Msgr. Francis Friedl

Now in the 90th year of what he calls his "first life," Msgr. Francis Friedl has had more than a lifetime of interesting and exciting experiences.

He recalls so many of those events, and retells them so vividly, that it's easy for his listeners and readers to visualize him fighting on his first day of kindergarten, piloting an airplane or interviewing actors Martin Sheen, Jane Wyatt and Loretta Young.

Friedl has been a pastor and president (Loras College, 1971-77). He is an author and expert homilist. He is a world traveler who is still planning domestic excursions.

The Telegraph Herald recently engaged Friedl in an extended interview. Here are highlights of that conversation. (A longer version appears on THonline.com.)

TH: One of your books is called "My First Life." Tell me how you chose "My First Life."

FF: One of the reasons I chose it is because I gave the best title I ever had to another priest. Father Ferring wrote his autobiography. He said, "Can you give me a good title?" I gave him the title, "I've Got a Life." So I had think of another one. So I thought, "My First Life," because there is another one coming -- and not too long from now at my age. So, "My First Life" is talking about my experiences here and I've got another one to look forward to.

TH: In that book, you indicated, in so many words, that you first entertained thoughts of becoming a priest because you weren't very successful as a petty thief.

Msgr. Francis P. Friedl Age: 89 Hometown: Waterloo, Iowa. Family: One of nine children of the late Philip A. and Mary Rose Schares Friedl. Among his six surviving siblings is a brother, Tom Friedl, of Galena, Ill. Occupation: Retired priest, pastor, educator and administrator; author. Former president of Loras College (1971-77). Education: Ph.D., Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., 1954. Master of Arts, Catholic University, 1952. Mount St. Mary of the West Seminary, Norwood, Ohio; ordained to priesthood, 1943. Bachelor of Arts, Loras College, 1939. Major honors and awards: Professor emeritus, distinguished alumnus and honorary degree, Loras College. Honorary degree, Clarke College. Knight Commander of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre. Sigma XI. Outstanding Educators of America. Named a monsignor in 1956.

FF: I think about 7 years old. I had just received my first communion.

TH: I think you indicated that you ended up seeking confession.

FF: Well, that really wasn't really the thing that led me to confession, but I had a tender conscious I think as a lot of young people do. When I would go to confession, I would come out and feel so relieved. This is all wiped off the books, you know? "If I died today, I'd go to Heaven." I thought, what a wonderful feeling that is. And I thought if I could enter some kind of a life that would give that joy to other people. Now, that was a start, and that can't carry it all the way through to the end, but it was a beginning.

TH: Did any other members of your family enter religious life?

FF: Yes, one of my sisters. A very strange story again. Margaret was a very beautiful, talented, brilliant girl and she had everything. She became a nurse. She worked in the hospital up in Rochester. She was the head of one of the operating rooms up there. Then she went back and was working for a hospital in Waterloo. She was engaged to a boy, and the boy died. Then Margy went back into service as a Navy nurse. She called me one day when I was at Catholic U, studying for my degree in Psychology. She said, "What would you think if I would join the convent?" I thought, yeah, Sociology 101. Her boy died, so and she wants -- but I knew different. Margy was a very, very wonderful girl, very talented and she would never do a thing, she'd never run away from anything. So I said, well, why don't you try it, Margy? You can always leave. She flew to Washington, D.C. I picked her up and I said, "Now, I think you ought to see Washington, D.C., while you're here, so I showed her around the Jefferson Monument, the White House. I never went there before. Places like that. Then I took her up to New York. We saw the Statute of Liberty. We saw the United Nations Building, Rockefeller Center and all that. Then I took her down about two days late to the convent. It was a pretty broken down place. Real old neighborhood with broken glass in the streets. They hastily put her garment on her, the veil, you know. I thought, well, I'll give her about two weeks. Sure enough, two weeks later I got a call. Can you come up to Philadelphia? Yeah. Will you say Mass for us Sunday morning? Yeah. This is our special Feast Day, Pentecost. What else? That's all. So I borrowed a car and drove up there. When I walked in and saw her I realized how stupid I'd been. She was the happiest girl I've ever seen in my life. That was 1954. We went down to celebrate her 50th in the convent last year. She's a great gal. She was the prior, head of the convent in Philadelphia and in St. Louis and then later in Corpus Christi, Texas. She finally retired and let someone else take the job over.

TH: You came from a large family.

FF: Nine children.

TH: Based on what I read in your book, the family did well in the bakery business but you were never well-to-do.

FF: We were never well-to-do. My grandfather ran a bakery in Waterloo. It had the latest type of equipment, nobody hardly ever touched the bread. Then the war came along, the first World War, and Germans couldn't do any business in Waterloo. So he closed the bakery down and sold it. My father moved to Waverly with his brother and our family and started a bakery there. He did very well. But then coming back, he took over the restaurant in Waterloo and it was Depression days. About the time I was ready to go to Loras College - then Columbia College. It was Depression time. I can remember when there were, we would have to have pork, ham and beef at least, and steaks for dinners. And I would come out there and work for my dad washing dishes and so on, and there would be two tables lit up and only two couples there for the whole evening. At the end of the week, dad would go down to borrow $50 to buy enough food to keep the restaurant going. Now, that doesn't sound like much, but in those days, $50 could buy quite a bit. It was a very, very tough time. Then the war came along and people began to work once again and they came out to eat. So things were better.

TH: And that would have been World War II.

FF: World War II. With nine children in the family, even then there wasn't much money to spare, so when I came down to Columbia College, I hitchhiked down and got a job waiting on tables in a restaurant. That took care of my board. For my room, I had room on the fifth floor with only three walls and a curtain in the front. That was $12.50 per semester, and I had a tuition scholarship for the first semester. So my total cost for the first semester at Columbia College was $12.50.

TH: And that restaurant where you worked was next door to where the TH is now.

FF: That's right, the Eighth Street Café.

TH: The schedule you kept to do that. You were a full-time student and you were working in this restaurant and unlike today's college students, most of them have their own cars or bicycles, you were hoofing that up to Loras College.

FF: I can remember walking up that hill the first time I had a job downtown and I walked up the hill to Loras College and I hardly made it, I was out of breath. Within two months, I was running. You won't believe this. I would run from the Eighth Street Café all the way up and across Jefferson and then up to Loras College without getting out of breath.

TH: Hard work was part of your lifestyle growing up, because of the family business.

FF: Yes. Every one of the kids worked either in the bakery or in the restaurant. Washing dishes, waiting on tables and so on. I can remember the first time I waited on somebody at the counter, I turned around fast and dumped coffee into the fellow's lap. So I had a lot to learn.

TH: What other recollections do you have of your childhood?

FF: I can remember when I was not more than 6, I'm sure. My dad asked me to go down to the bakery every day. When the donuts come out of the grease, the fried donuts and to powder-sugar them. That was before school. I would go down, and I was scared of the dark, and I would run all the way to the bakery, which was about five blocks. I would powder-sugar the donuts, that was my breakfast, and then I would go to school. But those were good days. I used to go to the bakery and the fellows would like to kid me. They would send me over the east side for a pie stretcher. Or they would send me off for a left-handed monkey wrench. I would get over to the hardware store and they would say, "I'm sorry, we only have one left-handed monkey wrench and a left-handed guy is using it right now." But that was part of the fun.

TH: Wasn't there some incident about your first day at kindergarten?

FF: Yes, a fellow came over to me and he was going to beat up on me. I didn't know what fighting meant. And all of a sudden, I stood back and started to beat up on him. Then he quit and I never had any more fights in school.

TH: You also indicated that the first chance you were offered the opportunity to take instruction to be an altar server, you didn't go for that.

FF: I didn't go for it. I was so busy. I had a paper route. I had to work for my dad. At the place where I lived, I had to pick up the garbage and burn it every day for all of the people who lived in the apartments. The nun asked me if I would be an altar boy. I said, no, I don't have time. So that night when my dad and I were working at the apartment, I told him that. He said, "I think you ought to give that some thought. That's not a bad idea." Well, when he said something like that, I knew he meant it, so I went back and told the Sister I would like to be an altar boy and I joined. I think had I not, I never would have become a priest.

TH: You're of German descent. Did the family speak German in the home?

FF: No. During the First World War, everybody knew German but nobody would speak it because it was kind of verboten to. My dad knew German, my mother knew German, but they would never speak it.

TH: When you finally did make the commitment to enter the priesthood, was there any particular ...

FF: There are two kinds of the priesthood, you know. There are the congregations like the Jesuits, the Society of the Divine Word, Franciscans, Dominicans and so on. Then there's a secular priesthood in which you study for a particular diocese. The SVDs came one time, and the nuns always knew who was ripe for the priesthood, and so they turned my name into the SVD priest. I was in seventh grade. He said, "Now, I know that you don't have much money, but if you come to our seminary, we'll send you through without any cost. Board, room, education, books, everything." I thought that was a pretty good deal. I talked to my dad about it and dad was a very wise man. Dad said, "Well, that's fine if that's what you want to do." But he said, "Why don't you finish your high school education first, then maybe you can make a better decision." So I did. Then we had a very young priest by the name of Father Louis Putz, who came to be our assistant. That was first young priest I ever met and knew. He was a marvelous man. During the summertime, I played tennis with him all the time. He took me on fishing trips. He was my idol. I talked to him about going, what's the difference between joining a congregation liked the SVDs or the diocese? Well, he said, the difference is this. If you join the congregation, they may send you anywhere in the world. If you join a diocese, like the Dubuque Diocese, which takes up the northeast corner of the State of Iowa, you will be within that area and you'll be able to visit your parents and your brothers and sisters any time you want to. That decided it for me. He said the first thing to do is to go to Columbia College, which then became Loras College -- became Loras College the year I graduated in 1939. Anyway, is it time for the rest of the story here, where I was to go then?

TH: After graduation from Columbia-then-Loras, seminary?...

FF: The archbishop would come in and visit all those who wanted to go to the seminary. He would say I think you ought to go, or you would tell him where you'd like to go. I worked for three years at the college for Father Kuenzel, who was the librarian. A marvelous man. He was another great, wonderful priest. He had gone to Innsbruck and he always talked about the wonderful days at Innsbruck and so I wanted to go there. So when the archbishop said where would you like to go to seminary, I said I'd kind of like to go to Innsbruck. He looked at me and said, with the grades that you have, you could go to Rome. I didn't want to argue with an archbishop, so I said, okay. So, a week later when the appointment came out, Father Kinzel called me and said, did you really want to go to Rome? I said, no, I didn't, but I hated to disagree with the archbishop. He said, let me take care of it. You come down here. I'll visit the archbishop. You're going to be changed. He went to the archbishop and said this boy is going to Innsbruck and the archbishop said, fine. Then the war broke out, Hitler marched into Poland, I think it was on September 1. On September 15th, we were supposed to fly to Innsbruck. That was the end. The archbishop called, three of us were to go. Father Al White and Father Karl Klein and myself were going to go to Innsbruck. The archbishop called us in and said you can't go now and he said, we'll send you to Norwood, Ohio, that's the Cincinnati diocese. He said if the war is over in a year or two, you can go to Innsbruck. And, of course, it never happened. So I spent four years in Norwood, Ohio.

TH: That's not anything like Austria, is it?

FF: No.

TH: You, of course, continued on with your education, your master's from Catholic U and Ph.D., as well. You went back to your alma mater. It struck me, in reading your biography, that you were given quite a bit of responsibility pretty early in your career.

FF: You mean when I came back to Loras? Too early. Bishop Lane was the president. There had never been a director of public relations. He decided to create that office and he appointed me to be the director. That's a full-time job. I had the job of recruiting all the students. I had the job of putting on programs from the parents and programs for the kids and just about everything else. Then he also wanted me to be athletic director. I didn't want that. I finally got out of that. I was so busy as the director of public relations, I had an assistant and a secretary, and I was so busy with that program, I could hardly prepare my classes to teach. Finally, Msgr. Gannon, a very wise man, let me out. He said, "I don't think you should teach anymore."

TH: It was about that time, or after a couple of years, then you moved up and actually became a vice president of Loras.

FF: I was only there two years, yes. I came back in 1954 and in '56, I was made vice president.

TH: Then either on or about that time of that appointment, then you became monsignor.

FF: At the same time, yes.

TH: So you've been a monsignor more than half a century now.

FF: I never thought of it that way, but you're right.

TH: About that time of becoming a vice president, then you had occasion to host JFK when he came to town.

FF: Yes. JFK was to give the commencement talk at Loras in 1956. He was giving another commencement the day before -- I think it was in Kansas, I forget the name of the place -- but he couldn't get a flight to Dubuque. So the president asked me to go out and hire a man from our local air service and we flew to Waterloo and picked him up and brought him back here. That was interesting. I showed him around town, took him to Mass at St. Patrick's. Then he gave the commencement address. An interesting thing. We were walking out of Keane Hall and he picked this comb out of his pocket, to comb his hair, and he dropped it. He said, "Father, would you mind picking that up?" I thought, "Well, that's an interesting thing." I picked it up and then I realized this man had such a bad back, he couldn't bend over. He had had an operation on his back. And had that terrible thing with the, what kind of a boat did he run?

TH: PT boat?

FF: The PT boat, PT 109. Let me tell you an interesting story about that. I'm leaving Loras College. I'm up to Elkader. I came back to St. Columbkille's. I came back here in 1984. There was the presidential election in 1988. Eldon Herrig came to Mass one day and brought with him Joe Biden. He brought him back at the end of Mass and introduced him to me at the entrance of the church. I said, "Sen. Biden, you know the last U.S. senator I shook hands with went on to become president of the United States." He said, "Is that true? Tell me the story." So I said it was Jack Kennedy in 1956 €¦ He looked at me kind of reflectively for a moment. He said, "Monsignor, would you have any time to show me around town this afternoon?" History will show I did not show him around town and that Joe Biden never became president -- although he still might.

TH: Yeah, we should never say never.

FF: Right, up until now, has not become president.

TH: You, of course, moved up the ranks at Loras in the administration. I noticed there were a couple of occasions when you were acting president. Then in 1971, you did become president of Loras.

FF: Yes, I became acting president when Msgr. Foley left. It was the first time in history that the faculty ever selected a president, or at least made a recommendation for the selection. Up until then, the archbishop made the president every time. But the faculty during that first year, that year that I was acting president, the faculty sent in a group of names and one of them was Msgr. Driscoll and he became the president that year. Then he stayed there three years. Then in '71, I became president.

TH: That was not the easiest time to be a college president. Lots of unrest politically, and also racial issues.

FF: It was the most difficult time I've ever seen to be a president. During that time, I can remember that every month, one college president would either die of a heart attack or some problem or he would retire, resign, because of the terrible pressures.

TH: Loras was not exempt from that.

FF: No. Msgr. Justin Driscoll came in and did a very good job as president, excellent job. But one thing he thought we needed and that was to have some black students there. So he went out and gathered about 12 black students and gave them scholarships, full-time scholarships. He thought he was doing the right thing. For the first year, everything went along fine. Some of these kids had roomed with white students at their high school or had attended a high school and were friends with the white students, so they roomed with them when they came to Loras. Then -- I don't know if you want to use this or not -- but then the black students went to Chicago that summer and Jesse Jackson got ahold of them and told them, "You do not do what the White Man says. There's only one thing he wants out of you and that's your athletic ability. So you don't make requests, you make demands. They came back and they were different kids after that summer. Those kids came in and began to make demands that Justin simply couldn't accept. Then they took over a building one night and Justin called the police and it was a very difficult standoff. Finally, the kids did leave the building. Then they were expelled, or they left it up to Driscoll how they would be suspended, but left it up to him for how long. Instead of making it a week or two weeks, he made it a semester. That was a terrible problem. The faculty got up in arms about that and wanted Driscoll to resign. Finally, we have happened a dei ex machine. Do you know what a dei ex machina is?

TH: I'm afraid not.

FF: "God with a machine." In the old Greek and Roman plays, when the hero or heroine got into a difficulty that they couldn't get out of, a machine would come down and pick them up and take them out of the scene and rescue them. Well, what happened is, the archbishop made Driscoll the bishop of Fargo, N.D.

TH: So, basically exited him from that turmoil.

FF: Yeah, that got him out of a difficulty. But as far as I'm concerned, he did a very good job at Loras College. He made a couple of mistakes. Who wouldn't in those times? But he did a very good job in many, many ways. He was the one who really promoted the tri-college effort and got money for it. Loras, Clarke and the U had never cooperated before. He got that going. So he did a lot of wonderful things.

TH: When you reflect back on your years as Loras president, what thoughts come immediately to mind?

FF: Me, as president? Co-education. I began co-education in the fall of '71.

TH: What were the particular challenges with making it the conversion from an all-male school to a co-ed school? Besides the restroom facilities.

FF: Outside of that, really no great problems at all. It's surprising how easy. Look, the biggest thing was how do you house them? Do you house them in the same building with male students? At first, we tried completely different dormitories. Finally, we simply separated the dormitories into several floors for girls and several floors for boys. That was one of the most difficult things, but that worked out all right. But now, the girls are the majority at Loras College. Not only that, the girls take the majority of honorary degrees: cum laude, maxima cum laude, academic honors.

TH: What other thoughts come to mind from your Loras presidency?

FF: I think one of the best achievements I ever had, we had the North Central come every 10 years to evaluate us. I had the job of doing the document, which we would present to them. I worked through some difficult times during the death of my mother. That happened right at that time. And some of the difficult times on the campus, the things we had to resolve with the boys and girls. It was just a very tough time to do a document like that, but it turned out beautifully. The document was very well accepted. I think another thing, physically or financially, we were always on top. Practically every year, we ended in the black. You can't say that today for practically any college. I still remember when I was asked to be the president of the college by the Board of Regents, I said I'll accept the job for three years. They said, "What do you mean, three years?" I said, three years only. They said, "We've never heard of a thing like that." I said, well, this is one of the most difficult times with the uprising of students demanding freedom and the faculty demanding their say in what goes on at the college. I said, it's a very tough time and I know what you want me to do and I think I can do it, but after three years, I want to go to a parish. That's where a priest eventually wants to go anyway. They said, "No, no, we can't accept that. Four years." I said OK to four years. So at the end of four years, I said, "By the way, my four years is coming up. They said, "What are you talking about?" I said, remember in our regent meeting when we said four years? They said we don't have any record of that. I said, okay, we'll make it five years then, but then I'm going. And at the end of five years, I said, now I'm going. They said, why do you want to go? I said, well, I know I've told the faculty that three years or four years and I'm out of here. They won't believe a word I say unless I keep my word. They said, we'll go to the faculty. They went to the faculty and said what do you think? Should Friedl stay or not? And they said, yes, let him stay -- or he should stay. I said, OK, all right one more year, the sixth year and then I'm out. So at the end of that year, Joe, the head of the regents, he said, "Father, why are you leaving the college? We're in the back, the enrollment is increasing, we just got accreditation with North Central, we just got accreditation from the Chemical Society, the kids are happy and the faculty's happy." I said, "Joe, you have just named six reason why I should go." He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "You know that when I started my job, it was a very tough time. Don't you think it's right for me to go when things are on the rise instead of when things are going down? He said, "Father, I can't argue about that. Go."

TH: So that's quite the transition in a relatively short period of time, actually. In a six-year period, from where you were at the start of your tenure to when you left the college.

FF: Yes, and I won't say that I turned it around. I'll simply say that there was a turn-around generally in education. And those vitriolic days were dampened quite a bit during my time, not just because of what I did.

TH: I think it was prior to your presidency, according to your book, actually Loras and Clarke did entertain some discussion about a merger. A lot of us know about that in the late '80s, but actually there was discussion prior to that.

FF: Yes. There were discussions prior to that (in late 1960s), but nothing ever happened with it. What happened was, they brought an outside agency in to study the question and bring the two faculties together to find out whether this should be done. And then, what are we going to do about the presidency? That was a difficult point. At that time, they made an unusual suggestion. He said the people that were giving us the advice wanted us to bring in somebody from the outside. The archbishop said that would be kind of a waste of two people who have done a great deal and have been prepared for many years, have been trained and educated to be leaders. We can't just throw them out. They said, there are some institutions that are doing this. When they unite, combine, one of the leaders becomes Chairman of the Board and the other one becomes the President. You should pick for the president somebody who has maybe special talents along the academic line. And for the chairman of the board, who is really the boss of the president, top boss, that person should have public relations talent. He says, now we've got two people here that fit that perfectly. The president of Clarke College at that time was a very fine public relations person. And the president of Loras College at that time was a very good academic person. We presented that idea and Clarke turned it down

TH: Didn't go.

FF: But I will say this. Before we went co-educational, I talked to the president of Clarke College and said, "Is there any chance, again, of reuniting? We tried it once, is there any chance now that we might unite?" They said, no, that's not in the foreseeable future. So that's when we went co-educational.

TH: I wanted to ask you, too, about some of your writing activities related to your role as priest, but I'm interested in your homilies book. You and Ed Macauley worked together on that.

FF: I'll tell you how that happened. I was leaving, retiring from St. Columbkille, I was retiring from work. At that time, Kevin White, now the athletic director of Notre Dame, was at a meeting with me. He said, "Father, what are you going to do in retirement?" I said, "Well, I'm going to play a lot of golf, do some fishing and travel." He said, "I think you ought to seriously consider writing a book on homilies." I said, "Why?" "Well," he said, "you give very good homilies and I think you would be in a position to train younger priests and deacons to give a homily." I said, "Well, I've been thinking about it but not very seriously." He said, "There is a fellow in St. Louis by the name of Easy Ed Macauley." He's in the Hall of Fame of basketball; he used to play with the Boston Celtics. He's studying to be a deacon and he's working on a book like that. It would be good if you'd collaborate with him." To make a long story short, a year later, I met him, we did collaborate and put out the book. Let me tell you this, writing is a fine art, but the finest seven words I ever wrote in my life had to do with that book.

TH: What were they?

FF: We finished the book and we sent it to 23rd Publications out in Mystic, Conn. He had read several chapters of the book, the head of the company, and he liked it. He said, "We want the book, don't give it to anybody else." So when we finished the book, we sent it to him. A week later, he called me and said, "I've got sad news. Our staff looked over the book, we think it's redundant, duplicative, too many words. We can't use it. I said, "Oh, that's a shame. Can you give me any idea how to revise it?" Well, he wouldn't, and of course I don't blame him because if he gave me advice on how to revise, he'd kind of be obligated to take it back. So we went to work on the book, looked at every word and every sentence and found out he was absolutely right. It was terribly redundant. It was so repetitive. We had used the same word three times in one paragraph. We had homilies in there we didn't need. We cut out 16,000 words. We cut out one whole chapter. We cut out all the homilies. Then Ed Macauley says, "Now, let's send it back to 23rd Publications." I said, "No, I don't want to get turned down twice." He said, "This is a different book. I said, "I'm still uneasy about it." He said, "You send it." So I mailed the new manuscript to the same publisher, to the head of 23rd Publishing company. I said, "I want to thank you and your staff. You were absolutely right. This book was so terribly redundant and repetitive; I was just ashamed of what we sent to you." I said, "We've cleaned it up now. It's a very lean, very much better book. I wish you would ask your staff to evaluate it -- here are the seven words - (ital) before we send it to a publisher(end ital)." A week later, he said, "Thanks. We want it." The best seven words I ever wrote.

TH: Good salesmanship. I've had the pleasure of attending Mass where you've given homilies and I think that the compliments you receive for your homilies are well deserved. What observations do you have -- what do priests and deacons do wrong in homilies?

FF: Too long. Way too long. Ed and I, after the book came out, were invited all over the country to give workshops to priests and deacons. I remember, we were in Philadelphia and giving a workshop to priests there. In our books, we have 10 chapters and there are 10 fundamentals of good speaking. Ed would take two, I would take two, and so on until we finished. I always took the one on timing, because I think timing is so terribly important. I would say to the priests, be sure to write out your homily. Now, you don't have to read it, but be sure to write it out because when you write it out, you can see where you have duplications, you can write out where you have mistransitions and they are very, very important. I said, "There are a lot of words you don't need to use. For example, you may say, 'He was a very good man.' You don't have to use the word 'very.' Just say, 'He was a good man.'" Or you may write, 'He was indeed a very good man.' Indeed is a stupid word; throw it out. By the time you get rid of all the indeeds and all the verys, then you've shrunk your homily into the size it ought to be." Then Easy Ed McCauley gets up. He gives the next talk. He says, "Msgr. Friedl has indeed given you a very fine presentation." The rat!

TH: I understand that Ed has some serious health issues.

FF: I was in St. Louis not long ago and called him. It was a Sunday night and said, "Let's go out to dinner." He said, "Fine. I'll pick you up." Never picked me up. I called the home and he said, "Oh, I'm sorry, I have Alzheimer's. I keep forgetting things all the time."

TH: Another collaborative effort was with Rex Reynolds on "Extraordinary Lives."

FF: Two, yeah. He's always forcing me to write a book. He tells me a great idea, then he says, "Will you write it?" Well, we wrote together, really, "Extraordinary Lives." But the other one was "The Loras College Story." He said there have been a lot of wonderful stories told by faculty members and students and he said, they're going to be gone pretty soon. Somebody ought to collect them and put them into a book. By someone, he meant me. So that's what I did.

TH: "Extraordinary Lives" was an extraordinary project for you. You mentioned earlier you drove -- how many miles?

FF: At least 15,000 miles. East coast, west coast, down south and actually, I got a couple of interviews in Alaska. One in Alaska and two in Canada.

TH: So you drove to Canada and fly to Alaska?

FF: No, I did that by phone. Those are the only ones I did by phone. But all the rest, east coast, south, west coast, I was driving. That was a lot of miles.

TH: You weren't a teenager doing that. When was that? Early 90s?

FF: Yeah, early 90s.

TH: But I think that particular project seems particularly poignant, it does highlight the lives of extraordinary men in the priesthood. Obviously there have been many issues lately over the last several years in the church ...

FF: And books, too. For example, I read a book called "The Last Priest in America." It had 42 priests in this book and exactly one-half of them were negative. They didn't want to be a priest or it was a mistake becoming a priest. Rex and I said that doesn't represent the priests we know. I don't know of any priests - well, maybe one out of a couple hundred who said that he'd rather not be ordained. But practically all the guys I know, they're doing a good job. He said, "Well, why don't we go around and get their story and find out questions like, 'What made you go into the priesthood? What's been your greatest surprise in the priesthood? What's been your greatest joy? What's been your greatest disappointment?'" May I tell you a story? There was a guy in Wichita, Kan. He told me his story that he was never quite sure whether he should be ordained. He went to seminary for two years, dropped out, met a girl, thought he'd get married. That didn't work out. Went back his junior year. Dropped out after that. Went back once more. They were trying to decide whether they would keep him or not, but finally they said, well, OK, so they kept him to the end of his fourth year. He said he wasn't even quite sure then, but he had been told that you should pray to the Holy Spirit for knowing whether you should go on. One way to do that would be to pick up a Bible and open it at random with your eyes closed and point to a passage. So the night before ordination, he borrowed a Bible, opened it up, pointed to a passage and it was Jeremiah. And the passage said, "Cursed be the day that you were born and cursed by the mother who gave you birth." He said, "I almost hit the road that night," but he said, "I knew my mother would go and get me," so he said, "I went on and got ordained." And now he is the director of vocations in the diocese. Never had anymore doubts.

TH: You did encounter many outstanding men in the priesthood and I know you've encountered many more than just the 23 or 26 that you profiled. How do you contrast that with the negative...

FF: The priests who have failed, you mean?

TH: Yeah ...

FF: My answer to that and whether it's the right answer or not, this is the answer I've often thought about. The vocation of the priesthood is such a beautiful, powerful thing that it attracts so many people and some of the people it attracts can't handle it. They love it, they respect it, but they can't quite handle it. That's a simple answer. It may not be the right one.

TH: When you were ordained, you were one of 15 or 16, as I recall.

FF: Fifteen.

TH: Now in the archdiocese, a good year is two, maybe three. Two years ago, maybe one?

FF: Yeah, that's right.

TH: What's going on with vocations?

FF: Well, for one thing, people are having fewer children. For example, there were nine in our family. Who's going to take over my dad's restaurant? If I had been the only child, I think I would have been expected to do that. Let me come back to that. Dad had a heart attack. He worked all day long at the bakery and all day long at the restaurant. He would go down at 9 in the morning and work until 2 at night. He'd go home, get up and be down at the restaurant at 9; he didn't even have enough time for sleep. Finally, he had a heart attack and he was hoping that someday, one of the kids would take over. The oldest girl got married. My brother Chubb was killed on a motorcycle. I was next and I knew he expected me to take over. He asked me one day. He said, "What would you like to do with your life?" I said I'd like to study with the priesthood. He never blinked an eye. He said, "We'll help you." I have no idea what that cost him, just to say that, but it cost him a lot.

TH: He must have been quite a man.

FF: Let me tell you another story about him. Our place was called Friedl's Coffee Shop. It was more than that; it was a restaurant, but out in front there was a big coffee cup way above the sidewalk with little lights running around, chasing themselves. One day when I was in high school, I think, my dad asked me if I'd go out and repaint the sign. So I went out and put a ladder up and braced it with some gunny sacks and went up there. I was afraid of heights; I was scared to death. But he asked me to do it, so I will. In order to paint the sign, I had to take out all the bulbs. So I took a basket up and put a flour sack in the bottom and tied it to the top rung and took out maybe 30 or 40 of those bulbs. Then I was getting ready to unloose it and to go down and put them on the ground and it slipped out of my hands and went down. They were all broken. Every single one. I was ashen-faced. I was gray. It was still Depression times. I went into my dad and said, "Look what happened." He said, "Are they all broken?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Did you get hurt?" I said, "No." He said, "Don't worry about it then, I can always replace light bulbs, I can't replace a son." That's the kind of guy that he was. Another thing. What do they call those little farmers around the edge of a town, they used to raise tomatoes and onions and so on and try to sell them to the restaurants?

TH: Truck farmers.

FF: Truck farmers. A truck farmer by the name of Joe came in one time and he said, "Mr. Friedl, I've got some tomatoes here, nice tomatoes." My dad looks and says, "They are nice tomatoes, Joe. Francis, why don't you take those down to the basement and Joe you can go up and my wife will pay you." So I took them down to the basement and I got there and I came up and I was just furious. I said, "Dad, we've got two more buckets of tomatoes down in the basement; we don't need a third one." He says, "I know that, but Joe has to make a living, too."

I don't want to leave my mother out of this. She was a great lady. My father was a storyteller and that's where I get my ability, if you want to call it that. I love telling stories. I've written two books. Practically all of those are storybooks, really, but two of them are main storybooks. When we'd be sitting up at the cabin up in Minnesota at our fishing lodge and my dad would pick up on some word and he'd lean forward and say, that reminds me and I knew he was going to tell a story. I knew the story was one mother had heard 50 or 100 times. She would laugh as hard as anybody at the table as if she'd never heard the story before. That's a compliment. But one thing about her. I never knew this until she died, but she named every one of the girls after the Blessed Mother. Now, how in the world did she do that? Well, the first one, she named Catherine Mary. The second one was Mary Margaret. The third one was Margaret Mary. And the fourth one was Rosemary. Then she ran out and finally what she did was name the fifth one after the mother of the Blessed Virgin, Shirley Ann, the word Ann was the mother. So she was quite a lady. She used to give things away. You know how people collect things and hoard things. If somebody came in and admired some dishes she had, she'd give them to them. Or a lamp. "Oh, you must take that. I can't use that anymore." When she died, my father went through her closet and there was practically nothing left. She'd given everything away. Good to have parents like that, huh?

TH: We're sitting here, and it's been many years since your parents have passed away, but I can tell that they still have a special place with you.

FF: Oh, yeah. That's one of the best things that could ever happen to a person.

TH: I heard you say that you were afraid of heights. I also read that you had a pilot's license at one time.

FF: Well, the funny part of is, you can be 10,000 feet up in the air and you never think of heights. It's only when you're standing on a ladder or something that heights begin to bother you. I learned to fly when I became the director of public relations. I was in charge of recruitment and I would have to go to "college days" all over the state of Iowa. So I said I better learn to fly so I can get to these things. So I did learn to fly. I went to a number of "college days" that way.

TH: How long did you keep your license?

FF: Until one day, I almost lost my way. I did lose my way and had a hard time finding my way back to the airport. I think I quit right after that.

TH: When would that have been?

FF: I was flying for about four years when that happened. A friend of mine wanted to go somewhere out west. I was coming back and was going to land in Waterloo when it suddenly got dark and I could hardly see the instruments anymore and I couldn't find the airport. Somehow I just got lost on directions. I called and said would you guide me into the airport. He says, yeah, watch and we'll turn on the powerful lights on one of our lanes. Can you see it? Not yet. He said keep going. Can you see it? Not yet. Keep going. All of a sudden I saw the lights and I landed. I think that was my last trip.

TH: A little prayer involved in that?

FF: Yes, quite a bit, quite a few. But you see, flying, you should have an instrument license and if you don't have that, then you just fly in good weather and don't try anything risky.

TH: Now, retirement allowed you more time to travel and I know you made a special trip to Medjugorje (where six young people reported visions of Mary, the mother of Jesus).

FF: I think I've been there six times. The first time, I went unwillingly. I got a call from Larry and Mary Sue Eck who I do marriage encounters with. That's another story, how I got into that. But at any rate, they said our magazine, which is Matrimony Magazine is going to take a bunch of people to Medjugorje and we picked you to be our chaplain. I said, "Larry and Mary Sue, I will not only not be your chaplain, I won't go to Medjugorje." They said why not? Well, I said I'm too old. This was 10 years ago. I said I'm too old now. Go 8,000 miles without sleep; I don't think I fancy that. I hear the bishop there is opposed to it and I said I don't have to go to Medjugorje and see the Sun run around in the sky and see all the rosaries turn to gold to believe in the Blessed Mother. I already believe in her. Now, if you have to do that to believe in her, you go ahead. I know that sounds pretty rough, but you have to talk that way to Mary Sue. She's a very tough lady. If you don't talk to her that way, she'll run right over you. They said, "We have another priest who wants to be our chaplain, but you're going to be it." I said, "No, you're not listening, I'm not going to go." Well, she said, "Would you please pray over it?" She said, "I'll tell you what, he'll be our chaplain; we'll just take you along. You won't have to do any work." I said, "You haven't been listening. I'm not going to go to Medjugorje." Well, she said, "Would you pray over it? I said, "OK, I'll do that." So every Friday, on schedule, she'd call me about 7 o'clock. "Have you been praying about Medjugorje?" "Yes." "Did the Blessed Mother say anything yet?" "No, not a word." Then one day, I was up in Elkader and I met two couples who said, "We heard you're going to go to Medjugorje." "No," I said, "I'm not going to go to Medjugorje." "Well," they said, "we wish you would go." "Why?" "Well, because we don't know whether it's true or not but we believe in you and if you go and come back and tell us it's true, then we can go." I came back to Dubuque, and another couple came up and said the same thing. So the next Friday when Mary Sue called me right on target, she said, "Have you been praying to the Blessed Mother?" "Yes." "Did she say anything yet?" I said, "Yeah. I'm not sure what she said but it was something like, 'Friedl, pack your bags and get going to Medjugorje.'" So I went. Now, this chaplain and I kept a diary there. In the center, I had one page blank: "Reasons for believing that Medjugorje is a fake." On the other side, "Reasons for believing the Medjugorje is valid." I tried very hard -- you have to believe me -- to find things that were against it. I couldn't find any. When I came back, I had 20 reasons on the right-hand side for believing that Medjugorje is a valid place.

TH: Is there anything that you can share from your experience?

FF: The tremendous faith of those people. Those people have more faith than anybody I've ever seen in my life. Let me give you an example. One of the families there wanted to bring a nephew from Sarajevo down to visit them. He had to fly into Mostar and then drive from Mostar, or get a cab into Medjugorje. One of the cab drivers from Medjugorje drove from Mostar to pick him up. On the way back, the kid pulled a gun or a knife and killed him. Threw him out and took the car. The cops got him and brought him back and put him in jail. So the funeral is on that Saturday. On that Saturday, all the cab drivers in Medjugorje wore black armbands. Nobody would drive. You had to walk. They all attended the funeral. The wife of this fellow brought her four daughters up into the sanctuary and she said, "Now, this boy has done a terrible thing, killed my husband. I want to forgive him; this is not the time for hatred. I've asked my four daughters to forgive him and they have done so. I'm going to ask you to do the same." Would you get somebody from Dubuque, Iowa, or Chicago to do that? Not very often. That's the kind of thing. And the cabdrivers. The streets are very narrow and sometimes a bus will block the street and the cabdriver can't get through. So he'll sit there and smoke a cigarette and talk to his friends. You know what the cabdrivers in Boston would do? The cabdrivers in Chicago? I won't go into it, but you know what they would do. These guys, they laugh and away they go then afterwards. Another thing, I've been over there six times, the fare was $2 apiece, no matter where you went in Medjugorje and four years later, it was still $2 a piece. Things like that. I know all six of the kids and they are genuine kids, they can't be fakers. There's no way they can fake. I know Merinko and his wife, Dragica, the aunt and uncle of the kids. Merinko says over -- and he's a very bright guy -- he says, "Kids no lie, children no lie." Those are some of the reasons. I had 20 but those are some.

TH: In your life, you've had the opportunity to get to know some other celebrities. We talked about JFK. Earlier in your career, you made the acquaintance of Loretta Young.

FF: I'll tell you about that. I was giving a Marriage Encounter down in Illinois and there was a fellow there who had gone to Medjugorje with Loretta Young. She had heard about it and she had gone over there twice with him. He was a fellow who worked in films out in California. He had tried to get an interview with her for Medjugorje Magazine, which now was owned by the Ecks. They couldn't get it. They asked me if I wouldn't try. This fellow was going to get me a visit with her, an interview with her one time when I drove out to Palm Springs. When I got there, he said, "No, she's not feeling well, can't get her." So I came home and I simply wrote her a letter and I said I had intended to come and have a visit with you and get your story on Medjugorje, but you weren't well that day. Here are a few questions I would like to have asked you. I thought if she answers those, that will be the interview. She didn't. She called me and said, "Why don't you come out? Can you come and stay for lunch?" "Yes." "Can you have Mass at my place?" "Yes." "Who will bring you out?" I said, "I have George Murphy and his wife who are former Dubuquers; they'll bring me out." "Will they stay for lunch?" "Yes." So we set it up for Friday night. Then some friends who were graduates of Loras College called from Palm Springs. They said, "Look, we heard you're coming out here. We'd like to take you out to dinner Friday night, but we're not free Thursday." So I wrote to Loretta and I said is there any possibility of changing that from Friday to Thursday and told her why. Well, I didn't hear from her for two weeks. Then one day at noon, I got a call. "Is Msgr. Free-DELL there?" Well, there are, what do you call them, the guys that call and try to sell you something?

TH: Telemarketer?

FF: Telemarketers. They always call at noon, they'll always mispronounce your name. I said, "No, he's not here. He's left, I don't know where he is. I'm not sure he'll ever come back to Dubuque." Then a gentle voice said, "Well, would you tell him that Loretta Young called." I said, "Is that you?" I thought it was a telemarketer.

TH: Wait a minute, isn't there a commandment about lying?

FF: Yes, there is. I've been to confession since. She said, "I get those calls all the time, too." So I went out and got the interview. It appeared in one of the issues of Medjugorje Magazine. Her picture is on the front.

TH: This would have been about what year?

FF: 1999.

TH: Another celebrity whose photo is on your wall, and also in your biography, is Martin Sheen of "The West Wing" fame.

FF: In 1989, I went to Medjugorje and when I came back, I drove west to see my sister and to see some friends out there. I was staying at Ryan's place. He's a former Dubuquer. I decided to go out what day and play golf. I went to the Westchester Golf Course, which is near the airport. I knew I could get on as a fivesome there. Sure enough, they said we'll get you on pretty soon. They called me after about 20 minutes and said there is a foursome down at the first tee. You can get on with them. So I go down and there were two rock 'n' band singers there that had hair down to their waist and they wore black satin pajamas. They were good singers but not very good golfers. The other two were an elderly couple, a pair sitting there. I said, "I'm Msgr. Frank Friedl." Why I said "Frank" I don't know, because they called me Frank from that time on.

TH: You called yourself Frank?

FF: I called myself Frank. I don't know why I said that. It's Francis. Just wanted to make it shorter, I guess. He said, "I'm Msgr. Sheridan from Malibu and this is my friend Msgr. Lonigan." I think his name was Lonigan. I said, "You're kidding. Are you the famous Msgr. Sheridan, the writer?.And Lonigan said, "He's not famous at all. Don't give him the big head." I said, "You've written some books, haven't you? Aren't you a friend of Msgr. Ryan?" He always talks about you. Ryan said if I ever get to Los Angeles here, I must meet you, so I'm so glad." So we walked around and he asked me what I've been doing. I said I just got back from Medjugorje. He said tell me about it. So I told him about it and all the things that happened there. He said, "I kind of wanted to go there but I hear the present bishop there is opposed to it so I don't think I should go." I said, "Well, if you want a good unbiased documentation of it, Martin Sheen has done a very fine thing. It was done for 20/20. Now study that." He said, "Oh, that's fine. What are you going to be doing for dinner Tuesday night?" "Well, I'm supposed to see my sister." He said, "Why don't you come to my house for dinner that night? Martin Sheen is going to be my dinner guest." I said, "You have to be kidding!" He said, "Yeah, he's a member of my parish." So I went and called my sister. She said, "Don't you dare come to my place. You go and you get an autograph for me." So I go to Monsignor's parish in Malibu; a lot of movie colony people go to Mass there. He had a big dinner that night and Martin Sheen was there and several from the movie colony who do a lot of reels and even major projects. So I told my stories about Medjugorje, and Martin Sheen told me his stories. I had my camera there -- an old-fashioned camera with the light bulb, you know. I wanted to get his picture, but they're very private people and I didn't want to try. Martin Sheen said, "Monsignor, would you like to have your picture taken with me?" I said, "Yeah, I guess it would be OK." So I picked up the thing and shot the picture and there it is.

Now, Chapter Two. The next night, I'm seeing my sister in Lompoc. I called Larry and Mary Sue Eck. I said, "You'll never guess who I had dinner with last night. Martin Sheen." She said, "That's a dirty trick to pull on me." I said, "What do you mean a dirty trick?" She says, "You never met Martin Sheen." I said, "Mary Sue, I did, I had dinner with him. I don't lie."

TH: Unless it's a telemarketer.

FF: That's right. She said, "That's the strangest thing I ever heard. We were talking last night, we are committed to getting Medjugorje Magazine started, the only one in the United States, and we called Mike Hat, who was out desktop publisher and said, how are we going to get it started? Well, we have to publish 60 or 80 or 100,000 brochures, scatter them all over the United States telling them when the first issue is coming out and what's going to be in the first issue. Mary Sue said what do you think should be in the first issue? He says, oh, if we could get an interview with Martin Sheen, that would be perfect. And she said, that was Tuesday night. While we had that conversation, you were interviewing Martin Sheen. So she said, send it. I said now, wait a minute Mary. That wasn't an interview, really. That was kind of a private, he might not like it. Well, she said, call him and ask him. I don't know his phone number. Call Msgr. Sheridan and ask him. I'll try. So I called Sheridan and I said they want this for an interview. He said, you know, he's a very private man. Why don't you send it to me? He's coming...I'm talking on Tuesday, this is Thursday, on Thursday, he's coming through, going to have breakfast with me, then he's going to Europe for a month. Well, by that time, it would be too late. He says, can you get it to me tonight? I said our night mail is all shut down. Well, he says, why don't you send it to me by fax? I said, have you got a fax machine? He says, no. I says, how am I going to send it by fax? Oh, that's right. Mary Sue said, now wait a minute. There's a guy calling us from California, let me find out what he wants. The guy called and wanted to go on the next trip to Medjugorje. Mary Sue said have you got a fax machine? Yeah. If we fax something to you, how far are you from Malibu? Forty miles. If we send you a fax tonight, would you get to Malibu tonight? He said, yes. So I gave her a little introduction, she faxed it, he took it to Msgr. Sheridan that night and the next morning, Martin came through and approved it. It was in the first issue of Medjugorje Magazine, the lead issue.

Now, Chapter 3. Then that fall, we went to Medjugorje again and we were sitting around one evening telling stories. They asked me to tell the story about Martin Sheen, so I told the story. There was a guy sitting across from me laughing his head off. I said, "Did you think the story was funny?" He said, "No, I don't Father. But I'm the guy who delivered the fax."

TH: Small world. And you also met Jane Wyatt?

FF: They asked me after the Loretta Young thing if I couldn't get some interviews with some friends of Loretta Young, and Jane Wyatt is one. I went out and got an interview with her. She was just delightful. She's one of the nicest ladies I've ever met. Solid, strong Catholic. She's just great.

TH: Well, in addition to Medjugorje, I know you took a tour of duty to be a chaplain in Alaska -- during the wintertime of all seasons.

FF: Yeah, that was an interesting thing. Three of us drove up to Alaska and spent several weeks there. Archbishop Hurley was the Archbishop of Alaska and he asked us to stay with him. We stayed with him and had Mass with him every morning. The last day we were there, he said, "Msgr. Friedl, you're in pretty good shape. Why don't you stay and help us out. We need help badly here." I said, "I can't, I'm writing a book." That was "Extraordinary Lives." He said, "I'll give you a dictionary, a secretary; you can finish it here." "No, I've got to go home." He said, "When you're finished, give me a call." So I gave him a call when it was finished and accepted. So I went. Flew up, stayed for three months in the wintertime. It was a great experience. I flew 11 or 12 different stations, missions.

TH: Then you also had a pretty sweet deal. You were a chaplain on a cruise ship.

FF: Five times. In 1952, when I was at Catholic U, I went on the Grace Line first time I ever went as a chaplain. Then 50 years later, in 2002. People asked me how often I go as a chaplain. I said, "Every 50 years." I went on four of them.

TH: You indicated in your Extraordinary Lives project that you asked these priests what their greatest joy was in being a priest. What is your greatest joy as a priest?

FF: I guess my greatest joy is bringing somebody back to the faith who has lost it. That's happened several times. People were gone.

TH: You also ask priests about their greatest disappointment. Could you share with us what your disappointment has been.

FF: My greatest disappointment? Actually, I'll have to admit I haven't many, I haven't many. I guess a few times when I was president of the college and people would mistrust you and wouldn't accept your word for what you were doing. But that was very few times; there weren't many. I guess I haven't had many. I suppose outside of that, seeing the children of families who have given them a religious education, have later lost their way and lost their faith because they didn't practice what they learned. That's a tough one. That's a tough one for the parents and it's a tough one for a priest.

TH: A lot of over the many years you've been the homilist, the celebrant at funerals of people who are fairly well known in the community and we happen to be visiting the afternoon after you've celebrated a funeral Mass for Bruce Lauritsen. You did assemble a book of some of the tributes, I guess I shouldn't call them tributes as much as homilies at funeral Masses for people that you described as the legends of Dubuque.

FF: I forget what the occasion was, but after one the funerals Archbishop Hanus asked me, "When are you going to publish these homilies for funerals? I said, "I'm not going to do it." "Why not?" I said, "They're rather personal things, you know, and rather private." But he said, "Just think of this. It would be a kind of a pen sketch of the history of Dubuque, because all of these people are well known around Dubuque." So he kept after me for about a full year. I finally said, "Well, look, I'll do it if you'll write the foreword. He did. So it's called "Legends of Dubuque."

TH: I'm not going to ask you to name names or anything, but is it hard where you have a funeral and you're doing a homily for someone who maybe did not leave a totally exemplary life, where they do have some skeletons in the closet or had some failings? How do you measure what to say in a situation like that?

FF: First of all, you have to have a great deal of sympathy for the person. You can't be a judge. There's only one judge. I'm not the judge. But I had just one like that. I think, in some ways, it's one of the best homilies I ever had, because I said this young man led two lives. One of them was a joyful life growing up, respecting his parents, everybody liked him. Then he had a terrible auto accident and was almost killed. His life changed from that point on, but the reason it changed is because he wasn't the same person after that accident. I said we have to have a great deal of sympathy for him because he was and always was a good person but often a person is not able to live through that kind of a trauma without being changed. So you look for something favorable in their life and there always is something favorable.

I wrote a homily one time in which I said that you look at people and often think that there's something very cruel, bad about them, evil. But I said if you dig down underneath just about any human being, you'll find something, you'll strike gold, you'll find something good that's there. My sister Shirley, who is now dead, always like to read my homilies, and I sent her a copy of this. Well, now, Shirley was a tomboy, and she was the last girl in the family and we all beat up on her quite a bit -- and she deserved it. So I sent her this homily and she wrote back to me and she said I liked your homily. She said, "Do you think that somebody, someday, will see something good in me?" Oooh. I wrote back and said, "No, Shirley, they'll never find any hidden good in you. It's all out on the surface. You have no idea how many people love and respect you." She wrote me, the last letter I ever got, she said, "Nobody ever wrote to me like that before."

TH: When you honor so many people with homilies at their funeral masses and I think maybe that's one of the burdens of living a long, full life has been that you've had to say good-bye to so many people...

FF: But giving the homily is never a burden. For some reason or other, that's always a joyful thing. Because there's so much to look forward to. There's a quote that I'd like to give you. St. John concludes his gospel with a statement, "There are many other things that Jesus did; if all were written down the world itself, I suppose, would not hold all the books that would have to be written." I often quote a passage from St. Paul, what is the second life going to be like? St. Paul has the description most people think is the best description ever written. He says, "Eyes have not seen, ears not heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man what God has in store for those who love him." But I think there's a much better one. St. Paul tells us what it's not like. You haven't seen it, you haven't heard it, you can't understand it. And a better one is St. Basil. He's more positive. He asks us to think of the times in our life that brought us the great moments of joy and peace. Then he compares those with the ones to come. He says, "If this is the pledge, what will the perfection be? If these are the first fruits, what will the full harvest be?" I think of Basil's words whenever I experience some of the special times in my life. I remember when our family would gather for picnics in the backyard of our home on Fourth Street. I remember fishing with my dad on Long Lake and we would return to the cabin in the setting sun and the shimmer of rays on the quiet water and the hum of the outboard motor. Then would come the sound of a loon calling from the marshes. I think of St. Basil's words whenever I bring somebody back to the church who has spent a lifetime away from the faith. If such moments are the first fruits, what will the full harvest be?

TH: You have had the opportunity to give the homily at funerals of a great many people. Not to be morose about things, but when the time comes, what would you like to have said at your funeral Mass?

FF: Just one thing I'd like to have them say. He was a good priest. That's all. That's the greatest compliment they could ever give me.