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Fr. Thomas Heath, O.P. |
Remembering Fr. Tom
Heath, O.P.
by Fr. Kieran Healy, O.P. "Buda,
Buda, Buda!!!" The hundreds of voices chanted at
the end of dinner at Tindinyo Major Seminary in West central
Kenya. Fr. Thomas Heath rose up swinging his arm in
recognition to the students who loved him. "Grandfather!!!"
A joke, a song,
a smile, a sense of divine laughter characterized his life
with us. He would use acronyms to remember
the names of the novices at the Novitiate of the Franciscan
Sisters of St. Anne in Kisumu, where we offered daily Mass
for the novices. Fr. Tom had his "Ten Commandments,"
his "Twelve Apostles," and even his "Gifts of the Holy
Spirit," for a smaller class. But sometimes these
memory tricks backfired on him. Nzuri sana
means "very good" in Swahili. Nzuri sounds like
a major American river ... Missouri, and then sana
means "very." "I can remember that." But
in a rushed moment, Fr. Tom came up with "Mississippi Sana"
to his bemused African audience, while he knew all too well
what had happened.
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Fr. Tom Heath, O.P. with
local Kenyan priests |
It began early in
life for Tom and his two brothers. One Ash Wednesday
when they were children, they missed getting ashes, and
their mother sent them down to the rectory after supper to
get ashes. But the rectory was dark and all locked up.
The boys were frightened.
Then one picked up some cigarette ashes from the bus stop on
the corner, and another added a bit of spit, and their
spirits rose as they marked one another's foreheads: "You
are dust!" and made a prayer of it. They
returned home silently to a mother who now knew her boys
were properly prepared for Lent.
Later all three were to become Dominican priests:
Scholarship, teaching, preaching, laughter, missionary work
-- they did it all. One time I suggested to
Tom that I had just the right shade of shoe polish to shine
his shoes. "No thanks, I like them scruffy."
Missionaries have the terrible habit of repeating
themselves. Tom would say, "Have you heard this one?"
"Yes, Tom!" "Well, you need to hear it again."
And then we would join in the craziness as Tom would break
down in laughter, retelling the joke.
|
Watercolor depictions
of Fr. Tom Heath, O.P. painted by Fr. Kieran
Healy, O.P. |
I
would offer Mass at Kibagari Good News Center Orphanage at
the edge of a slim in Nairobi. "Would you hear some
confessions after Mass?" "Certainly," I would say
and before I knew it there would be 20 to 30 children lined
up around the corner of the porch that offered a bit of
privacy with a view of the playing field and the wafting of
fumes from the privy below. It's my conviction that
children in an orphanage can't do too much wrong.
These kids want an adult to listen
to them and bless them, and Fr. Tom gave us a wonderful
model of how to be a "Buda" grandfather to the
neediest children.
 In the
days following Christmas 2004, armed thieves came to the
Novitiate in Kisumu and robbed it twice. The second
time they beat Fr. Tom in the chest with a panga machete.
A few days later Fr. Tom was back in the hospital with shock
and stress from the beating. As Fr. Maury Schepers,
his local superior, entered the room his cell phone rang.
... Fr. Dominic Izzo, the Provincial in New York,
asked, "How is Fr. Tom?" Fr. Maury said,
"Here, speak to him yourself," and handed Fr. Tom the
phone. With characteristic joy, Fr. Tom gasped,
"Dominic!!!! Thank you ... for everything!"
He died that night and is buried at the Novitiate compound
in Kisumu overlooking the Nandi Hills. Fr. Tom taught
a great deal about being a father. Buda. |
