Catholic Fathers on the WWW
Rick Ricciardi was brought up Catholic, but spent much of his adult life as a Baptist minister before switching to the Assembly of God denomination. But that was not the end of the story. Rick has returned to his Roman Catholic roots and runs Returning Home to reach Catholics who have left the Church. Rick has two grown children.
Sono Motoyama reminiceses about her father in My Father, Myself, a story published by Catholic Digest. Sono's father passed away when she was 12 and in this story she searches for meaning in his life and death.
Sometimes the parent outlives the child. Grandparents Tom and Nancy Ferstl have put up a memorial website, Miss Maigin, for their granddaughter who only lived two and one-half years. Readers receive a blessing: "May the peace and blessing of Almightly God, Father and Son, and Holy Spirit, come down upon you and remain forever." One of the goals of this site is to share support and medical information with other families with seriously ill infants. Maigin was born without a pulmonary artery, with truncus arteriosus and with the chromosome 3P deletion anomaly. Check their links for more information on the web.
Concluding this article is a poem I rescued from the "throw-away" pile in our church library. I do not know who Edna Groh is, but I'd like to thank her for her work commemorating men who may not be famous or rich, but who stand tall with their family during the rough times in life. To these men, thank you!
Good Timber by Edna Groh
The tree that never had to fight
For sun and sky and air and light
That stood out in the open plain
And always got its share of rain . . .
Never became a forest king,
But lived and died a scrubby thing.
The man who never had to toil
Who never had to win his share
Of sun and sky and light and air
Never became a manly man,
But lived and died as he began.
Good timber does not grow in ease.
The stronger wind, the stronger trees,
The farther sky, the greater length:
The more the storm, the more the strength:
By sun and cold, by rain and snows,
In tree or man, good timber grows.
Where thickest stands the forest growth
We find the patariarch of both . . .
And they hold converse with the stars
Whose broken branches show the scars
Of many winds and much of strife . . .
This is the common
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