“Something Saintly”

He was an ordinary man, on many counts: a husband, a father, a former Vietnam pilot. He worked his farm in Nokesville, VA, and gave hayrides to the local kids and built bonfires every fall; he coached soccer and basketball at my high school and laid the floor of our first real gym, which doubled as an auditorium and chapel. When there was a time of suffering in the community, he stood on that floor and led the community in prayer. And, morning after morning, he knelt in one of the back pews of the parish church, with Joseph, his son who has Down Syndrome, praying (and smiling and squirming) by his side.

Thomas Vander Woude was an ordinary man, but as one of older sons remarked, last week “this guy did something saintly,” saving Joseph’s life and giving his own. At his funeral Mass yesterday, the church pews were packed with more than 2,000 people, and seventy priests concelebrated. “This guy did something saintly, and they wanted to come be a part of it.”

The article excerpted below appeared in today’s Washington Post , reminding me that generosity, charity, and heroic sanctity—manifest in Mr. Vander Woude’s final moments—begin in daily life:

Another of Thomas S. Vander Woude’s sons, Tom Vander Woude, pastor at Queen of Apostles Catholic Church in Alexandria, gave the homily. In it, he likened his father to Saint Joseph, a man who patiently and quietly supported his family, did odd jobs for those in need and was content to worship God and not seek the limelight, Tom Vander Woude said.

At a reception at Seton School in Manassas, where six of Thomas S. Vander Woude’s sons went to school, friends and neighbors traded stories about how Vander Woude had gone out of his way to help them. Fittingly, Tom Vander Woude observed, they were standing on the gym floor that his father had installed.

Mary Heisler, 36, of Nokesville, said she never would have come to Virginia as a teenager, let alone met her future husband, if it had not been for Vander Woude. She was receiving Catholic home schooling in Texas when Vander Woude, who was helping with the home-schooling program at Seton, contacted her father and persuaded him to move 14-year-old Mary and her 11 siblings to Virginia to attend the school.

Her father obliged, sold the house, bought a yellow school bus and drove his family to Prince William County. Money was tight, so Vander Woude took the family into his home for a month before lending them money for a down payment on a house of their own in Manassas, Heisler said.

“He gave us half the home,” said Heisler, who met her husband, Tim, at Seton. “I don’t think he realized how many people he impacted.”
. . .

His dying act was, “truly saintly” and “the crown of a whole life of self-giving,” Bishop Paul S. Loverde said at the Mass. “May we find in his life inspiration and strength.”