Father Donald O'Brien
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| Father Donald O'Brien |
This wasn't remotely true because I, of course, was Father O'Brien's favorite. At least I thought I was until I realized my friends Hugh Brandon and Julie Kayl seemed to have the impression Father O'Brien liked them best. Then Dave Mildenstein, our school janitor, said he was pretty sure Father O'Brien was especially attached to him.
Either our pastor Don O'Brien loved every single one of us best, or the guy was the most fraudulent con-artist alive.
I shouldn't have been surprised. After he performed my wedding and the weddings of most of my sisters, I overheard him speaking at the reception to my sister Terri whose ceremony he'd just celebrated. He didn't know I was just behind him with my other sisters, but I heard him say very distinctly, "Of all you five girls, you were the prettiest bride."
My head shot up. "What did you just say?" I demanded.
Surprised, he turned around like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
My sister Mary next to me heard the commotion. "What?" she said. "What'd he say?"
Without taking my eyes away from him, I informed Mary in a steely voice, "He said Terri was the prettiest of all of us."
Mary's eyes grew wide as she turned on him. "That's what you told me!"
Suddenly surrounded, he looked from one of us to the other hoping for sympathy, but there was none to be had. I shook my head. "Busted, old man."
He managed a wavering step backwards. "I'm allowed one phone call," he joked.
Back in the early 80's when our family first became acquainted with Father O'Brien, he was the Johnny Carson of our time. Nobody under 40 will even know who that is. Too bad for them, because just like Johnny, Father O'Brien could entertain a roomful of people with his lightning-quick quips and self-deprecating humor. In his 61 year career as a priest, he never forgot a joke, a name, or a birthday. He remembered your second child's First Communion, what flavor ice cream you liked best, and your youngest brother's peanut allergy. How this was possible, none of us ever knew. But from North Platte to Sidney to Amherst to Eddyville to Shelton to Ainsworth to Scottsbluff to Grand Island to Cozad to Gothenburg to Kearney, he collected thousands of favorite parishioners. Every bride was the prettiest, and every parish was full of the smartest, hardest working, most loving folks he ever knew.
"You're my very favorite church," he gushed over every one of us. No matter where he went, he was still our favorite, too.
His connection with people was palpable. Perhaps because he'd struggled with alcoholism and even after 45 years of sobriety called himself a recovering alcoholic, he was tender with others who struggled. No sin was too great for God to forgive, he assured us. The idea, he said, was to forgive the way God forgave and never to judge anybody too harshly.
That's what Father O'Brien did. When an elderly man in a threadbare coat held together by safety pins started attending Mass at Blessed Sacrament, Father O'Brien took the time to ask him about himself. All alone with no family, the old man was comforted by Father O'Brien's kindness and was glad to accept the new coat Father offered. When the man died, it turned out he was actually enormously wealthy and had privately made arrangements to gift most of his wealth to Blessed Sacrament Church - all because of a priest who extended a little kindness. How's that for a lesson in charity?
My friend Betty Frey-Nelson will always remember the way Father O'Brien performed the funeral for a young couple tragically killed in Wyoming. "The mother of the girl was Catholic," Betty recalls, "so Father O'Brien offered a Mass for the wife and a service for the Jewish husband whose Rabbi could not attend. He was loving and caring and tried to meet the needs of the entire family!"
Father O'Brien didn't judge any of us. I remember the way he guided John and me through our marriage prep nearly four decades ago and instructed us to bring our Baptismal certificates to the next meeting. I couldn't find mine.
"Dad!" I panicked. "Where is it?" It was not the question to ask my widowed father who'd always depended on my mother to keep track of those things.
Dad made a brief stab at helping me search but was anxious to get back to his recliner. "You know," he said, "I remember now. The church burned down - and all the records with it."
It was a bogus story, but it was all I had. At our next marriage prep meeting, my heathen non-Catholic husband-to-be dutifully handed over to Father O'Brien his baptismal certificate - carefully saved by parents who loved him much more than my parents loved me.
"Where's yours?" Father O'Brien turned to me.
I ducked my head. "I couldn't find it," I said.
He sat behind his desk and reached for the phone. "What was the name of that church in Montana? I'll have Jackie call for a copy."
I stared at him miserably. "It burned down," I said.
Glaring at me for a long minute, he swore then reached into his desk drawer for a blank certificate. I remember the way he leaned over the typewriter in his nice tweed jacket and carefully pecked out a fake baptismal certificate for me.
"What just happened here," he warned after forging a fake priest's signature, "goes no farther than this room."
I never told anybody until now. If Bishop Hanefeldt declares our marriage null and void after 38 years and two kids, what the heck? We had a good run.
Just after our wedding and just before Christmas in 1984, Blessed Sacrament really did burn down. It was a traumatic event that shook us to the core. Myrna Sullivan's exceptional choir had been preparing for Christmas services, and the grade school kids were practicing their roles for the yearly pageant. One freezing night, an arsonist - who wouldn't be discovered for weeks - sneaked into our church. In a single night our beloved Blessed Sacrament was destroyed. We were heartbroken and stared at each other helplessly as we moved to Central Catholic High School to attend Mass.
At that first service in the school gym, Father O'Brien turned to us with a radiant smile. I don't even remember what he said. I only remember the love that shone out of his eyes and the way he made us feel grateful for being a united community even without our church building.
In the end, Father O'Brien oversaw the renovation of a beautiful new church. The vividly colored windows represented the seasons, and over the altar in stained glass was the image of Jesus ascending into Heaven. After that horrible fire, it would make you cry to see Christ rising out of the ashes. To this day we all think of Father O'Brien when we gaze upon those beautiful stained glass windows. Don O'Brien was exceedingly proud of his new church - so proud that some teasingly accused him of being the arsonist.
Years after he had been transferred to Cozad, we celebrated a milestone anniversary at Blessed Sacrament with then pastor Father Don Larmore. Father Larmore invited Father O'Brien back to speak at the anniversary liturgy, and we were all eager to see our much loved former pastor again.
Father Larmore introduced him during Mass and waxed poetic about the fire and the courageous leadership Father O'Brien demonstrated during that difficult time in the history of Blessed Sacrament. It was a magnificent intro, and Father O'Brien stepped to the pulpit to thunderous applause.
We waited breathlessly for him to speak as he adjusted the microphone. He looked over his former congregation with the familiar kindly but grave expression beneath those shaggy eyebrows.
"Just so you know," he said, "I didn't set that fire."
We exploded, and it was a full five minutes before the last chuckles and snorts finally died out. We were all reminded in that instant why we loved the man so much.
For Blessed Sacrament Church and every one of his other parishes, Father O'Brien was the quick-witted, charming, funny and loving pastor we all adored. He married us, baptized our babies, buried our dead and even played Trivial Pursuit with us.
More than two months ago, I was with a group of Blessed Sacrament faithful when I heard the news that Father O'Brien was suffering from terminal cancer. Altogether, we gasped in unison and instantly read on each other's faces everything that Don O'Brien meant to each of us. It was impossible to think of him ever dying.
At the end of April, I called him to arrange a visit.
"I'd love to see you all!" he said. His voice was weak, but he sounded pleased to hear from me. "By the way, I didn't get around to sending you a birthday card this year."
For 40 years, even if it was usually our only communication, we always sent each other a birthday card.
"That's okay. I guess you're off the hook this year," I said.
"Oh sure," he laughed. "You'll go right home and tell John, 'That SOB forgot my birthday!' "
We didn't talk long before he tired. I wish we had. It was the last time I would ever hear his voice. On the day John and our good friend Julie Kayl and I planned to see him, he was too ill for a visit. One week ago today, the entire Grand Island Diocese learned the news that our Johnny Carson-double-of-a-pastor had died.
We could hardly take it in. The priest who remembered 20,000 birthdays and raised a blackened church from the ashes could never do anything so ordinary as die. He was too smart, too funny, too vibrant.
Too loved.
He was our favorite. And we were his.
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