FUNERAL FOR SISTER MARY DANIEL, RSM

Pat Colavita, Gaetana Borgia Iseicz, Fr. John

In the first three days of this Easter season, I have been at two funerals: one in Indiana on Easter Monday for a teacher at Notre Dame University and one on Wednesday for a teacher I had in high school – Notre Dame High School, in Trenton NJ. That funeral was in Watchung, New Jersey and it was a real homecoming.

Sr. Daniel was a member of the Sisters of Mercy, and a musician. She ran the choirs, directed music for the school plays (and our school plays were full-fledged extravaganzas, with costumes from Brooke & Van Horne in New York, professional choreographers and pit musicians, and a cast of thousands. Well, hundred. In my three years (I entered as a sophomore) we did Merry Widow, Student Prince and The King and I (I was the king – get your mind around THAT!)

She was an extraordinary teacher, because she always supported, always encouraged, always challenged you to do more, and do it better. She had had Alzheimers the last several years, so the sorrow was tempered with celebration that she was now in a place with full possession of her faculties again. And it was a reunion.

I apologize for those not associated with Notre Dame High School – you might want to check and see if there is anything gripping on television. But memory lane, here we come.

I was at Port Authority bus terminal a little before 7, to catch the 7:15 AM bus to the mother house. These morning commuter buses are family affairs, with the driver knowing many of the passengers, and them knowing one another. I haven’t been on one of these buses in a long time, and the electronic sign at the front of the bus rolls off streets on the route before the bus gets there – very handy if – like me – you don’t know where you’re going. At one point there was a fire on the road ahead of us, complete with police road block, and the driver wasn’t sure how to go, so one of the passengers directed him – turn here, now go right, straight down this road – and back on the other side of the fire. Great fun.

I got off and walked a long block and then uphill to the infirmary. The nursing director directed me to the chapel (I was way early) and got me a cup of coffee. Bless her. I helped set up for Mass, and as people started coming in I met folks, some I knew, some I didn’t. Sr. Daniel’s long time friend, Sr. Judy Ward was there, as was her cousin, Sr. Lucille, a Carmelite nun from Wisconsin. (Everyone knows at least one Jesuit, and everyone asks if I know them. In this case, Fr. George Drance who is now helping out at St. Malachy’s – he was a novice in Wisconsin and she remembers him chopping wood.)

The nuns have a ritual for welcoming the body, which was very nice. Sr. Daniel had been in the Mercy’s for 70 years, and everyone knew her at one point or another in her life.

The principal celebrant (I was liturgical decoration) was Mnsgr Capik, who had been the bright young priest of our time, the dashing and exciting faculty member with whom a number of young ladies were chastely in love. He’s in his early 80’s now, but you’d never know it – strong voice, great personality and delivered a wonderful homily. I ran into several teachers from those days – Sr. Raymond, Sr. Sean, Sr. Jacinta, Sr. Victor, Sr Paschal – I’m not sure what was the more startling moment, that I was there as a priest or that I kissed Sr. Paschal. Gaetana Borgia and Pat Colavita from the class of ’63 sang a song that Sr. Daniel had written, and Ed Hofmann who had been in the King and I production was there – he is a Christian Brother and director of undergraduate admission at LaSalle University. (He3 didn't come back for lunch after the cemetery so there is no picture of him - but he's tall with a handsome short white beard.) The woman who was supposed to do a reflection couldn’t make it – she broke her foot – and so I was pressed into service. I talked about Sr. Daniel, and sang a song from our class (Almost Like Being in Love) – and at the cemetery, never being one to resist temptation, sang the first verse of Danny Boy – although, of course, as Danny Girl. There was a lovely lunch afterwards at the center and it was a lovely day, reminding me of all the good times at high school. OK, we all tend to gloss over and make more golden the days of our youth – especially when they are as far away as they are. But it was a good send off to a lovely lady and another important teacher, at least in my life. And there are even a couple of pictures.

Sr. Judy Ward. She recently broke her hip and is temporarily using a chair. She has a very artistic photo on her phone of the x-ray clearly showing the screw in place. 

For those of my era at Notre Dame High School, how many of these can you identify? 

The cover from the Order of Worship for the funeral Mass.

And I got a copy of the published obituary as well:

Sister Mary Daniel Schroeder, RSM

Sister Daniel, 86, died peacefully on March 29, 2013 at McAuley Hall Health Care Center, Watchung, NJ.

Sister was born in Easton PA and entered the Sisters of Mercy in 1943. She received a Bachelor’s Degree from Georgian Court College, Lakewood and a Master’s Degree in music education from Boston University. She continued her studies at Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart; Pius X School of Liturgical Music, Purchase NY; and in Westminster Choir College, Princeton.

For many years, Sister Daniel shared the joy of music through the classes she taught at St James School, Woodbridge; Notre Dame High School, Lawrenceville, Mount Saint Mary Academy, Watchung; and Phillipsburg Catholic High School, Phillipsburg.

She also served as pastoral music director in St Joan of Arc Parish in Marlton, St John Parish in Bushkill, PA and pastoral musician in the parishes of St Theresa in Succasunna; St Joseph in Lake Orion, MI and St Luke in Detroit.

Sister Daniel served the Lord through her ministry of music and in doing so; she made a lasting impression on many lives. She made a positive difference not only in the lives of her students, but on all who knew her.

After retiring, Sister Daniel volunteered in the music ministry at Mount Saint Mary and  helped initiate and worked untiringly with Sister Judy Ward for “Catherine’s Legacy” until she moved to McAuley Hall where she could still be heard playing the piano, something she never forgot.

She is survived by a loving cousin Sister Lucille LaMontagne, O.Carm. from Hudson, Wisconsin and many devoted Sisters of Mercy and dear friends.

Visitation will take place at McAuley Hall Health Care Center on

Wednesday, April 3, 2013 from 9:00 – 11:00 am followed by a Mass of   Christian Burial.

Burial in Holy Redeemer Cemetery, South Plainfield, NJ.

Memorial Contributions may be made to Sisters of Mercy Mid-Atlantic Community,  1645 Highway 22, Watchung, NJ 07069.

Arrangements by: Higgins Home for Funerals, Watchung, NJ 

A FUNERAL FOR FRED SYBURG

Fred Syburg was a professor at the University of Notre Dame from the early 1950’s until his retirement some five decades later. He directed the first university play I was in at Notre Dame (I had done two plays for the “underground” theatre, Impersonal Productions earlier), Brecht and Weill’s Threepenny Opera. At one rehearsal, he had the whole cast and tech crew sit out in the audience, and from the stage he read us the entire play, song lyrics, stage directions and all. He felt we weren’t capturing the tone of the piece, and so he wanted to share with us what he thought it might sound like.

Fred taught oral interpretation and the literature of theatre, which is plays and history, and he was a great lover of poetry. (And music. And baseball. And a list of other things piqued his curiosity. He was a reader, an actor, a director, a teacher – an inspirer. He was a quiet man with a great heart, and in his last years he enjoyed following friends and grandchildren on Facebook, and his observations were always something we looked forward to. He won the Arthur Harvey Award from the University of Notre Dame is recognition of his dedication to “young thespians and the University theatre.”

Fr. Don Dilg, CSC is an old friend and classmate from those days and he sent me an email suggesting I might come out for the funeral and concelebrate with him. He had been a good friend of Fred and Jane’s (Jane was his wife, who died in 2006) and was Pastor for several years at Little Flower Church where they were parishioners, and where the funeral Mass was going to be celebrated. (Fred’s remains had been cremated, and the funeral was scheduled for Easter Monday to allow more people to be present.) Funerals are always important, and when it involves people who were important in your own life, you make the extra effort to attend.

So on Good Friday I found myself on the 3:45 pm Lake Shore Limited, pulling out of Penn Station, heading for South Bend Indiana. Cheaper than a plane. (Someone years ago said to me that time is the currency of the poor. If you have money you can afford the fastest and most convenient transport, for instance. If you don’t have money, you wait for the bus. Or in this case, you take the train. 17 hours out, 19 hours back. It’s the same distance, and Indiana doesn’t do daylight savings so at this point it’s on the same time as New York.)

I was in a reserved coach section – doesn’t mean I have a reserved seat, like on a plane, but it guarantees that I have a seat. The seats are wide, they recline significantly (unlike the airline 3 inch recline), there is a foot rest and a leg rest and curtains for the windows. The sleeper cars have individual rooms that look lovely – ah to be rich – but there was a dining car (linen table cloths) and a café car. And they pass out small pillows when they turn the car lights down. There are plugs at every seat – and given the number of laptops, notebooks and other electronic devices, that is a strong selling point. I was struck by how many people have laptops with sizable screens and how many are being used to play videos. I hadn’t thought of that for this trip but it is like having the entertainment center on a plane, except that you control it.

I managed some sleep – got into South Bend with an announcement that there had been a derailment between South Bend and Chicago, and they did not know how long the train would be held up. The cab driver was friendly, and since my destination was in a single zone, the meter didn’t apply so he drove me around on the way to show me a LOT of the new construction that had been going on. Several times, in a town where I had spent almost 8 years, I knew intellectually where I was but my eyes found no recognizable landmarks. It was a little disorienting – things like that make me feel old much more than the odd pain in my back or my shoulder.

Got into Corby Hall, the priests’ residence, found my room and unpacked. I had a living room with a tv and a desk and a couple of armchairs, and a separate bedroom with a spacious closet, a chest of drawers, built in bookcase and a bathroom. Different style than the Jesuit community. Went down to get a snack and met some of the community. Don Dilg came by and we chatted and started to coordinate schedules. I took a nap – skipped dinner – and concelebrated the Easter Vigil at the Basilica. One of the newly baptized took the name Ignatius of Loyola for his confirmation name, so I went up and introduced myself afterwards and told him that the Jesuits were watching him. A very nice party afterwards and a late bed.

Easter Sunday was a quiet day, featuring a good cigar on the front porch, enjoying the weather and the rocking chair and families walking by. And Monday was the funeral.

Since Don had been Pastor at the church, it was old home week, and reunion all wrapped up. Reg Bain was a colleague of Fred’s, and a teacher of mine and Don’s and his daughter was in charge of the music and led the singing. Gorgeous voice – she has three sons – and Don and I remember the night she was born. We were in rehearsal for a summer production of Rhinoceros when the word came.

The Syburg family was present, and the service was lovely. Don’s homily was spot on (and is reprinted at the end of this rambling. It will give you the words, but you miss the delivery. I once again find myself wondering why people don’t video funerals. Often there are people who can’t come – and often there are wonderful moments when people share stories or feelings or observations and I cannot but think it would be a comfort to be able to re-play those in later days and share them with those not able to come. I would love to know what I said at my father’s funeral, or to have some of the comments people made at my mother’s. Fred’s funeral had moment like that too.). The music was lovely throughout – and after Communion, Reg Bain shared some of his thoughts about his friendship with Fred and how Fred and Jane (and he was right when he said you really couldn’t take about Fred without also talking about Jane) had been so important when Reg and his wife Georgia had first come to South Bend, and when Georgia was in the final stages of battling her cancer. Ellen, one of Fred’s daughters, spoke about what it was like growing up with Fred and the things she had learned – including that one did not go to an artistic event to eat. True also in Fred’s mind for ball games.

There was a short service at the cemetery, where I led everyone in singing the Alma Mater, and then we adjourned to O’Rourkes, a pub in the new Eddy Street complex, called the Village I believe – an assortment of stores and shops handily adjacent to campus. Not good news for downtown South Bend, but good news for Notre Dame students and faculty and staff. More stories were told, toasts raised, I even sang the Parting Glass. (Well, it IS a pub song.)

It was a grand sendoff and Fred would have enjoyed it. On the back of the order of worship (and Fred had had an active hand in deciding what music and readings and poetry would be part of his funeral) was a quote from Ulysses, by Alfred Lord Tennyson:

Though much is taken, much abides; though

We are not now the strength which in the old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are,

One equal-temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

And I’m sure Fr. Dilg will forgive me putting his homily in immediate juxtaposition to Tennyson.

Homily for the funeral Mass for Fred Syburg --   April 1, 2013

So many images converge on us in this celebration today – images personal, cultural, liturgical.  Such is true in every liturgy, of course, but is perhaps especially obvious in celebrating the funeral of a man who was both a master and a servant of images.  The over-arching image, the controlling image, the one which encompasses all the rest on this Easter Monday, of course, is Resurrection. 

Resurrection is an image that explodes possibilities.  It is an image which proclaims that human life is a bigger, a far bigger reality than anything we can possibly imagine.  Such is the Word that comes to us in the second reading the family has chosen for this Mass.  Some of you may recognize that this is the Epistle reading that is read at the Eater Vigil.  Although somewhat out of place in the current structure of the Vigil Mass, this reading was meant to be addressed directly to the newly baptized, immediately after they emerged from the waters and had taken their seat in the assembly.  “Are you not aware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death; so that, just as Christ has been raised from the dead, we too might be raised to new life in Him.”

In other words, the reading says, “You’ve already died.  You are now living, right here, in the resurrection. That is something you can’t even begin to wrap your minds around. Just let it lead you into fuller life – for there will always be more.” 

Easter calls us to feast on resurrection. “Feast” is another image this day.  In the first reading the family chose for a memorial Mass back in Wisconsin, the prophet Isaiah speaks of God preparing a feast on this mountain, a feast of juicy rich foods and pure choice wines.  It will be feast for all peoples of the earth, a feast in which God will remove the veil, so that all may recognize each other as sisters and brothers.  It is truly to be a Feast of Fools. 

Although it sounds hokey, I can’t help thinking that Fred had something to do with arranging that the day of his funeral would fall on April 1, April Fool’s Day!  For Fred was one who helped me appreciate the true meaning of the Fool.  The Fool was an official appointment in the court of a king. The Fool was not someone the king kept around for laughs, the Fool was actually a trusted advisor.  The task of the Fool was to see with an outsider’s eyes, to turn prevailing wisdom on its head.  Whenever a strategy, or policy, or proposal to wage war was put forward, it was the business of the Fool to use parody and rhyme and riddle present an alternative view, to suggest, sometimes mockingly, that there was a whole other way to perceive the situation.  Some Fools were so good at their profession that they eventually were beheaded for treason!  But it takes a Fool to see the truth of Resurrection – and invite others to come to the Feast of Fools!

This image of the Fool hints at what I believe is, in broadest terms, the purpose of all art.  That purpose, I would propose, is to illuminate the possibilities of human existence.  I remember quite well Fred hammering home the definition of the art of the Drama:  “Drama is an image of human action in the form of human action.”  Thus, drama plays a particular role in helping us to see, to face, or to confront the conscious and unconscious assumptions which lie behind our ways of doing things.  This is not always a pleasant or welcome task.  And to present this art form with integrity demands at least three qualities, which I believe Fred exhibited abundantly. 

The first is courage.   Once, after the closing of a good but tepidly received production, I remember him quoting with conviction the saying, “if you’ve pleased everyone, you know you’ve done nothing.”  A second necessary quality for a great dramatic artist, I believe, is a playful imagination.  All of us, I’m sure, could put forward hundreds of examples of this in regard to Fred; but one of the best was given me just last Saturday by Michael.  Two days before he died, Fred said to Michael, “This is going to be a great day.  It is Ash Wednesday.  It’s also the day pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training!” 

                                                                                                             

Finally,  and perhaps controversially, it seems to me that a great dramatic artist needs to be a person of faith, that is, a person who is convinced, at some deep level of his or her being (maybe not even a conscious level), that there is meaning in life, and that it is good, and that illuminating the possibilities of human existence, even when they are very dark, or painful, or ugly, is a humanizing process that can, in some ultimate sense point others to the source of life. 

For Fred this meant to point to the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the One whose work of art we all are; that is, One who calls us to be metaphor, to let everything in our lives point to a bigger reality.  Another quote of Fred, before going on the vent a second time, related by Michael: “I know I love Jesus, and I know Jesus loves me.  I love my family, and I know my family loves me.  And that’s about all there is.”

So, as we gather on this Easter Monday, on this mountain of the Feast of Fools, we pray for Fred, who we trust is preparing a place at the feast for us.  And we give thanks to God for calling us to the vocation of the Fool; and for one who invited us, and helped train us, to be the best fools we can be.

If Reg’s or Ellen’s remarks are ever shared, I will – with their permission of course – share them. They were very personal but very wonderful, each unique and each sharing another dimension of Professor Fred Syburg.

It was a great gathering of friends and fans, of family and colleagues and students, and we discovered again how much we each owed this man for his influence in our lives, and, not coincidentally I suspect, how much we really like each other. For me, it was more than worth every minute of the 18 hour train trip out and the 19 hours back.

Yet once again, I find myself saying “Thank you” to Fred Syburg.