frtony.page

What would Father Tony do?

A couple of weeks ago I read a post about an altercation that occurred between a Gonzaga Alumnus, Jay and a fan from the opposing team. While Jay was leaving the arena after the game he was shoved while walking down the bleachers, then listened while the angry fan ranted about the game. Like most people, Jay's first reaction was to respond in kind, but before he did, he asked himself, "What would Father Tony do?"

What would Father Tony do?, what a great question. He showed people how to become part of the Gonzaga family and what it meant to be a Zag. One of the stories that I received was a perfect example, it came from Zach Gourde's parents. They had come to campus to watch a practice during Zach's redshirt season. They didn't know anyone so that sat alone and watched the team practice. After a while Father Tony came over and introduced himself.

In vintage Father Tony style he had some nice things to say to the Gourde's about their son and invited them over to join the rest of the parents and fans who had gathered. He brought them into the family and showed them the Gonzaga way first hand. Since then they have followed his lead and when attending a practice or game they will look for a new player or recruits family and try to pass along his legacy of welcoming everyone into fold. These are the kinds of stories everyone who knew Father Tony have to tell. For many people he was the perfect representation of the Gonzaga experience.

Father Tony the Priest.

I need to mention all of the weddings and baptisms Farther Tony performed. I have received dozens of pictures from weddings and baptisms that Father Tony participated in. Each one came with a beautiful story about the day and the magic that Father Tony brought to it. While reading these stories it was impossible not to feel the joy the writer felt while recalling the moments.

I was never able to attend any of these events so when I think of Father Tony as a Priest I think of how God lived in him. You can read and theorize all you want about God's Love, but if you ever wanted to see it, all you had to do was mention Father Tony to someone who knew him well. You would instantly see it in the look on their face and the sound of their voice. I was forwarded a copy of a letter written by Tom Ranieri and he sums it up perfectly:

"The recurring theme of Tony's homilies and prayers has been that Christ promised to be present in our lives. Tony is that presence in our lives; he is truly Christ-like: call it what you will but being lit from within by that presence, being, attitude, disposition, belief, etc. he proves his thesis concretely and conclusively. He believes in the community of like-minded individuals bearing this presence everywhere. He gives his gift to others unceasingly and it is never exhausted and he never gets tired of giving. It grows in strength as he shares it; it's not diminished. He fully expects to find that presence in each person he meets, though it is often obscured, neglected, buried, etc. One might say that as we search in others for that presence, our relationship with Tony is freshly renewed and expanded. This would sound like blather, no doubt, unless you've met Tony."

Father Tony the guy.

I will never forget the first time I saw Father Dussault and his cane. I knew for sure that if he wanted to, he could have used that cane to split the Red Sea. Father Tony, on the other hand, always had a look on his face that said, "It's great to see you."

He was the type of guy who loved to laugh and just be one of the crowd. How many priests do you know other than Tony who could stand on one leg and pick up a dollar bill with his mouth? Forget the amazing physical ability that takes... How many people, let alone priest, would even try that in the first place?

He was also known to come and say a special prayer and a few jokes before the senior class would partake in the annual "keg war". He knew that the students were having fun, even if it was a little extreme, and all he wanted to do was be part of the community and be with the students that he so loved.

Father Tony was the guy everyone else wanted to be close to. As you got to know him you wanted to have a little piece of him all to yourself. The energy that would radiate from his smile and laugh could instantly light up a room. At Gonzaga people didn't want to be like a movie star they wanted to be like Father Tony.

"To be continued..." Father Tony's favorite way to say good bye.

The continuation of this story is that Father Tony will remain in all of our lives through our memories and even more importantly in our actions. If you knew Father Tony, you were given a gift and nothing would make him happier than if you shared that gift with others in the form of compassion, love, enthusiasm and insight. He was a spectacular human being and it is all of our duty to insure that he will be continued.

Below are anecdotes about Father Tony from the Gonzaga family that cover a wide variety of experiences, from comical to spiritual to unique.

"In 1989, Gonzaga guard Dave Clement and his Australian fiance Kylie, were living in Palo Alto with my parents following Dave's return from Melbourne where he and Kylie met & where he played for the Melbourne Tigers. Kylie & Dave (who went by the nickname "The King" or just "King" all through his years at GU) needed to get married quickly as Kylie's visa was expired and could have been deported. So, Father Tony agreed to conduct a quick marriage ceremony to make things official prior to the wedding party in Seattle later that summer.

"So, there we were, Dave, Kylie, myself, and a Palo Alto High School Basketball teammate of mine named Boston Heller, waiting for father Tony to arrive at Gate 8 at the Oakland International Airport as he returned to Spokane from LA. Off the plane he came, bounding down the aisle with that vigorous enthusiasm of his, a big smile on his face with just a hint of a mischievous smile for the ceremony he was about to perform. 5 minutes later, with a crowd of close to 20 gathered around, Father Tony performed a quick but beautiful Mass and then pronounced Kylie Clement and Dave King (he'd known The King for 4 years at GU and had always thought his last name was 'King') husband and wife. The crowd cheered, Father Tony packed up his stuff and ran back onto the plane and left us & the rest of the crowd touched by the simplicity of the moment. Classic." --Nick Zaharias.

"I had some great experiences with Fr. Tony. Father Tony, his "goodbyes" were said in a way I felt it was never final. The saying "to be continued" meant his friendship had no physical boundaries. He assures me that true friendship continues in heaven and on earth. Father Tony had an insatiable desire and incredible memory to know, not just my family, but literally hundreds of others. Father had a belief that relationships are the core of life and what makes life worth living." --Jeff Schmitz

"Concerning Fr. Tony, one experience will always stand out. It was in Spring of 2000, in Tucson. My wife (then fiancee') and I had got seats in the second row in corner at end line, but close to the bench. We were surrounded by noisy St. John's fans that quieted as Zags took over. It was an incredible victory. Shortly after the game finished with the Zags running off the court right by us (Casey slapping my hand so hard I thought it would fall off), Fr. Tony spotted us. Knowing of our upcoming wedding that summer but unable to attend, he asked all about it, our plans, etc.

"I wanted to talk hoops, but in the midst of the frenzy and celebration, he wanted to talk wedding plans! It seemed so out of place then, not so much now. A minute later he was on the court embracing Matt Santangelo as the crowd chanted AL-BU-QUER-QUE. Fr. Tony sees the good in everyone and I'll always remember him for that as well as his amazing ability to guide people to make choices that invariably turn out correct. I know many people that have benefitted from his subtle guidance." --Jim Bartholet

"DOCTOR Tony Lehmann, M.D. (Sort-Of) Fr. Tony lived in my pensione over at GU in Florence in the early 1970's. He was a BIG FAN of that pine-needle based liqueur known as CHARTREUSE. It's made by the Carthusian monks and he had been a member of that order prior to hooking up with Gonzaga University in 1969 through its Florence program. If anyone in our pensione got ill with a cold or cough or flu, Fr. Tony would soon make an appearance at the door of that person's room with a shot glass and a bottle of Chartreuse, and we knew we HAD to take our MEDICINE. He was convinced of its medicinal qualities and went from "Fr." mode to "Dr." mode. In fact, I have it on extremely reliable authority that a couple bottles of Chartreuse made their way into Fr. Tony's hospital room at Sacred Heart...at HIS request, the old smuggler!

"Fr. "Jay Leno" Tony -- comedian. Our group of Florentines decided to celebrate one of our reunion anniversary years with a return trip to Italy a few years ago. Naturally, Fr. Tony took a major role in planning the itinerary to insure it would include his favorite small towns like Stresa and Cinque Terre. Fr. Tony was our "guide" and sat up in the front seat just behind the tour bus driver, with microphone in hand, to give commentary as we drove from town to town. While driving along one day, some papers he was holding scattered down on the floor towards the stairs of the bus door and, as he went and crouched down to retrieve them, one of my classmates (a female) who was seated in the passenger side front seat THOUGHT she saw Fr. Tony giving a side glance at her legs. She loudly exclaimed, "PADRE! Are you trying to LOOK UP MY SKIRT??!!" That got everybody's attention in the first 6 rows of the bus ... and a big hush came over the conversations that had been going on up until that point. Fr. Tony had an appropriately modest blush come over his cheeks, and then he said, "Just because I'm a CELIBATE on a DIET, it doesn't mean I can't take a look at the MENU!" The whole bus exploded in laughter at that one!"

Fr. Tony - Naif. On that same trip, Fr. Tony was reminiscing about how naive he had been about the "wild ways of hippie youth" when he first became associated with Gonzaga over in Italy. As he told some of us, "Coming out of so many years spent in a Carthusian monastery with a vow of silence, and being brought up on a farm in Illinois before that, I was so GREEN and cut off from what was going on in American culture all during the radical 60's. Do you know how GREEN I was? The first year Reggie [Fr. Clement Regimbal] and I met up with a student group in New York to take them over for the Opening Tour, I happened to be sitting down for a visit in one of the hotel rooms with about a dozen of the kids. Two or three of them started rolling a joint over in the far corner, kind of hiding behind the chest of drawers in the hotel room. And as I saw them with their rolling paper, my only frame of reference was to the farmers in Illinois back in the 1940's, who commonly packed pouches of loose tobacco in their overalls and kept a packet of rolling papers to roll their own cigarettes. So I pointed at the boys and said, "Hey there!" They froze. THEN I made some ignorant comment like, 'Well, isn't that INTERESTING? I haven't seen folks roll their own TOBACCO since I was a farm kid in Illinois!' I should have been suspicious since those 3 guys looked a little GUILTY and were trying to HIDE when I first drew everyone's attention to what they were doing in the corner ... and then they looked VERY RELIEVED as I made the comparison to Illinois farmers. But do you know, I had NO IDEA of what marijuana even was until nearly halfway through that first full year!"

Fr. Tony, Spiritual Guide. His "Masses on the Road" are the stuff of legend. A sampling ... 1) Christmas Day Mass in Nazareth. While in Israel during the Christmas break in the early 70's, our tour group of students had gone to the little church in Shepherd's Field outside of Bethlehem to celebrate a Christmas Eve Mass. Although the Gonzaga-in-Florence priests had reserved the church for our own group, our plans got disrupted about 5 minutes before Midnight when the late Terrence Cardinal Cook of the Archdiocese of New York showed up at the church, along with 20 members of his "traveling party" plus a huge television camera crew. It turned out that HE had been displaced from the much larger Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem from celebrating Midnight Mass, but with a promise to the TV networks to provide THEM with a MASS to be broadcast back in the U.S., he had to find SOMETHING! So he had gone in search of a CHURCH and been directed down the road to OUR GROUP! Reggie and Tony and Fr. Frank Costello (on sabbatical in Italy with us that year) were very gracious, and wound up as glorified altar servers at the Mass (since Cardinal Cook had a retinue of his OWN priests from New York also along). But that Mass was possibly the least religious experience any of us had ever witnessed ... there must have been a dozen of the TV crew members who were chewing gum, SMOKING, and chatting to each other ("throw me some more cord for the audio, willya, Mike?" and "Hey, I'm losing the video feed off of Camera #3, what the hell gives?" etc. etc.) at the back of the church DURING the Mass ... while up at the front, with all the overwhelmingly resplendent vestments and slow, deliberate pacing and heavy use of incense a Mass for the "television masses" was looking like a REAL "staged event" ... in sum, it was pretty awful. Hope the viewers back in the U.S. found it emotionally moving! At 1:30 AM we left the church for the drive back to our hotel looking like 120 pretty glum campers.

"The next day back in Nazareth, Reggie and Tony and Frank sent messages to our hotel rooms to meet them in the lobby at Noon. When we got down there, they had gathered around a little coffee table set up as an altar. They mentioned how they were aware of how "upset" a lot of us were about what had transpired the night before ... so anyone who wanted to stick around could grab a seat on the floor and we'd have Christmas Mass "Gonzaga style". For the homily, Fr. Tony read that famous "This One Solitary Life" story that's often printed on Christmas cards nowadays, though back then none of us had ever heard it before. It's the one that starts out "He was not born in a palace but in a humble manger surrounded by cattle, He never commanded a vast army, He never ruled a nation ..., " etc., and then ends with the line "But all the armies that ever marched, all the fleets that ever sailed and all the kings that have ever ruled have never had as much impact on the world today as This One Solitary Life". Everyone from my group of Florentines agrees that the simplicity of that little Mass, and that homily from a Christmas card, celebrated with three favorite priests around a hotel lounge coffee table in Jesus' childhood hometown of Nazareth is the most memorable Christmas liturgy we've ever attended."

"2) San Rafael, California --- June 1986. At a little church in San Rafael, we held a Mass during one of our every-five-year Florentine reunion gatherings. This one was so remarkable because two of our fellow students from our year in Florence had, in the intervening years, become priests. And they were concelebrating the Mass with Fr. Tony and Fr. Frank ... who were both looking like "proud Papas" that day, handing over the stock certificates of the "family business".

"3) Italy '97 -- another Mass. Fr. Frank and Fr. Tony celebrated this one while touring with our Florence reunion group on June 21st in Rome, at San Jesu, home "cathedral" of the Jesuit Order, at a side altar built over the tomb of St. Aloysius de Gonzaga (whose feast day just happens to be June 21st). For the homily, we got not only a wonderfully detailed biography of St. Aloysius, but also many details about the life of Fr. Cataldo and how it was that he came from Italy during one of the periodic "Jesuit diasporas" as that Order fell in and out of favor at the Vatican, and how he wound up founding what would eventually become Gonzaga University in a frontier town. A wonderful "bringing it all full circle" kind of homily with a special resonance in that setting."

"4) Santa Clara Marriott Hotel -- March 2000 --during the WCC tournament. It was a beautiful sunny Sunday, and the Zags were well on their way to the title after the previous day's game. A hotel meeting room had been set aside so that players, their parents and family, and alumni in town for the tournament could share Mass with Fr. Tony. At the back of the room, standing along the wall, were a few of my old friends who had come in grumbling A LITTLE about what a great day IT WOULD HAVE BEEN for some GOLF ... but the Mass time was going to throw them off of the proper tee-time at their favorite course nearby. Tony must have overheard them, because he chose as his homily theme "the true meaning of the Lord's Day of Rest". And right in the middle of it, he made some comment that if people thought that a ROUND OF GOLF was more "restful" than going to Mass, then THEY OUGHT TO BE OUT DOING THE FIRST NINE HOLES right then and there, because being outside with nature might make them feel more inclined to commune with God and get their much-needed REST! A bunch of chuckles came from the fellows standing along the back wall ... along with murmurs of "NOW he TELLS us!" The chuckles at the BACK of the room were greeted with a big SMILE from the guy up at the "altar" ... ha! He must have loved that little zinger!"

"Fr. Tony, Scribe. Anyone who has ever started up a little written exchange with Tony probably came to cherish his "style" of writing personal messages. They were always written with TWO implements ... a BLACK marker pen for the actual words, and a RED marker pen to underline the NAMES of everyone in the recipients' family (often even including the family dog's name) in the salutation, and to underline any other important points he wanted to make in the note. And responses always seemed to be written within 24 hours of whenever Fr. Tony opened and read the senders' message. I noticed that the amount of the RED underlining always seemed to be on the "plentiful" side if Tony was writing from the site of an NCAA tournament game. His last such greeting to our family, sent from the little Eskimo village where he spent this past Christmas as "priest in residence", is definitely a keeper! Just wish we'd saved all the others."

"Fr. Tony, a 'man for others.' Last time I saw Fr. Tony was in a series of visits to his hospital in New York City this past January, after Gonzaga officials had called me soon after his hospitalization to inform me and ask if I could pay some personal visits and report back to "headquarters in Spokane" - where everyone was extremely concerned. Even amid the rather grim news he had been getting from the doctors at Lenox Hill, Fr. Tony didn't want to dwell for too long on the details of his own predicament. He was more interested in getting ALL THE DETAILS of how the Zags' games at Monmouth University and St. Joe's had gone, and how the players were doing (right down to his knowing WHICH kids had been suffering from various aches and pains and strains before leaving Spokane). We spent a lot of time reminiscing during the visits, catching each other up on the "news" of various members of the "old gang" -- many of whom he had seen at a mini-reunion gathering out in California wine country in September, and others that I had seen or heard from at Christmas time. We compared notes on our respective trips back to Florence within the past year, and how Fr. Via and Fr. Bruno were doing with "the program" that has been the birthplace of so many Gonzaga friendships over the years.

"When I heard that Fr. Tony was declining treatment for his leukemia once he got back to Spokane, it didn't surprise me. His last "in the spirit" message that was tucked into the Christmas cards he sent out to friends this past Holy Season quoted the famous "Death, where is thy sting?" line of poetry ... and went on to talk about how the same archer's bow (of our emotional make-up and energies) can be used to launch either the arrow of "fear" or the arrow of "trust". While the attacks of September 11th had been on his mind when he wrote the words of that message (and whether Americans' response should be to cower in fear and repression, or continue to live in freedom and trust), that same thought pattern could well be applied to Fr. Tony's decisions when confronted by his illness. He opted not to go the route of "limited odds" chemotherapy in fear of his own mortality. Rather, he embraced the idea that his illness and its late diagnosis might have been part of God's plan for him ... and his bow fired off its last arrow of "trust" in the wisdom of all Divine plans."

"I attended GU from 1987 to 1991. In that time, I would frequently get a chance to talk to him. We would eat lunch together from time to time. He is such a sincere man and has an incredible ability of remembering people. Not just names, but the backgrounds of people. Where they're from, what they like, personalities, etc. The Keg Wars at Gonzaga are always fun events for the students. I recall him attending every Keg War where he'd open the party with a special prayer and a joke or two. Then he'd bless the keg! What a character! I was very blessed to see him in person again last Summer at my 10yr Gonzaga reunion. He met the alumni in the Cataldo and believe it or not, after 10yrs, he still remembered my name and all about me! I introduced him to my new wife Jamie, and he gave her a big hug and welcomed her to the GU community. He pulled out a Susan B. Anthony coin and had a neat little story about her and the fact that she was a strong and resilient woman of many qualities. He blessed the coin and gave it to Jamie. This meant so much to her because the story he shared and his insights really touched her. He seemed to peer right into her heart and knew exactly how to connect with her. There was almost a spiritual element to him, and his comments really touched us as if he knew the things that bothered us. As if he was well aware of our inner-most secret problems or anxieties! We now treasure the coin as a special keepsake. Fr. Tony is the most amazing man I have ever met! I know that deep in my heart, I will always treasure my memories of him and how he made my Gonzaga experience all the more special." --Tom Savage.

A Tribute to GU's Father Tony
By Russell Bevan and Friends
Date: Mar 8, 2002

For decades a very special man has occupied the end of the Gonzaga University Men's basketball team's bench. But his influence has literally been felt around the world by countless people. This is a tribute of words and of pictures of a man Zags simply and affectionately call "Father Tony." Thanks to everyone who contributed.