, and headed for my Paddy Wagon. I must have looked like Wyatt Earp or Doc Holliday on the way to the O.K. Corral that morning, but I was not heading to a corral, not even the mule corral. By this…
Room In The Inn The bus was filled to capacity and one very pregnant woman was left standing in the aisle up front in the clear view of all the other passengers. No one got up to offer a seat to her, no one that is except the bus driver. Quickly realizing the situation, he…
Precious Memories “Precious memories, unseen angels, sent from somewhere to my soul. How they linger, ever near me, and the sacred past unfolds.” We could say that these lines from a traditional gospel song, written by J.B.F. Wright in 1925, and put to music by great vocalists such as Jim Reeves, Aretha Franklin and Alan…
In Memoriam The morning meeting started right on time …..Kalaupapa time that is ….which usually means after the participants have done hugging, kissing, talking story and visiting the cooler for some libation. This day’s libation was cold, clear, refreshing Kalaupapa water, the best water I have tasted since my childhood days in the west of…
To Tell The Truth “Tell the truth and shame the devil.” When I was a growing boy in the west of Ireland, a few moons ago, this was one of our moral mottos. As I grew into adulthood, I tried to live by this motto though this was not always easy. In the course of…