Koesler stopped and shook his head. “Frank Morris confused me, Zack. I was bound and determined to help him. Instead, I destroyed him.”
“You didn’t do it,” Tully insisted.
“I know … I know … at least I’ve known it for the past some thirty years. That doesn’t much help Frank.”
“It was out of due time,” Tully said. “Lots of people died because they lived before antibiotics, or chemotherapy, or organ transplants … or kidney dialysis.”
They fell silent for a lingering period.
“I guess this example doesn’t bode well for me in dodging the Profession of Faith and the Oath of Fidelity,” Tully said finally. “I can just hear Bishop Delvecchio now: ‘What does the law say, Father?’”
“Don’t jump to any hasty conclusion, Zack. I’m becoming as concerned as you are about your getting this parish without compromising your conscience. It’s just that I’ve, never bothered to analyze Vinnie in such depth. I assure you, we’ve only scratched the surface.”
Tully rocked comfortably in his chair. “We’re also getting to know another young man as he goes through his own ‘change of life …’”
Koesler’s eyes widened momentarily. “Me.”
“You.”
“True, I was developing. That was to be expected after that super-seclusion of the seminary. Twelve very formative years was a long time to be part of a subculture.”
Tully tipped his head to one side. “More. It was more than just adjusting to ‘the world.’”
“Yes, it was,” Koesler said thoughtfully. “For the life of me I couldn’t put it all together. It wasn’t that I hated Canon Law; all I had done about those laws was to learn about them. But I couldn’t resolve the apparent conflict between the law and the rights due a Christian.”
“Interesting though, that you and Delvecchio were, apparently, going in opposite directions.”
Koesler gnawed on his lip. “I thought it was only a matter of time before Vinnie would join me on wherever the path led. But I figured I’d have to be patient. First he would have to finish his seminary career-and he’d only just begun it. He had almost the full four years before he would get a parochial assignment. Then we would see what was what.”
“So? Is that the way it worked out? How did he get on with that first job?”
“It happened before ordination to the priesthood. It was a surprise to everyone. It couldn’t have been foreseen. And I’m still not absolutely certain what happened. But something did. It changed his life.
“I’ll tell it to you just the way it happened. Then, we’ll try to figure out what sort of impact it had on Vince’s life.”
Tully rocked himself to his feet. “How about some more iced tea?”
11
“The year was … let’s see … nineteen fifty-nine, as I recall. Yes,” Koesler nodded, “I was nearing the end of my fifth year as a priest. Vince was in his fourth and final year in the seminary.
“He had received the minor orders of porter, lector, exorcist, and acolyte in turn, and the first major order of subdeacon. Just at the beginning of that year, he was ordained a deacon and, for the first time, he shared in the priesthood: As a deacon, he could play his part in a Solemn Mass, preach, and baptize.”
“Strange, isn’t it,” Tully mused, “that’s almost all gone. I took all those steps-but that was before Vatican II.”
“Yeah. I miss them.”
“So do I.”
“’Fifty-nine! We were on the verge of the Council … and we had no idea!” Koesler paused, remembering …
“It all began during Lent. We were headed for Easter-and then, things and plans had to be changed drastically.”
1959
America didn’t know it, but we were about to pass from what many were to call the Last Decade of Innocence. Vietnam would tear our country apart. And the Second Vatican Council was about to do the same favor for Catholics worldwide.
The Delvecchio family, however, had more pressing and personal problems to deal with.
To begin with-something that would test his ongoing relationship with the Delvecchio family-Father Koesler had been reassigned from the very urban St. William’s parish to the very suburban St. Norbert’s in Inkster.
In the Detroit archdiocese there existed a nonbinding understanding that assignments for assistant priests would last approximately five years. Whereas pastors were to work their parishes until either the pastor or the parish dropped.
But after only a year and a half at St. William’s, an emergency assignment had to be made. Such an occurrence usually triggered a domino effect: To keep things in working order, X numbers of priests were bumped and moved to new diggings.
So it was with Father Koesler.
It had been especially difficult in this, his second assignment, to adjust to new faces, new names, and lots of excellent people who were beginning their families. They had just started what would be a bumper crop of babies.
Koesler did not completely cut the cord that connected him to many of his special contacts at St. William’s. Chief among families he continued to visit were the Delvecchios.
They in turn welcomed him-though the only ones still at home full time were mother and daughter.
Vinnie, of course, lived at St. John’s Seminary. After Lent would come Easter and a week’s vacation. After Easter, in one’s final year, a whole bunch of things were no longer doubtful. You knew all the answers. You knew you would be ordained. Of course there were still classes and important things to learn. And there was the final oral examination just weeks before ordination. A time was assigned when the deacons would face three faculty priests who could ask anything they wished in the fields of Moral, Dogma, and Canon Law.
Vincent had no reason to be concerned with any of that; in fact, he was tutoring.
The senior students practiced offering Mass, although since they’d been attending Mass more or less daily for most of their lives, what did they need with the practice? Surprisingly, some needed a lot of help-particularly with the singing. Again, that was no problem for Vince.
He even had the gold-plated chalice he would use as a priest. He had earned almost nothing at the charity summer camp. But his mother and his two siblings had saved up and bought it for him. His mother’s engagement diamond had been set into the cup. It was a dream come true for everyone in the family.
To top it all off, Father Koesler had agreed to preach the homily at Vince’s first Mass.
Anthony was a senior at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. Having noted the quality of athletes entering the Big Ten universities, Tony figured it would be better for his athletic career to be a very big fish in a relatively small pond than vice versa.
So he had decided against Michigan and Notre Dame and a few others on that exalted level and accepted the free ride at WMU.
It had paid off.
He did extraordinarily well academically as well as athletically, so much so that the area sports writers felt secure in referring to him as the Bomb with the Brain.
But it was his gridiron feats that sent the writers into spasms of superlatives. His arm was “a cannon.” His eye was “unerring.” He turned the ball into “a bullet with brains.” He was “Eddie LeBaron on a ladder.” He “drank from the same volcanic cup of fiery competitiveness” as Van Brocklin. His scrambling ability, precursor of the dashes that would later make Fran Tarkenton renowned, “flummoxed” the opposing line. But where Tarkenton would gain more yards running east and west than many pro stars running north and south, Tony Delvecchio never heard of east and west; he “ran for daylight.” He “gave 110 percent.” Feisty, with a take-charge attitude, he did not accept plays from the sidelines, but kept the opposition on their toes with his imaginative and “bodacious” calls.
In the autumn of his senior year, as the pro draft loomed, the question was: How high up would Tony be selected? A first-round pick, especially for a quarterback, promised gold and glory. Look at Len Dawson, the Purdue powerhouse who was the Steelers’ first-round draft pick in 1957: He had made it big. All agreed Tony Delvecchio deserved that ranking. But … from Kalamazoo?