STORY: Festus the Labrador guides wounded Marine back to a normal life

Charlie Petrizzo and some of his Labrador retrievers pictured in May at his Waxhaw home/training kennel. 

I got to do a freelance story for the Catholic News Herald, my wife's paper. Was nice to be able to squeeze in a freelance assignment.
Here is a picture and the story below, as well. Please go ahead and hit the story on her site. It's the nice thing to do. And she's got more pictures than I do.

STORY: Festus the Labrador guides wounded Marine back to a normal life

WAXHAW, N.C. — A red fox Labrador retriever named Festus has given Marine Staff Sgt. Nick Bennett something he hasn't had since he heard a whistling noise in Anbar Province in Iraq in 2004.

Bennett has his life back.

Things most people take for granted – picking something up off the bottom shelf at the grocery store, putting on a pair of socks, enjoying a baseball game – had been out of his reach for much of the past 10 years since he heard that whistling sound and was severely injured – physically and mentally.

A long-time Marine reservist who lives in Franklin, Ind., Bennett asked his superiors if he could deploy during Operation Iraqi Freedom when several members of his unit were called up. His family has a long tradition of military service, and he also wanted to serve his country, he says.

He and five others ended up in Anbar Province, in an area dubbed the "Triangle of Death."

Bennett was technically a communications officer, but given his family's emphasis on military service, he says, he didn't go to Iraq just to work in a communications hut making sure fellow Marines could email and phone home. So he also pulled security duty at his forward operating base in Mamadiyah, Iraq.

It was one of the deadliest months of the war, and Bennett and his fellow Marines endured daily mortar attacks and IED blasts while out on patrol. Then rockets started falling on their base.

"The mortars, they thump," he recalls. "The rockets whistle."

The piercing whistle he heard on Nov. 11, 2004, was a rocket attack. When the blast from the 107mm shell struck him, badly wounding his legs and arms, Bennett was getting into a Humvee to assist other Marines who had come under attack. He had been in Iraq for less than three months.

An expression of 'caritas'

Outside a home set amid the rolling green hills south of Charlotte, N.C., one mild May morning, a man claps and whistles, and a collection of Labrador retrievers comes bounding up to him. Their tails wag as he pets and hugs each one.

Charlie Petrizzo has turned his three-acre property into a kennel and training operation for these Labs to become service dogs for people like Bennett.

Petrizzo formerly worked in financial services, where he focused on making money. Now retired, this cradle Catholic feels compelled to put his faith into action.

Project2Heal is that calling.

The "puppies," as Petrizzo affectionately calls them, get all the attention, but the idea is to help people. The dogs he breeds, raises and sometimes fully trains at Project2Heal are his way of expressing Catholic charity, he says.

"Charity comes from the word 'caritas.' It means Christ-like love."

Petrizzo knows something about what the people his dogs help have endured. He suffered two near-death experiences in his life, including getting electrical burns while standing on an aluminum ladder.

"I call that the gift that keeps on giving," he says with a wry laugh, explaining that he has had to deal with subsequent medical problems that trace back to that accident.

A family Labrador retriever helped him heal, and dogs have remained a source of comfort for him. So after years as a Fortune 500 executive, he searched for a way involving dogs that would enable him to help others who needed similar healing.

That way became Project2Heal, which breeds Labs and donates them to other organizations to train as service or companion dogs. They serve the disabled or injured vets such as Bennett, but they are also trained to help children who suffer from seizures, autism spectrum disorder and more.

Petrizzo works with up to 50 volunteers at Project2Heal who handle the daily operations. They start when each litter of carefully bred pups are just two days old, Petrizzo says, "imprinting" them with the sights and smells they'll need to understand later as trained service dogs. When the most promising puppies are just weeks old, they are given to service dog training groups for specialized training.

In the case of Bennett's service dog Festus, Project2Heal sent the pup to Indiana Canine Assistant Network (ICAN), which then matched him with Bennett one year ago. It was ICAN's 100th service dog, and its first with a combat wounded veteran.

Festus went to the Indiana Women's Prison to be trained by the inmates there. Many service dogs are trained by inmate handlers in prisons across the country.

Bennett spent two weeks at the prison with Festus to see if they would hit it off, and they did – right from the start.

Festus looked at Bennett, and the dog's eyes said, "Everything is going to be OK," the wounded Marine recalls.

'There to pick me up'

Now, three-year-old Festus is now helping the former Marine in ways he never imagined.

There's the "brace" command. Bennett says it, and Festus lets Bennett lean on his back for support. This enables him to put on his socks and reach for items on the bottom shelf at stores.

Before Festus came along, Bennett says, he simply didn't go to the store by himself. Now, he can go out anytime he wants.

Festus helps Bennett walk straight, too – keeping him from sidling too much in one direction because of his leg injuries.

And the "nudge" command makes possible experiences like going to a Chicago White Sox game, despite the worry of loud noises and crowds triggering his post-traumatic stress disorder.

"Like a lot of teams, they have fireworks when the White Sox hit a home run," Bennett says, but the whistling and exploding noises of fireworks can set off a PTSD episode, in which he can be frozen, zoned out for 20 minutes or more.

Without Festus, "I'd be hoping the White Sox do not hit a home run," Bennett says. But the dog nudges him, pushing his cold doggy nose into the side of Bennett's leg until he snaps out of the trance. Now his PTSD episodes last only five minutes or so, he says.

But the simple things Festus does are what truly amaze him, Bennett says.

"I can go do a flight of stairs like I did 10 years ago," he says, choking up.

Despite having had 26 surgeries to repair his hands and legs, he still feels pain from his injuries, but the pain has lessened considerably. And, he adds, "If I fall, he's going to be there to pick me up."

Festus has not just helped Bennett, though. Bennett's wife, his sole caregiver, is not afraid to leave him now to run errands or take time for herself.

"The anxiety that he has lowered in her, you can't ask for anything more in this world," he says.

Because Petrizzo bred the dog that has given him his life back, Bennett calls him a "major angel." He first met Petrizzo when he and Festus completed their training, when ICAN held a graduation ceremony, but Bennett wants to visit North Carolina and see where Festus and all the other service dogs got their start with Project2Heal.

Maybe when he does, Project2Heal will be in a new location.

Petrizzo has long dreamed of moving Project2Heal into a newer, larger home. He has more than one breeding dog, and each can have up to two litters a year. His pups are highly sought after by many organizations that train service dogs, because the breeding stock he uses is so highly regarded, as is the training and imprinting the Project2Heal staff do just days after the dogs are born.

Petrizzo can't keep up with the demand in his current home-based facility. He is getting assistance from parishioners at nearby St. Matthew Catholic Church, but he is also reaching out for more support because he sees a growing need – both among veterans like Bennett returning from combat, as well as with children suffering from autism spectrum disorder and other conditions.

And because he sees the good the dogs are doing.

He recalls one particular call from the mother of an autistic child who had a service dog from Project2Heal.

One day, the mother told him, she watched as the Labrador retriever brought a ball over to her son, and the child tossed it away, as if it were an annoyance. The dog brought the ball back and the child tossed it away again. Boy and dog continued to repeat the game of fetch for about 10 minutes, and soon the autistic boy began laughing.

The mother cried as she talked with Petrizzo. She hadn't heard her child laugh in years.

The amazing things dogs like Festus give back seem simple to "normal" people, Petrizzo says. But it's really all about charity – "caritas," the love of Jesus – because "a dog's love is the closest thing on earth to God's love."

Holding him up on all sides

The close bond between Festus and Bennett is no coincidence, Petrizzo and Bennett both agree.

Before he deployed to Iraq, Bennett told friends about his favorite Scripture passage, Exodus 17:10-12, which he considers his own intercessory prayer. It describes the Hebrews' battle against the Amalekites.

When the Hebrews were told to fight, Moses held up his arms. As long as he kept his arms raised the Hebrews prevailed, but when Moses grew tired and lowered his arms, the Amalekites started winning the battle. So Aaron and Hur held up Moses' arms.

"That's what I thought I would be needing" in Iraq," Bennett says: help on all sides. And he thinks he got it. From the moment he was injured by the rocket attack to his trip to medical facilities in Iraq, Germany and back in the United States, he believes he has been supported by the prayers of many.

And now Festus is holding him up, giving him back his life, he says.

Petrizzo notes that right after he was born, Festus had a different name. He was part of a litter named using a red theme.

It's also a nickname some of Bennett's friends had for him. It comes from the Bible and means "drawn from the water." The original name holder freed his people from slavery, leading them through the desert toward a new life, to a Promised Land.

They call him Festus now, but he started out as Moses.

SportsTalk makes fun of Kalon Davis' Eyes.

In a recent post on Sportstalksc.com, fun was poked at a Clemson offensive lineman.

See here.

They need to be careful. We knew about him long before.

Jury duty, just sitting around

So I got called for jury duty again. This time it was magistrate's court.
When I got there, I was just one of eight jurors. There was a Highway Patrolman, and the magistrate arrived a little bit later. No lawyer or defendant.
I thought that was interesting. The judge said that they would try the accused in absentia, but he showed up, by himself, a few minutes after the judge started court.
No lawyer, I thought. No family, I thought. This is going to be interesting.
The judge had spent a lot of time explaining the process, but I was a bit bored, having covered it for years and being a confirmed know-it-all. But when the guy showed up late and alone, I knew it was going to be interesting.
A lawyer who represents himself, the saying goes, has a fool for a client. The average Joe who decides to represent himself has an absolute freaking moron for a client.
It took a while for it to become clear what the charge was. Had to be vehicular, because it was a Highway Patrol case. Wasn't even going to be a first offense DUI, because the judge mentioned there was no alcohol involved.
When we got right down to it, the guy was charged with ... (drum roll please) failure to have his trailer chained to his vehicle.
The trooper, a nice corporal, testified. Played a tape of the "incident."
I wasn't on the jury, but I stayed anyway. Didn't have a note pad, so I'm getting details from memory. But in December, he was driving on Cherry Road, turned onto Celanese and pulled in to or near the Home Depot. The trooper had stopped the guy for failure to wear a seat belt, but the guy had said he had a note to excuse him from wearing the seat belt. The trooper said he accepted that, and did not charge the man for that crime, but noticed walking up to the vehicle that there was no chains. So he gave him a ticket for that.
You couldn't hear the man clearly on the tape, but you could tell he was mouthing off, from the get-go.
When he came in, he didn't really apologize for being late, and when the judge asked him if he "had anything before we proceed," a standard thing judges ask, he did not respond.
The man had been given a January appearance date on the ticket, and in January had requested a jury trial, which was set for Feb. 26.
According to this guy, who was popping off more than a few times during the brief trial, when he met with the judge, the judge told him he WAS going to throw him in jail for 30 days, so he requested the trial at that time.
"That's why we're here," he said.
The judge said when they met, he asked the man if he had, since he had gotten the ticket, gone ahead and gotten chains for his trailer. The judge said the man asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Sounds like the guy thought the judge was trying to trip him up into admitting something.
The judge said he was wanting to work with the guy. The trooper was willing to work with the guy. If he had gotten chains for the trailer, they would have dismissed the case. But he refused to answer the question and the judge told him the potential sentences.
Magistrate's court can be a bit more informal than "big" court. In all the big courts I have been to, the charge is clearly stated, and almost always, the potential sentences are laid out as well. They weren't at this trial, so when the jury went in to deliberate, the trooper, being kind to what he thought was the average citizen with better things to do, told me I was free to go.
But I am curious by nature and was free to stay, and asked him some questions.
The potential sentences are a $115 fine (which gets about doubled with court costs) or up to 30 days in jail.
Before I talked to the judge after the case, I was thinking this guy could have paid $115 and put this behind him. Yet he requested a jury trial.
He didn't really defend himself, but he doesn't have to. When he was "questioning" the trooper, he made some statements, which the judge said was testimony. But he flatly called the trooper a liar, twice. He said the trooper testified that he had a tan, four-door Jeep.
Which were TWO big lies, to this guy. I couldn't make out the color of the vehicle on the tape. Might have been white, might have been tan. But the trooper might have said four-door but meant four-wheel drive. I don't really recall what he said there.
A lawyer, had the man hired one, would have honed in on such a "discrepancy" and quizzed the trooper extensively about the difference in what he testified from memory and what was on the tape. He would have shown the jury there was a discrepancy, if there was one, and planted the idea in the jury's mind that there was a lie or two being told But calling a career highway patrolman who had served on the governor's protection detail a liar just didn't work.
He just came across as surly.
The trooper spoke in a calm voice through his testimony, but had a bit more emotion in his voice in summing up. He saw what he saw. He's been doing this a long time, he said. The patrol works to save lives.
In summation, the accused called the trooper a liar again, said the jurors didn't want their daughters getting stopped by a cop like him.
"He's one of the bad ones," he said.
It was absolutely over the top.
Over a violation that could have been dismissed without even a fine, had he bought chains for his trailer. Over a violation he might have paid a $230 fine and court costs penalty.
The jury spent more time going to the bathroom before deliberating than it did deliberating. It wasn't 10 minutes.
While the jury was out, the man started asking what the judge would do about sentencing him. He seemed like he had chosen that time to try to be reasonable. He wanted 30 days to get his affairs in order. I wasn't sure the guy would necessarily get prison time. So it struck me as both defeatist, after having requested the trial to begin with, to start asking about an accommodation in sentencing.
Sentencing in big court is a bit more formal than this was handled Wednesday.
But at a certain point, after the jury had left and some paper work had been filled out, they slapped the cuffs on him.
So began another back and forth about how he viewed he had been bullied by the cop and the judge.
But what was also hysterical was the guy working security for the judge, while they were waiting, goes up to the now-guilty fellow, and says, "We went to high school together, didn't we?"
It took a second for the guy to recognize the constable, but they had. So they spent a few minutes visiting while awaiting the sentence.
I have always wanted to serve on a jury and I have never had the chance to be one of the 12 Angry Men (and women). Not in the box. The closest I came, dear old Walter Bedingfield, a late, great defense attorney in Barnwell County who was so good because he knew all the cops when they were in high school and he had their high school hijinks in his back pocket for leverage, struck me because I worked at the paper.
I got called in York County, but after the first day, zip. No juries needed.
I love the criminal justice system and I think it is morbidly slow, but generally it works.
But this experience in the end just struck me as a colossal waste of time. I blame only the guilty dude for it. He had a chip on his shoulder, instead of a seat belt. He never elaborated and no one asked what medical issue he has that gets him an excuse to not wear it. I myself wonder if the excuse is signed, "Epstein's mother." (Dated reference, I know.)
But what was patently obvious to a first-time observer like me was confirmed by the constable.
"He was just like that in high school," he said. "Always had problems with authority figures."
Mostly, that is police. He gets pulled over a lot — he says it's because of the seat belt issue. But he has always paid those tickets.
The constable said the guy was a decent wrestler in high school, but had trouble with the coaches.
"Authority figures."
I talked to the judge afterward, actually getting a couple of interesting tidbits of information that might make some decent stories. He was interested in me and my job as well. And he has a keen interest in demographics, with some population figures and changes over the past decade on tap in his mind. Seemed like a smart guy.
His time was wasted. The trooper said he and all his fellow troopers have about 10 percent of their job time allocated for court time.
But he spent the morning, from about 9 to 10 a.m., handling 100 to 150 tickets in that same courtroom.
He then spent about an hour at a trial that was totally unnecessary.
The trooper tried to say it wasn't. But it was a waste of his time.
They say a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. This case proved it. This was a waste of the guilty guy's time, too. His little knowledge of his "rights," had it been balanced with just a little knowledge of his responsibilities, might have spared him 30 days.
Summary courts, as municipal and magistrates courts are known in South Carolina, rarely end up with someone going to jail, the judge said. Not on a traffic case that doesn't involve alcohol, for sure.
Maybe he'll learn something in there. I doubt it
The only person's time that wasn't wasted was mine, I think. The jurors who served got the hell out of there as soon as they could. But I stuck around.
It was great entertainment. A laugh riot. Like watching "Cops," but in the courtroom.

My USC-Clemson front

www.scnow.com

The puzzle

The St. George's Cross

The Bronze Pelican

Father Frank, the pastor of Jesus Our Risen Savior Parish in Spartanburg, delivered the homily at Dad's funeral Mass.
He didn't get into too many specifics, and some in the family were initially disappointed in that.
He has a theme he uses often, my mother said. He talks about visiting cemeteries and mostly finding pleasant stories by piecing together the information on the headstones.
He also once saw his own name on a headstone and high-tailed it out of there.
And he started Dad's homily by talking about some cemeteries.
Like all of us, we believed Dad was the greatest man to walk the earth, actually exceeding a certain carpenter's son from Nazareth, so we wanted the specifics. I also wanted them because he and Mom visited the day before and he quizzzed her, and he took notes.
He did allow a eulogy of sorts right before the Mass ended, which is not strictly in the Catholic rite. And I got to say the words I said below, to offer a little glimpse.
And Fr. Frank did get into some specifics later in the homily.
My dad went to Ireland as a young man, he said.
"And they didn't want to give him back," he added, making us laugh. He went for a summer visit and got stuck when World War II broke out. Fear of U-boats.
I don't want to dismiss the sermon as an easy, boilerplate homily, though, because of the way it made me think when Fr. Frank also talked about the puzzle.
The list of things he might have said would be just pieces in a puzzle, he said. You don't know what the whole picture is until you put it all together.
And before the day was out, I got what he meant.
But I have to add to Fr. Frank, that sometimes, you can make out part of the puzzle as you do it.
My wife and son did a 1,000-piece puzzle on the dining room table once.
Was this red dot a flower on the house? Nope. Later, it turned out to be part of the small canoe of the guy on the lake.
Surrounding me at the funeral were pieces in my father's puzzle.
Three young men were the altar servers. They were brothers, all sons of a friend of my sister Anne. The Ravan boys. They are all my father's godsons.
As we were sitting in the limo, waiting to go to the cemetery, a young lady approached the car to talk to Mom. I thought it was a woman I remembered, but it was her daughter. She was the spitting image of her mom, now grown up. She used to come over to the house and was Dad's second unofficial grandchild in Spartanburg.
But she was his goddaughter.
Her mother? My mom and dad were her sponsors when she decided to become a Catholic.
Boom boom boom.
Pieces of the puzzle, right there, and pieces in the same area of the puzzle.
I also thought as we came back to church for a lunch provided by the Bereavement Guild at the church about Dad's obituary. I wrote the main body of it, and mentioned that my father had received two awards from the Catholic Church and Boy Scouting, the Bronze Pelican and the St. George's Cross.
I don't know what specifics were cited when my father was nominated, but here's what a current application form for the award says about them --

• "The St. George Award is a national recognition approved by the National Catholic Committee on Scouting. The Bronze Pelican Award is a diocesan recognition defined by the Diocesan Catholic Committee on Scouting with the approval of the local ordinary. Either award may be presented to any adult who is working in the Scouting Program. It may be given to clerics, laity, or Scouters of other faiths. 
• "The purpose of these awards is to recognize each recipient's outstanding contribution to the spiritual  development of Catholic youth in the program of the Boy Scouts of America. Other awards are available to  recognize general Scouting achievements by districts, local councils, regions, and the national office.  However, recommendations for the St. George and Bronze Pelican Awards should carefully detail how the nominee meets the selection guidelines described below. 
• "... In most cases, the Bronze Pelican is presented to a first-time selected  nominee. The St. George Award is presented to a nominee who has previously received the Bronze Pelican Award and who has continued to significantly influence Catholic Scouting for at least two additional years."

In a life having gone to hundreds of Masses, I vaguely remember a piece here or there of a few sermons, even from priests that I respect, admire and love.
But I can remember walking home one night, accompanied for a time by Mr. Nicholas Palazzo, our adult scout leader, who was teaching the class so us Scouts in Troop 56 could get our Ad Altare Dei awards. That's the award for Catholic Boy Scouts. We had already gotten our Parvuli Dei awards, the award for Catholic Cub Scouts. I remember a specific lesson Mr. Palazzo told me after class about the Beatitudes and about mercy.
We were definitely a Catholic Scout troop and one of the tasks they took seriously was teaching us our faith -- in a way that got us medals we could hang from our uniforms.
Again, I don't remember what my dad did for his, because they obviously wouldn't let him sign off on his own kids. But I remember we drove upstate once when he got his Bronze Pelican, and I think Monsignor Vier of St. Raymond's was there to give it to him. I remember he got his St. George's Cross at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, the same day my brother got his Ad Altare Dei there.
Boom boom boom. More pieces of the puzzle. Same area of the puzzle. The picture really took shape.
It didn't occur to me until I started writing this to add in my father's two daughters and his two sons, whom he, along with Mom, made sure got to church every Sunday when we were growing up. Whom he put through seven to eight years of parochial school. Two daughters who got one to two years at Catholic high schools. The schooling was not free in any way.
At the luncheon after the funeral and even more clearly now, I see "the guy on the canoe in the middle of the lake" in the puzzle that is my father.
Given that we are not yet complete, and we are not sure to what degree of success it has happened, still it is clear, my father was a man who brought other people to God.
My pastor has a theme he uses often in his sermons.
"Who here wants to go to Heaven?" he asks. All the hands go up.
"Who here wants to be a saint?"
The hands go down.
Which perplexes and confounds him. Because by definition, if you go to Heaven, you are a saint. So to go to Heaven, you have to try to be a saint.
"We are called to be saints," he says, chiding us.
I don't know how many times my father was a godfather. I think about the two times I have been asked and done it, and I realize what a poor job I have been doing with my goddaughter Gracie and my godson Talmadge. That I hope to change.
I don't know how many Cub and Boy scouts he counseled on their way to a chest ribbon or two. Had to be more than a few to get those awards. The Bronze Pelican might have be pro forma thank you for anyone who pitches in. But the St. George's Cross? Not for a slacker.
So the clear picture I am getting from this part of the puzzle that is my father is this -- he was a holy man.
It is not hyperbole. I am not bragging on him. Rather, it is daunting to have that example to follow up to.
About a week or so before he died, Fr. Frank came to visit him. He gave him, he told my mother, the Anointing of the Sick. That is the more-used name of the Sacrament that doubles as Last Rites. And he did mention that my father would obtain a plenary indulgence upon death, so Dad got the Last Rites. He also took Communion, which in that context, is called Viaticum. Food for the journey. Fr. Frank also asked Dad if he had anything to confess. He said he did.
Fr. Frank promptly kicked my mother and sister out of the room and heard Dad's confession. A couple of minutes later, he was out and looking for Mom and Catherine.
"Where did you go?" he said.
Mom said she figured he would need some time, and Fr. Frank said, "You, maybe. Not him."
Knowing he had confession, an anointing and communion, I put on Facebook, as a joke, that Bud was an instrument of grace. But that's usually been the case.
It was just a bit of Catholic humor.
Now that I'm putting the puzzle together, I realize.
It was no joke.
The fact that there is a new saint in heaven is no joke.
The fact that we can call him St. Bud. That's a joke.

One he would tell, over and over again.

New Maronite pastor asks for fledging flock's compassion

New Maronite pastor asks for fledging flock's compassion

Eulogy, Stephen Christopher Guilfoyle Sr.

To my non-Catholic friends, I will explain as a preface that a personal eulogy is not generally a part of the Catholic funeral mass, but, depending on the priest you have and the sympathy he has for parishioners and family, it can be allowed.
I found out about 11 p.m. Monday night that Fr. Frank Palmieri would allow anyone who wanted a chance to say something, so I put this together. I had been thinking about some things beforehand, but then had gotten the impression they weren't going to do it. So it was not what I might have done if I had time to really work on it. And, as with the one other time I was allowed to do this, I heard something during the service and had to improvise. I went off-script a lot, and don't remember all my changes, so I added in my improvization and tried to approximate my on-the-fly edits.

Among the many things my father gave his children, particularly his sons, was a love of the movies. He loved movies. My mother will tell you that many of the dates they went on when he was courting her were to the movies, and involved hot dogs. He was a big spender.

His favorite movie was, of course, The Quiet Man, starring John Wayne. He could quote the dialogue verbatim from his favorite scenes. If he was flipping channels and happened to find it on, he would start watching. Often, we would see this, and tell him, “We’ve got the tape. We can stick it in and watch the whole thing, without commercials.” But he would say no. He had been transported wherever he went and didn’t want to go back. Driving his sons crazy.

An online posting from an old family friend called him “The Quiet Man,” and it made my sister and my mother choke up to read it. The friend saw something we saw in him; we were glad to see that others saw it to.

If you watch it and like it, the next time you see it, think of my father.

It is hard to be the type of man my father was. I hope I have learned from his example, and I want to teach my son to be the kind of man my father was. He is a gentle boy.

To my mother, I saw the remarkable care you and Catherine gave him, and it was out of love.

You have many memories to cherish, but the thing I truly grieve about is that you have lost your dance partner. I am sad because we are so left-footed. But I think John won’t mind my speaking on his behalf here. If you need a dance partner, we are here for you. As long as it is slow music and not too complicated.

It needs to be said again and loudly, that my sister Catherine basically moved into the house in the final weeks to assist Mom in taking care of Dad.

I had an asthma attack once and it put me in Mary Black Hospital. I ended up on her floor. And when she came in to my room that first time, I expected to get it, both barrels, from someone who knew all my faults. Something tough. Too tough.

When she left, I asked, “Who was that nice girl who looks like my sister?”

She was the most gentle, kindly and caring nurse I have ever had.

I once applied for a job at a newspaper, and the editor told me his father had been on her floor, and that he received excellent care from the redhead.

I know how well you cared for Dad because I know how well you cared for me. I know also that Dad would not want you to get so caught up and involved in what happened to him that you forget to take care of yourself. He wants you to continue to care for many, many others as well as you cared for him, for years and years to come. He was proud that you chose your career, and he is beyond proud with the way you have conducted your career.

I am proud of both you and mom for taking such good care of him. He died, in gentle comfort, at his home, in his own bed, because of you and your love for him.

Lastly, I am improvising here, but I have heard Psalm 23 before, but never quite the way it was worded today. Everyone has said what a kind man my father was. I was looking at some pictures at my brother’s home, of a trip my father took to Ireland with John and his wife. That was when Dad was beginning to slow down. And in several pictures, Dad is lagging steps behind.

You should not laugh during the responsorial Psalm, but I couldn’t help it when I heard the cantor sing, “Kindness shall follow you the rest of your days.”

Because Dad was kindness personified. And he was following us the past few years.

Ps: A1 & A2- Psalm 23

Response: The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
In verdant pastures he gives me repose;
Beside restful waters he leads me, he refreshes my soul.
Response

He guides me in right paths for his name's sake.
Even though I walk in the dark valley I fear no evil; for you are at my side With your rod and your staff that give me courage.
Response

You spread the table before me in the sight of my foes;
You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Response

Only goodness and kindness follow me all the days of my life;
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for years to come.
Response