Fr. Paul Desch, OFM. A Great Blessing for the World. 1929-2017.

Fr. Paul Desch, OFM

This past Tuesday, July 25, 2017, we attended the wake and funeral for Fr. Paul Desch, a Franciscan friar, the great uncle of my son-in-law Brian Homan, and the priest who presided at my daughter Emily's wedding to Brian. The funeral and wake were held at beautiful St. Clement's Church, in the Cincinnati inner-ring suburb of St. Bernard. This is the town where my father-in-law Art Sanders grew up. I think he attended both St. Clement's School for grade school and nearby Roger Bacon High School.

St. Clement, as seen from Vine Street

At Fr. Paul's funeral, St. Clement Church

The wake lasted but an hour and was held in the gathering space of the Church. The place was packed with friars, relatives, and friends, and many people spoke of how Fr. Paul affected their lives. Three special people there were his sister Mary Desch Sowar, and his two brothers. I thought how much they would miss their brother, whom they had known for over 80 years, through umpteen family baptisms, weddings, and funerals where he presided. Not to mention the letters, phone calls, and face-to-face conversations they had with him over 8 decades. The same would be true for his beloved Franciscan brothers, his second family. He had been a Franciscan since 1947, 70 years. The homily at the funeral was given by his dear friend, Fr. Paul Walsman, OFM, who first met Paul as a Freshman in the seminary (when Paul was a Junior). The homily was beautiful. Not exactly eloquent, but human, fun, and deeply touching. Father even sang--something Fr. Paul Desch often did, at mass and during homilies. I imagined how pleased Francis of Assisi would have been with these two priests.

Fr. Paul was actually named Thomas at birth (born in Fresno, California) and didn't receive his religious name, Paul, until he joined the Franciscans. His family had moved from Coldwater, Ohio, a heavily German-Catholic area of west-central Ohio, with the goal of curing his father's tuberculosis. After a few years, they moved back to the Coldwater area.

Thomas/Paul was an outstanding athlete and student in high school at St. Francis Seminary. After this high school seminary (a practice that I don't think is done anymore--high school seminary), Paul attended Duns Scotus College in Southfield, Michigan, where he made his solemn vows in 1951. After college Paul studied at Holy Family Theologate and was ordained a priest on June 8, 1956. So he was a priest for 60+ years.

Paul had many different jobs in his career, from college professor, to campus minister, to parish priest and pastor. I just missed meeting him many times--at St. Francis Church in Over-the Rhine (Cincinnati), and at the St. George Newman Center, adjacent to the University of Cincinnati. I attended St. George and knew two of the priests there, Fr. Joe Rigali, OFM, and Fr. Harry Meyer, a priest of the Diocese of Cincinnati. Fr. Harry presided at Linda and my wedding on May 5, 1978. Little did I know that Fr. Paul Desch was a campus minister there right at that time.

My daughter Emily met Fr. Paul before I did at functions involving the Desch, Sowar, and Homan families. I met him for the first time at Emily and Brian's wedding rehearsal. And then the next day at the wedding and reception. Fr. Paul's homily at their wedding was unforgettable. His sermon was sweet, and personal, and filled with song. He sang, from the pulpit, the German folksong "Du, du, liegst mir im Herzen." This was so appropriate because Em and Brian met in Salzburg, Austria in a German-language study abroad semester. The words of the song say something like, "you, you, lie in my heart; you, you, stay in my mind . . .you don't know how good I am to/for you." Brian and Emily were, and are, good for each other. Fr. Paul captured it. No one will ever forget that homily.

Emily, Fr. Paul, Brian Homan

The funeral mass was full of song ("Amazing Grace," "Sing a New Song," "How Can I Keep from Singing," "I Am the Bread of Life"). Everyone in church sang (and the church was full!). The songs were beautiful and helped send Fr. Paul on his way toward union with God and union with those whose lives he touched. Two were in Latin, and I especially loved them. One was "Ultima," a traditional Franciscan hymn--about the day our lives end and the day we are led into heaven. The other was "Salve Regina," a prayer I said every day of my growing up years as the "Hail Holy Queen." I felt deeply the beauty of the Church and its rituals and traditions.

Fr. Paul is gone. We are both deeply sad--and deeply grateful for his life. What do we do now? Somehow, we have to take on aspects of his life and spirit . . . and sing them out in our own lives.

Eternal rest grant unto Paul, O Lord.

And perpetual light shine upon him!

"We Got Cake!" Father's Day Lunch at Fairport Harbor

"We got cake!"

The boys practically exploded on the scene--a picnic pavilion at Fairport Harbor Beach. "We got cake!" said Robby. A brownie cake for Father's Day. The boys, Colin and Robby, always greet you with energy and excitement. It makes you so happy and so alive.

It was a wonderful Father's Day. Linda and I went to mass at Our Lady of Lourdes Shrine in Euclid; afterwards we picked up some donuts at Buettner's Bakery on East 185th Street in Cleveland, then ate them at Sims Park, on the lake in Euclid. The lake was beautiful and calm this morning. Then, in early afternoon, we met Julia, Ed, and the boys at Fairport Harbor.

I was so grateful for being a father and grandfather today. It would have been nice to see my daughter Carolan and my daughter Emily, but gee whiz, you can't have everything.

I thought a lot about my father and my grandfather, and how much they gave to me. My grandfather, Cornelius Francis Coughlin, was the son of an Irish immigrant (his own father Cornelius) and a German immigrant, his mother Lizzie Ierg Coughlin. He was a great athlete--a very fast sprinter (the fastest runner in Cleveland, he claimed) and a terrific baseball player--in the Cleveland sandlots and in the Three-I minor league. I was his first grandchild. He was funny and fun and I really loved him. And what can I say about my Dad. He helped me in two big areas. He helped me become a good reader and student. He drilled me in arithmetic and spelling, he took me to libraries all the time, he modeled reading for me. My father also is probably the primary source of my religious sensibilities (of course my mother was important in this regard too). We thought of our Dad as a hero--a World War II hero for his four years at war in the US Navy. But more important than that was his lessons about family, work, and love.

So today I thought a lot about my father, my grandfather, my daughters, my wife, my sons-in-law, and my grandsons. Thank you God for my family.

Happy Father's Day!

My First Half Marathon (River Run Half Marathon 2015)

Well I wish I could say I ran one yesterday--say, the "River Run" from Berea, Ohio, to Rocky River. But no. What I did was watch the finish of my first half marathon, which is 13.1 miles. I watched my daughters Emily and Julia, and their husbands Brian and Ed, finish their runs. I must say that it was so beautiful, so inspiring to see this. First of all, I couldn't believe how many people finished this race. They ranged in age from teens to 80 years old (an 80 year old woman, Pauline Beatty, finished the race in about 4 hours and fifteen minutes--she was last of the finishers, but maybe the greatest champion there!). The overall winner, David Petrak, ran the race in 1:07:32, which to me is astonishing. My son-in-law Brian Homan ran in the race in 2:03:19; Ed Kleppel was not far behind at 2:10:47; and my daughters, Julia, and Emily, ran across the finish line together around 2:19:20, give or take a couple seconds.

What I didn't realize was first of all how many people could do this. I'm guessing a thousand people or more finished this half marathon. And they did it with such enthusiasm and esprit, and for the most part a spirit of cooperation. I'm sure that among the top finishers there is an intense spirit of competition, but I think most of the runners were running against the clock and their previous performances. Maybe many were just running against the distance, to see if they could do it.

What a wonderful inspiration this was. Makes me want to participate in walks and runs. Not sure if my 67-year-old legs could run any great distance, but I certainly could walk  a 5K, 10K, or even 13.1 mile event. And I plan on doing that soon!

Some photos:

Julia and Ed at the finish line

Brian, Emily, Julia, Ed

Emily and Brian

Julia with Colin, Emily

Em and Julia, running pretty hard toward the finish line

The last stretch of the race, through Rocky River Reservation.

Ed flashed by me before I could get the camera ready. He's in a dark gray shirt.

Linda, with Colin, watching the race.

What the Church SHOULD Look Like!

Retirement Mass for Fr. Paul Desch OFM--Holy Name Church, Cincinnati.

Holy Name Church, Mt. Auburn, Cincinnati

After the wonderful service at Holy Name

Emily, Fr. Paul Desch OFM, and Brian Homan

Today we attended the retirement mass and celebration for Fr. Paul Desch OFM [Franciscan] at Holy Name Church in the Mt. Auburn neighborhood of Cincinnati. Fr. Paul is a wonderful man and a great priest and minister of the gospel. His church community is joyful, diverse, and a little left of orthodox (Thank God! Thank God!).

Fr. Paul Desch is 85 years old and his ten-year term as pastor is coming to an end. He has built up and maintained a lively community, absolutely infused with the Holy Spirit. Any Christian, no matter the denomination, and I think most non-Christians, would feel at home here. There is a healthy diversity present, black and white, new babies up to Miss Roberto, 101 years old. I met 2 physicians and their 3 children (Mr and Mrs. Rahner), parishioners who come a long way to attend this mass, talked to 3 members of a visiting choir from Munich Germany, and shook hands with and hugged about 20 members of Fr. Desch's family (who are now, by marriage of my daughter Emily to Fr. Paul's grand-nephew Brian Homan, my family). I am so happy to know this interesting, loving family and to have this little connection to Fr. Paul.

Here are some random thoughts about the event:

• the music seemed heavily influenced by African-American church music. The keyboardist, a large black fellow, was incredible, sometimes playing organ and piano simultaneously. His style was lively and fun. The choir was terrific.
• during the sermon, Fr. Paul mentioned how, when we leave church after mass every Sunday, we shouldn't feel like we had just left a funeral. I began to think how often I leave church feeling worse than when I came in. Life is too short for that. The church community should lift you up.
• Fr. Paul makes some modifications, on the fly, to the readings and the prescribed text of the mass. Not sure how conscious all of these modifications are, but they seem to humanize the mass and make it seem more like a communal supper and celebration than the old model of the the priest doing something mysterious and special for us. The mass is our celebration. It is community, communal.
• Fr. Paul's message and style is inclusive, forgiving, and welcoming. It is not the hate-infused message, the condemnations, the narrow-minded focus I have seen in some Catholic churches. Fr. Paul is a community builder and bridge builder.
• It is odd that it's often the older priests, those infused and informed by the ethos of the Second Vatican Council, that communicate this spirit. The older priests are much younger and more open-minded than many of the younger priests. How do you explain that?
• Fr. Paul loves to sing and song can break out at any time during mass. Before the reading of the gospel Lazarus story, Fr. Paul broke out into the old song "Dem Dry Bones." Later, we heard some singing in German, "Du, Du, Liegst Mir im Herzen"--"You, You, Are Deep in My Heart."
• At the end of the mass, Sister Liz extended her hand toward Fr. Paul (as we in the congregation did) and blessed him. Many people laid on hands in this blessing. We, non-priests, are as capable of giving a blessing as ordained priests. This was a wonderful final touch.
• I think the true church can be found everywhere (and, it often seems, nowhere). It is not just inside the walls of a Catholic church. It is often in the least expected places. And I found it in a church with very modest resources, with a small congregation, in the Mt. Auburn neighborhood of Cincinnati. Thank You!!

[Monday night, April 7th]

I just talked to my daughter Carolan (who lives in Whitefish, Montana, and works in Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness). She had been at Emily's wedding last summer when Fr. Paul Desch had the mass and officiated at the wedding. At that time Carolan remarked, "I feel as if that's the first time I've ever been to mass." Fr. Paul's mass celebrations can feel that different and that special.

Family Photo from 1992

Bob with Carolan, Emily, and Julia. Circa 1992, Euclid, Ohio

Fr. Paul Desch, OFM--a Wonderful Priest

My daughter Emily was married earlier this month to Brian Homan of Lima, Ohio; the presider at the wedding was Fr. Paul Desch, a Cincinnati Franciscan. I love the Franciscans and thought if I ever were to pursue religious life it would be as a Franciscan (that train has left the station). I know quite a bit about the life of St. Francis and one of my close Cincinnati friends was Kenny Przybylski, who was a Franciscan brother for about 6 years (Little Brothers of the Poor of St. Francis). Another Cincinnati and Mansfield House Commune friend, Jack Shereda, was also part of that Franciscan order.

Fr. Paul's liturgy was beautiful and both traditional and non-traditional. His homily was especially beautiful. He knew that Brian and Emily met during a summer school semester in Salzburg, Austria, where they studied German. So during the homily Fr. Paul sang a sweet German folk song for them:

Du, du, liegst mir im Herzen.

Du, du, liegst mir im Sinn.

Du, du, machst mir viel Schmerzen--

Weiss nicht wie gut ich dir bin.

Ja, Ja, Ja, Ja,

Weiss nicht wie gut ich dir bin.

The words mean: You, you, are in my heart. You, you, are in my mind. You, you, cause me much pain--you don't know how good I am to you (or for you).

Fr. Paul especially commented on that last line and how good Emily and Brian are for each other. I think he was exactly right.

Since I was so much part of the ceremony and the reception, I wasn't able to take many pictures of Fr. Paul. But below is one from the brunch we had at our Chardon home the day after the wedding; the other from the rehearsal dinner. 

Thanks Fr.Paul!

July 6th brunch at our Chardon home. Fr. Paul is in a white shirt back
and a bit to the left of center. Members of the Homan family
sit with him (also, Bruce Sanders is there on the left).

Rehearsal Dinner, July 4th. Fr. Paul on left, Emily front center, Brian right.

Irish Blessing for Emily and Brian on Their Wedding Day

Irish Wedding Blessing

Go bhfaighe tú focail te ar tráthnóna fuar

(May you have warm words on a cold evening)

Lán na ré ar oíche dorcha

(A full moon on a dark night)

Agus an bothar le fána ar feadh an bhealaigh go dtí do dhoras

(And the road downhill all the way to your door)

Blessings to you, Brian and Emily on Your Wedding Day!

Yesterday's Birthday Picnic, at Fairport Harbor, on Lake Erie.

Colin playing in the sand with Emily

Ed and Julia

Colin eating the birthday cherry pie

Colin and "Brrr"

St. Patrick's Day 2012 in Cleveland

St. Patrick's Day 2012 in Cleveland, Ohio, was the greatest day ever. The parade, which lasted 2 and a half hours, featured 16,000 marchers and was viewed by 500,000 people lining Superior Avenue from East 18th Street to Public Square. Usually we are are watching the parade in snow or sleet, under gray skies, a half mile inland from the frozen lake. This year the skies were blue and the temperature hit a record 77 degrees. And the parade was on  a Saturday, which allowed more families to attend. The presence of so many families had the side effect of reducing drunkenness and fights. People were very happy, very peaceful all afternoon.

Photos: top shows Bob, Brian, Emily, Linda, Julia, Colin; second shows Brian and Emily; third shows Girl Scouts dressed up as cookie boxes; bottom shows Colleen Fitzpatrick, with other family members in the background, including Mike and Karen Fitzpatrick, Peter Fitzpatrick, and Linda.

Family Photo

Aunt Emily. Aunt Carolan, Julia, and Colin--January 28, 2012.

Coughlin/Kleppel Family Photo

Coughlin/Kleppel Family photo, taken in Fall of 2011 at the Great Lakes Brewery in Cleveland. Linda, Emily, Carolan, Bob holding Colin Jude Kleppel, Ed Kleppel, Julia Coughlin Kleppel.

Colin at Halloween

Top: Bob with Colin (Colin's the one in the pumpkin suit) at Lakeland;
Middle: Emily with Colin in Chardon;
Bottom: An autumn portrait of Colin and Julia.

New Grandbaby, New Aunts

Above, Baby Colin with two of his aunts: Aunt Emily and Aunt Carolan. Emily came up from Athens, Ohio, to visit Colin; and Carolan took a break from her work with Montana Conservation Corps to visit her new nephew.

Long Winter in Geauga County, Ohio!

This morning I looked out on about two feet of new snow (on top of who knows how much old snow!), and thought how we seem to be the snowiest place on earth. Of course that is ridiculous. But we are indeed the snowiest place in Ohio! Cleveland has certainly had less than half of our snowfall this year. Their temperatures and snow accumulations seem like a different world compared to ours--and we are probably only 40-45 miles east of the airport, where official weather conditions are measured around here.

I just checked temperatures in my favorite places across America and the world--and we in Chardon and Geauga County are the coldest and snowiest. I checked Kalispell, Montana, where my daughter CC is training with AmeriCorps and the Montana Conservation Corps; I checked her former home in Leadville, Colorado; I checked my home from long ago in Innsbruck, Austria; I check Lexington, Kentucky, where relatives live; I checked Athens, Ohio, where my youngest daughter lives; I checked Galway, Ireland, one of my favorite cities in the world. And of all these places, we were the coldest and snowiest. Geez, in Innsbruck, Austria, it is 50+ degrees--and that's in the Alps, the skiing capital of Europe! Kalispell should hit the high forties or 50 today, and that's on the Canadian-US border! And Leadville is in the high 20's right now, heading higher, and that's 2 miles above sea-level, in the highest of the Rockies!

What's the deal here? Is it some kind of Divine Retribution? I'm so glad that I have proclaimed March 1st as the First Official Day of Spring!

Happy Birthday, Em-Babes!

On July 28th we'll celebrate the 20th birthday of our baby girl, Emily Anne. I'm thinking Em is one of the prettiest Coughlin girls in the history of Coughlin's. Luckily, she looks a lot like her Mom. The baby pictures of Em and of her Mom are uncanny in their similarity.

Em was born in Lexington, Kentucky--Central Baptist Hospital--just like her two sisters. By our third birth, you'd think that everything would be routine and totally relaxed. but that's not the way it was. Because when Em's head was birthed, her umbilical cord was wrapped twice around her neck, and her face was a very pale white. I thought she was dead--my heart was broken. But skilled doctors, the obstetrician and a pediatrician, cool as could be, grabbed that cord with some sort of gigantic tweezers (don't know the technical name of this instrument), and looped it twice over the baby's head--and voila, there she was, alive and breathing. Linda and I were overjoyed and thanked God that our baby was all right.

This baby was in for an adventure because when she was about 3 weeks old, we packed up all our household goods and moved about 400 miles north to Euclid, Ohio--where I grew up, about one mile from my Mom and Dad's house. We moved to Forestview Avenue near Lloyd Road, a house we rented from a shirttail cousin, Trish Dougherty Kennedy. An odd thing is that this house was on my paper-route back around 1961 to 1964. Em and her sisters would make this house our home for about 4 months--right around Christmas we moved less than a half mile away to 27391 Beech Drive, a home that we purchased. So in the first 4 months of Emily's life she had 3 addresses!

Em is definitely a Chardon girl now, but she is also a Salzburger Fraulein; she's been living in Salzburg, Austria for the past 3 weeks and attending classes where only German is spoken! Em is a great student and a great kid--a lover of country music, her Irish and German heritage, her family and friends. We all wish you a wonderful Happy Birthday! Froehlicher Geburtstag, Em!

[Photos shows Emily at Mentor Lagoons and at Lake Chautauqua, New York.]

Happy Birthday Carolan!

Photo shows Carolan (right) and her friend Gretchen Wolfe at the Augustiner Brau Bier Garten in Salzburg, Austria: "Prosit! Slainte!"

Today is my daughter Carolan Ruth Sanders Coughlin's 23rd birthday. Sometime around 4 in the morning on July 16, 1985, in Central Baptist Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, Carolan was born into this world--a great day for Carolan and her family, and a great day for the world.

I vividly remember driving the 45 miles from Berea, Kentucky, to Central Baptist Hospital that summer night, north on I-75, over the long and high interstate bridge over the Kentucky River, and into the Bluegrass region of Fayette County. I was focused on driving carefully and getting to the hospital safely; Linda was focused on the contractions and on her Lamaze-type breathing.

It took us just under an hour to get to the hospital; I was worried that our second child would be born on I-75, maybe at the rest stop between Berea and Lexington. if that had happened, her name would have been "Rest-Stop I-75 Sanders Coughlin." But we made it to the hospital.

Once there, they put Linda into a birthing room, where we expected the baby to be born. By the way, we had no inkling if this would be a baby girl or boy, or if it would look like Julia, with her dark brown eyes, dark hair, and olive-colored skin. We had been playing with names, both boys names and girls names. For boys' names I was partial to "John Francis," or in Italian, "Giovanni Francesco," the name of St. Francis of Assisi and of my grandfather, John Francis Fitzpatrick. For girls, I was thinking about "Carmel" or "Carmen." July 16th was the feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, and I remembered a beautiful Irish singer named Carmel Quinn who used to appear on the Mike Douglas TV show. Linda had her own list of names, and I doubted "Carmel" was on it--"Carmen" maybe, especially if this new baby had the dark eyes, hair, and skin that Julia was born with.

The labor moved along very quickly, but a glitch developed right near the end when, as with Julia, the nurses or doctor detected meconium--a sign that the baby might be in some trouble. That ended the birthing-room plans as hospital personnel immediately wheeled Linda on her bed into an operating room. Their urgency worried us--would we lose this baby?

Linda had not had any anaesthetic at all, and as transition labor proceeded, she went through it without any problem (none that I could see--but then again, I had the easy part at this birth). I stood at Linda's head as our new baby was born, her "labor coach," whose main task (and accomplishment) was not fainting! And then voila! There she was, a beautiful baby girl--who didn't look anything like we expected! She had fair skin and eyes, and flaming red hair! This didn't look like any Carmen, and certainly not any Giovanni Francesco!

Very soon after the birth, we were back in a room at the hospital, Linda holding on to her new baby, and me at their side. Linda was as happy as a human being could be--she was happy, energetic, and bursting with the desire to share our wonderful news with the world. She wanted to immediately call her Mom and Dad, her brothers, her sister, her friend Jan Shepherd. And I said to her, "Sweetie, nobody else in the world is awake! Let's wait a couple hours to call people!" So we waited a while to share our good news with the world.

Linda went home from the hospital the very next day, and I remember getting a phone call from a friend congratulating me on the birth of baby "Carmen." I guess I must have shared my name ideas with some people--and they hadn't heard that plans had changed! We ended up naming this new baby "Carolan Ruth." "Carolan" was in honor of the great Irish harpist and composer Turlough O'Carolan, who lived circa 1700, and whose music is still played and enjoyed today. Her middle name honored her grandmother, Ruth Sanders. And there she was, "Carolan Ruth Sanders Coughlin," our second child (and we thought we would never be blessed with any children! and three years later, another miracle, our third: Emily Anne Sanders Coughlin).

How did this baby turn out? There is a German word for the likes of her: einmalig, "one of a kind." Carolan is a happy kid, a very fun person, very bright, compassionate, loving, a great friend, and very fun. Did I mention she's a lot of fun? Carolan is a great gift from God.

May the Lord bless Carolan and keep her, let God's grace shine upon her! Keep her Lord like the apple of your eye, shelter her under the shadow of your wings!