"MOTHER" MAHER, FATHER DOHENY, AND MY FATHER'S MEMORIAL ANNIVERSARIES..........

As I received the news last night that my Presentation parishioner pal, Alex Mauro has passed away, my prayers for him and his family led me to ponder how it coincides with the memorial anniversaries of my colleague Father Oliver Maher's mother Noreen, and my late diocesan colleague Father Richard Doheny, both of which are today March 4th, and my own father's fourth anniversary which is tomorrow. "Mother" Maher, as I called Oliver's Mum, died on this day in 2001. She was a native of County Cork in Ireland and married Oliver Joseph Maher of Freshford, County Kilkenny in 1956, having seven children with him; Fr. Oliver is the third of their seven children, with two older and one younger, brothers, and three sisters younger than him. His mother was a vivacious and active woman, whether raising and caring for her family, working in their family business, or in her religious, social, and athletic pursuits in the village of Freshford, and Kilkenny city, as well as her beloved Cork...Father Richard Doheny, a priest of the Sacramento Diocese and the Pastor of the parishes of Quincy, Florin, and Fair Oaks, for a total of 51 years, passed away four years ago today. He was a lifelong friend of Msgr. Kavanagh, as their native Irish communities of Gortnahoe and Urlingford, are each on the either side of the Kilkenny / Tipperary counties boundary. Completing his seminary studies in Thurles, County Tipperary in 1948, he was ordained to the priesthood for the Sacramento Diocese on June 13th of that year and upon arrival in California served for his first assignment as Assistant Pastor in Angels Camp, then for five years in Marysvillle, when in 1954 he was appointed Pastor of St. John's Parish, Quincy; and then St. Paul's Parish, Florin in 1960; and in 1976 he became Pastor of St. Mel's Parish, Fair Oaks...My own father Troy Doil Powers, was born and grew up in Rison, Cleveland County, Arkansas, who during the Great Depression, was part of the Civilian Conservation Corps and sent to Oregon as a teenager to work with the CCC. That led him into the U.S. Navy Seabees, during World War II. After the War he migrated to California in 1947, and settled in South Sacramento where in 1950 he met and married my mother and where at the same time sixty years ago, he built our family home, where my youngest brother still lives. He worked for Dolan's Lumber for three years until the rain storms of 1950, led to massive layoffs. Within weeks after being laid off, he acquired a job at the Campbell Soup Company, where he worked for thirty two and a half years, primarily as an Assistant Electrician. He retired from Campbell Soup in 1984, and in 1988 returned part-time for eleven years to live, work, hunt, and fish, in his native Arkansas. Returning home permanently to California in 1999, he continued residing in our family home with my brother Thomas, until he was diagnosed with a glio blastoma brain tumor in mid October 2005, and died on March 5, 2006, at age 84. I share these memories in prayerful remembrance and in affirmation of what I have preached at funerals for several years : "The greatest treasure each of us possess of a loved one who dies, is the Treasury of Memories we have of sharing love with them. It is a treasure that human death cannot destroy". Please continue to pray for the angelic soul of my pal, Alex Mauro and his grieving family, as you pray and ponder your own circle of memorial anniversaries...........God's Light + Love, Fr. Troy