The official blog of Rev. Francis X. Hezel, SJ

1
Counting Friends and Years
2
Christmas 2024
3
From Retreat to Recovery: A Week in the Hospital
4
Pat Sullivan: From One Xavier High to Another
5
The Passing of a Devoted Dad
6
Reopening the Doors of MicSem
7
Christmas, 2023
8
Ken Urumolug: 1965-2023

Christmas 2024

Thank you, Santa Claus, for the excuse to greet old friends again, even if just once a year. Friendship has been a real blessing for me. I just wish I could acknowledge it more often.

This past year brought its share of challenges. On my 85th birthday in January, I awoke to a sharp pain in my knee that made walking nearly impossible. My trip to the hospital, hobbling into the emergency room with a cane, was just an omen of what was to come.

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From Retreat to Recovery: A Week in the Hospital

I must have fallen hard when I arose from bed on Monday morning, Sept 30. We could blame it on the wet surface (as I do), or harbor the suspicion that this was a cardiac arrest (as the doctors seemed to believe). In any case, I found myself sprawled on the floor for the next six hours. I just didn’t have the muscle strength to lift myself back on the bed, nor could I reach my cell phone as time passed and the calls increased. Finally, someone opened the door, gasped at the sight of the old priest on the floor, and called the ambulance.

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Pat Sullivan: From One Xavier High to Another

If ever there was anyone stamped with a “made in New York” sticker, it was Pat Sullivan. Yes, he might have once been a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers and forever afterwards mourned their loss. Even so, he identified as a New Yorker. As I recall, it was a Yankees baseball cap he was wearing when he was sitting at a table, head bowed and listening to classical music as he pondered how to respond to the storm damage at our seminary on Guam.

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Reopening the Doors of MicSem

For nearly four decades Micronesian Seminar (usually known as MicSem) was the center of my life. As we went about our mission of promoting public discussion and reflection on key issues in Micronesian life, we managed to build up a library. Over the years it grew from a few shelves of books on the islands to an internationally recognized collection with 24,000 print titles, 82,000 historical photos, 800 videos, and 22,000 audio tracks.

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Christmas, 2023

I wish this were a personal visit instead of a written greeting, but let this note with its brief update suffice until we do meet again. 

Any honest update from me would have to deal with the challenges of getting old, but you’ve heard all this from guys like me before. Maybe you’re even going through it yourself. If so, you know that becoming an old-timer does take a bit of adjustment. Not only to the aches and pains in the joints, but other things are just as bothersome:

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Ken Urumolug: 1965-2023

I always thought of Ken as a kid—but a big kid, for sure. He had that playful smile that made you feel that, sincere as he seemed, he might be stringing you along just a little bit. But the smile was real. The earliest vivid memory of him was sitting on the hull of our overturned boat with that triumphant smile as Xavier freshmen splashed in the water around him. The boat had been swamped by waves not too far from shore, but Ken and a couple of his buddies held tight to the food packages they had saved from the floor of the lagoon.

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