News

Retiring priest responds generously to others

By Tony Staley
Compass Correspondent

ROSIERE -- Fr. Jerome Taddy will retire at year's end, but that doesn't mean he will be forgotten.

Mention his name to current or past parishioners and they talk about how generous, caring and concerned he is.

One former parishioner, Jeanette Arndt of St. Mark Parish, Redgranite, recalled one family that owed a $1,200 natural gas bill and was in danger of losing service. Fr. Taddy paid the bill from his own savings.

"He always kept bags of food to give to needy people who stopped by the rectory," Arndt said. "He took care of so many people with food and money, that I always wondered how they survived after he left. His heart is bigger than he is. I will never forget him."

To Nancy Killoren of St. Mary Mission in Pickerel, he is "the most generous man and priest in the world."

Fr. Taddy, who will turn 74 in April, has been administrator of St. Peter and St. Hubert Parish, Rosiere/Lincoln, since Jan. 1, 2007, after four years at Redgranite, and Sacred Heart Parish, Poy Sippi.

He also has been pastor of St. Francis Xavier Parish, Brussels, and St. Mary Parish, Namur; chaplain at the Green Bay Correctional Institution; administrator of Holy Family Parish in Elcho, St. Mary Mission in Pickerel and Ss. James-Stanislaus Parish in White Lake/Langlade, and an Army chaplain for 21 years.

Fr. Taddy said that because he wasn't meeting his own expectations on how a parish should be run, it was time to move from administration to serving as a sacramental minister.

He plans to assist at parishes, visit care homes and hospitals.

He's exceptionally good at caring for others, parishioners said.

"He gave from the heart," Killoren said. He is a selfless person who would literally give the shirt off his back. He visited the sick and homebound, and reached out to everyone and everyone loved him for it." Plus, he was easy to talk to and gave good and homilies filled with stories that hit home, she said.

Arndt recalled the parish's summer-long rummage sale and how he would put out the signs every morning and pick them up at day's end, plus haul worthless donations to the dump.

"He was just a super guy," Arndt said. "We would get really mad at him because if someone poor came in with a child he would give them things. We'd say, 'Father, we're doing this to make money for the parish.'"

Then there was the time, he brought over his stump grinder and removed a tree stump from Arndt's back yard and how he consoled her after the unexpected death of her son.

Fr. Taddy grew up in St. Luke Parish, Two Rivers, along with an older brother and two twin brothers, Peter and Paul, five years his junior. They were raised by their mother when Fr. Taddy was 5, after the death of their father.

Arndt said she's sure Fr. Taddy learned about compassion and generosity from his mother, who is part of the Two Rivers' Schmitt family. Several Schmitts became priests from both the Two Rivers and Algoma branches of the family, including his cousins, Bishop Mark Schmitt and Fr. Carl Schmitt.

Fr. Taddy attended St. Francis High School Seminary in Milwaukee and then the seminary's college and theology school.

After his ordination in 1960, he served as assistant pastor at Sacred Heart Parish, Shawano, then at St. Philip the Apostle Parish, Green Bay.

In 1968, his twin brothers, who were both in the Army, asked him to consider becoming a chaplain. Bishop Stanislaus Bona approved and on Aug. 31, 1968, Fr. Taddy began basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., followed by chaplain school at Fort Hamilton, N.Y.

In 1969, he began the first of two tours of duty in Vietnam. Assignments at various bases in the United States and Germany followed. The Army assigned one priest to every 1,000 soldiers in combat and five or six priests for every 100,000 soldiers at a base, of whom 20-40 percent were Catholic.

Being a combat chaplain was rewarding, Fr. Taddy said, because he got to renew the faith of soldiers.

After a combat death, "you anoint them and share with soldiers. You say 'Life is a gift, but how do we share in this mystery with Jesus? All of us have to die and these people dedicated their lives to freedom,'" Fr. Taddy said. "Freedom is never free. Men have to die. Soldiers have to die. It's the same as Jesus. It's what is. It's the mystery of salvation."

Duties of a base chaplain are similar to parish work - administering the sacraments, offering religious education, witnessing marriages and performing baptisms, he said.

Then there were the pilgrimages. While in Germany, Fr. Taddy led two week-long tours every month - one to Rome, that included the weekly papal audience, and Florence - and the other to Paris and Lourdes, the Netherlands or Spain.

The pilgrimages cost $100-$150 and involved staying in convents or with families, who provided lodging and breakfast for a small fee. The pilgrimages met a religious need and rewarded soldiers who had done well in training exercises.

He also led tours to Australia while he was in Vietnam.

He received numerous awards while in the Army, including the Bronze Star and Army Commendation Medal, each with three Oak Leaf Clusters; the Meritorious Service Medal with one Oak Leaf Cluster; the Vietnam Service Medal and the Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm.

The Army also was a good place to learn humility.

Once, as the First Cavalry Division chaplain at Fort Hood, Texas, he was ready to give the invocation at a banquet when the general in charge spoke up: "'Since I can pray better than the chaplain, I'll say the prayer.' I said, 'Hey, anybody can speak to God better than I can. I just get paid for it and you don't, that's all.' So he got up and said the prayer," Father Taddy recalled.

At times like that it's important to remember that "you can't please everybody all the time," Fr. Taddy said.

After retiring in 1989 with the rank of lieutenant colonel, Fr. Taddy returned to the diocese, planning to be a pastor and looking after his 85-year-old mother, whom he asked to be his housekeeper. She refused.

"I'm your mother, not your housekeeper," he recalled her saying. "I give the orders, not you and I'm not going to sit around waiting for you to take me someplace when I can do that myself."

Instead, he lived with his mother while serving nine years as the Catholic chaplain at the Green Bay Correctional Institution. Because he had weekends free, he helped at parishes as needed.

Fr. Taddy said he enjoyed prison work and had no major problems, though he always had to be on guard for prisoners passing drugs back and forth - something he didn't always see, but which the cameras that constantly monitor prison life didn't miss.

Fr. Taddy said what he enjoyed most about being a priest is the Eucharist - the center of Catholic life.

"I'm not that holy," he said, "but you try to reflect on how much and how simple and how wonderful it is that God lets us all share in the history of salvation as part of the Body of Christ and we are privileged to be able do that.

"The other great joy is sharing the priesthood, the spiritual part of our life, with the sick. You just see the sick and they energize you," Fr. Taddy said.

"Going to bring holy Communion to people for me is a lot of fun," Fr. Taddy said. He tries to do it daily. "To be able to do that and bring our Lord to people inspires me. I think, 'I should be complaining? Look at these poor people. They're carrying a bigger cross than I'll ever carry.' A lot of them are in their late 70s, 80s, and suffering illnesses. You go to visit them and they're wonderful, so grateful and appreciative. It's really nice."

In retirement, Father Taddy also plans to take computer classes, study Scripture, visit relatives, travel, and do manual work with his brother Paul, who lives in Two Rivers.

He and Paul often split two cords of wood on Mondays. "It's fun," Fr. Taddy said. "We work for two-three hours, then go take a break, sit around, watch the fire burn and talk, then have lunch and then work another hour or two."

Although Fr. Taddy will be remembered, he will be missed at Rosiere/Lincoln, said Janice LaCrosse, a member. The parish "was very fortunate to have him as a priest. He is very nice and common. He doesn't put on airs. He makes himself sound like a human being, yet he's a very holy man."