We had just finished praying a family rosary that Saturday evening when the first phone call came in. My wife sounded concerned from the other room, but not too alarmed. My father-in-law had collapsed at the parish near his home and was being taken to the hospital. Details were vague.
Then came the second phone call, just as we were getting the kids ready for bed. It looked like Papa, as my children called him, had suffered a heart attack. He had been revived on the scene, at least briefly, before being rushed off in the ambulance. But there was no news from the hospital. We prayed for Papa and his doctors and sent the kids to bed. The third phone call was shorter. He was gone.
Then began the mind-numbing whirlwind of activity which always follows the death of a loved one, especially when death comes unexpectedly. There were more phone calls that night: my wife, the oldest of seven siblings, checking in on her brothers and sisters, finally getting a hold of her mom who was still at the hospital, calling her aunts and uncles to tell them their brother was dead.
My father-in-law, John Henry Purk, was a dentist. I like to joke that he chose that profession so he would have a captive audience for evangelization. The truth is that his dental practice – a small clinic downtown where many of his patients were poor – was never a full-time gig. And he had given it up several years ago because of back and nerve issues.
John’s full-time work was as a professor of dentistry, first in Kansas City and more recently in Omaha. Somewhere along the way he had picked up a PhD in Oral Biology and Engineering to go with his DDS. He knew more about the chemistry and design of dental adhesives than just about anyone you’re ever likely to meet. But that was rarely what he wanted to talk about.
He wanted to talk about the joy of knowing Jesus Christ, the blessings and graces of marriage and family, or the importance of the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist.
And talk about these things he did – to anyone and everyone who was willing to listen. He made Scripture Rosary DVDs (which are pretty much exactly what they sound like) at his own expense and handed them out by the thousands. John was, for decades, a lay member of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity. With a priest of the Society, he traveled to World Youth Day and handed out Miraculous Medals and his DVDs to everyone they met, from teenage pilgrims to bishops and Cardinals. He was unabashed and indefatigable.
I remember being at a party in college – one of those end-of-semester family barbecues for parents who are in town – when a friend came into the room and said, “There’s this guy out back who just told me that, when I get married, my wife and I will be an icon of the Holy Trinity.”
I knew immediately who my friend had been talking to. There was only one person it could be. And I happened to be dating his daughter.
Ours is an age in which the line between evangelization and marketing is often blurred. In fact, there are times when the corporate logic of “effective communication” seems to matter more than the content of the Good News itself. Too often, the Church behaves as though she is embarrassed by her own faith and afraid of appearing unsophisticated. Too often, the result is that the treasure of the faith is adulterated and truncated in some vain attempt to make it more appealing. The Gospel message is tamed, made acceptable, made easy. . .made empty.
My father-in-law had no time for that. He spent years co-hosting a radio show with a rabbi and a Protestant minister in which he always held the line – gently, but unequivocally – on every contentious point of debate and against all comers.
He lived as a man whose life had been changed by the Gospel, and who could not but share that same Good News. In this, he was not unlike his namesake, John, who with Peter could say, “Whether it is right in the sight of God for us to obey you rather than God, you be the judges. It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard.”
Not that everyone was always glad to hear what he had to say. He knew that. But he was undaunted.
John was ordained a deacon in 2014, and loved to preach. He took his deacon’s role of proclaiming the Gospel literally, as the volume of his voice from the ambo made abundantly clear. He spent hours preparing his homilies, the hallmarks of which were clarity and accessibility.
He served longest as deacon in a poor, black parish where his candor and zeal endeared him to the congregation. Twice, my family and I were there with him for Easter Mass, and the parish was faith-filled and joyful in a way I have rarely encountered in most “flourishing” suburban parishes.
John and Patty, his wife of 43 years, gave me the greatest joy of my life: my wife, Christine. I am a much better man because of the woman she is. And, of course, she is the woman and wife she is, in no small part, because of her own mother and father. It is impossible not to feel immense gratitude even in the midst of grief.
And there are other reasons to be grateful. John once told me he admired the kind of people who talk about Jesus and Mary as if they were actually real people, living and present. I knew immediately what he meant, not least because I was blessed to have a father-in-law who was just such a man.
May he rest in peace.
