Hawaii’s last Maryknoll veteran pastor has left the islands. Father Thomas Killackey, who has served here almost continuously since 1956, bid aloha to friends and parishioners of St. John Apostle and Evangelist Parish in Mililani at a gathering Dec. 4. The next day, he was on the plane for the Maryknoll retirement residence in New York.

The New York City-born ex-Marine served as associate pastor or pastor in at least eight parishes in Hawaii, on Oahu and the Big Island. He was last in residence at the Mililani parish.

Father Killackey’s departure came six days after the diocese celebrated the 80th anniversary of Maryknoll’s presence in Hawaii, Nov. 30, at Sacred Heart Church in Honolulu.

Hawaii has one remaining Maryknoll priest, Father John Soltis who came to Hawaii in 2001 to be chaplain of Oahu’s Korean Catholic Community after working 30 years as a missionary in Korea. No longer with the Korean community, he is now in residence at St. Philomena Church in Salt Lake.

Father Killackey, 82, joined Maryknoll in 1946, the year he left the U.S. Marine Corps. He had enlisted in 1942 and served as a staff sergeant in the Pacific during World War II and was among the first wave of U.S. troops to occupy Japan after the war.

He was ordained on June 9, 1956, in New York, one of 27 ex-GIs in a class of 54. His first assignment was as associate pastor for three years at St. Anthony Church in Kailua. He then went to the Big Island where he worked in Hilo at St. Joseph Parish and then as pastor on the Kona side in Honaunau at St. Benedict Church.

He returned to Oahu in 1968, serving at Sacred Heart Church, Honolulu, and as pastor of St. Philomena’s in Honolulu. He went back to the Big Island in 1976 to be pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes in Honokaa.

In 1981, the superior general of the Maryknoll Fathers assigned Father Killackey to the Maryknoll Development Department in New York. After a few years he was back on Oahu, this time as pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Waianae.

In Waianae, Father Killackey, a soft-voiced man with a durable sense of humor, developed an ambitious door-to-door evangelization program. He and parish volunteers would spend hours walking the parish neighborhoods, introducing themselves and their Catholic faith to people wherever they met them, at doors and on porches, in driveways and over front yard fences.

After leaving active parish administration, the Maryknoller lived at St. John Apostle and Evangelist Church where he assisted at Masses, the sacraments and evangelization and home visits.

Father Killackey’s younger brother Edward is also a Maryknoll priest who served in East Africa for many years.