Priest’s act of charity brings evokes words of gratitude all the way from Brooklyn

By Lisa Benoit

The shrill of a telephone ring in the middle of the night. It’s a sound that most priests will recognize as a hospital emergency call even before they open their eyes. It usually means hard sleepless hours ahead immersed in a human crisis for which he is expected to provide comfort, strength, consolation and answers to unanswerable questions.

It’s often a thankless job, the priesthood.

But not always.

Maryknoll Father Bob Wynne, the pastor of Annunciation Parish in Waimea on the Big Island, received a heartfelt acclamation of appreciation for his response to such a phone call last year.

The gratitude was expressed in a form of a letter by Margaret C. Jones of Bay Ridge, N.Y., published in “The Tablet,” the diocesan newspaper of Brooklyn, on Nov. 27. It was entitled “An Angel from Maryknoll.”

Here is the letter in its entirety:

Dear Editor:

The Good Lord sends His angels in difficult situations. Perhaps, His angels are all around us and we are unaware of them.

Last February, my older brother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The doctors performed three surgeries in four days and we prayed. He survived and, after his wounds healed from surgery, underwent 12 weeks of chemotherapy. The latest scan showed no cancer, so it was decided to stop all therapy and wait until the next scheduled scan, which was for Nov. 21.

My brother told his wife that he really wanted a long vacation prior to the scan. Therefore, they booked a week-and-a-half week tour to Hawaii. Their plane left JFK on the morning of Oct. 15. After changing planes in San Francisco, they took off for [Big Island of Hawaii], landed, checked in at a beautiful but remote resort and had a small supper. At 10 p.m. my brother called two of his children to say all was well and “[Hawaii] was paradise,” and then he went to bed.

A few hours later, he developed severe pain and died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. My sister-in-law was all alone some 6,000 miles from family, friends and all those she loved. The hospital called the local priest and he came immediately. It was now about two in the morning, Hawaiian time.

Father Bob Wynne, a Maryknoll missionary, stayed with my sister-in-law, held her, consoled her and advised her through all the talk of autopsy, funerals, undertakers, coffins, etc. Hours later, my sister-in-law needed to return to the hotel, which was at least 40 minutes away. However, she had no transportation. No trouble. Father Bob was there. On the way to the hotel, he asked her if she wanted to go to Mass. She thought, “I am in no condition to see people,” Father told her she did not have to see anybody. He put the lights on in the small church, lighted the candles on the altar and celebrated a private Mass for her and my brother.

She told us when she received Communion she received great peace and knew my brother was really all right now.

My family has told this story, not only to everyone who came to the wake, but to everybody who will listen. It is truly beautiful and Father Bob was not just an angel, but an “alter Christus” to my sister-in-law. All those who have listened to my family have commented, “What a great priest!”

But I am sure, no, I know, that there are many priests in our midst who have done the same or very similar things for hurting people in our diocese. Maybe we just don’t see our angels.

So, God bless Father Bob Wynne, from Worchester, Mass., and God bless our priests, humans just like us, but showing Jesus to us, too.

Father Wynne spoke later to the Hawaii Catholic Herald about that early morning call. When he arrived at the hospital, he met Mrs. Jones, whose name is also Margaret. Her husband had already died.

“She knew no one in Hawaii,” Father Wynne said. “She was completely stranded.”

The Maryknoll priest said he counseled her regarding the decisions she would now have to make and helped with the difficult phone calls to the mortician and other necessary arrangements.

According to Father Wynne, what he did was not unusual. Caring for those in their time of grief is just part of his work as a priest, he said.

“Father Wynne was especially wonderful to us,” Jones said in a telephone interview. He wrote me a note saying that what he did was nothing special. But he did a lot that was special.”

“In my life, I too have had priests that were exceptionally good to me and I have never forgotten them,” she said. “When I heard about Father Wynne from my sister-in-law, I just wanted to shout it from the housetops.”

Jones said that last Thanksgiving and Christmas were difficult for her sister-in-law and her family, but that they were “holding up pretty well.”

“It wasn’t easy, but you keep on going,” she said.

Jones said her brother was a lector at Our Lady of Mercy Parish in Forest Hills, N.Y.

“He was involved in his church and he was an exemplary Catholic,” Jones said. “He was a wonderful man, a wonderful father, a wonderful husband and good son to my mother and father.”