You’ll Never Be The Same

He was “the world’s worst dressed priest.”

He may have been the best of the best mid-Twentieth Century missioners.

The formal (in a clergy shirt and collar) portrait accompanying his obituary does no justice to the man who taught me (and many, many others) so much.

My image was formed more than half-a-century ago.

In the early 1970s, I officially designated him “the world’s worst dressed priest.” And (I am certain), he couldn’t have cared less.

Then, young and impressionable and with a sense of propriety and decorum derived from my Sigma Chi Fraternity ritual (something we took with Knights of Columbus- or Masons- seriousness), a shock wave went through my whole system when the line or mourners brought a coffin to the doors of the Guayaramerin (Bolivia) church on their way to the cemetery.

Seamlessly, as if it were a daily occurrence (It was.), Frank Higdon stepped out of the mud and dirt of the construction site at which he was laboring, walked the few yards to the church door, donned a grubby white priest’s stole, grabbed the holy water bucket, sprinkled the coffin, recited the prayers of Final Commendation, spoke briefly with the family of the deceased, and returned to the mud and cement mixing.

Standing in the church portal and blessing a coffin, his “sacred vestments” that day in the Amazon Jungle shook and shocked the world of haute courtier: primitive flip flops on dirt-caked feet, plaid shorts and some kind a patterned short-sleeve shirt.

The second son in a family of nine boys and five girls, Frank, who was born in 1940 in New Haven, Kentucky, was ordained in 1967 and immediately assigned to a pueblito (tiny town)  of  six thousand on the Bolivia-Brazil Amazon border. During the heady years following Vatican II, he developed an integral pastoral approach to sharing the Gospel, with a wide range of services for the people – credit unions, water/lighting/transportation systems, commercialization and consumer cooperatives, many rural and urban schools, union organizing, youth and lay pastor leadership programs, and a team approach in almost everything he did. He earned the ire of wealthy landowners who saw their power slipping as the people Frank served became aware of the injustices under which they suffered. 

Prior to his assignment to Maryknoll efforts in the United States in 1991, Frank also served in Cochabamba and Santa Cruz and, in 1981, became one of the co-founders the Associacion Misionera Boliviana (the Bolivian Missionary Association), a Vatican-recognized “Mixed Association of the Faithful,” a missionary community of priests, Sisters, Brothers, single, and married lay people.

In a 1970 late evening walk during my first week in Bolivia, the contemporary apostle and missioner shared vital information with a seminarian five-years his junior: “Boy. Boy, never go anywhere in this country without your best friend in your back pocket.”

I was silent.

He repeated himself.

I was silent – student walking with the Buddha silent.

He repeated himself, adding “Never go anywhere without a roll of toilet paper in your back pocket.” [Think Cochabamba, Bolivia. Think 1970s. Think 8,000 feet above sea level. Think… ‘Nough said.]

And, in more direct terms, he told the kid just arrived from sea level not to worry about being polite while struggling with altitude-induced flatulence. [A direct quote is not necessary.]

Then came the life-altering words. He declared that on Saturday – two days hence - I was to accompany him to a tiny community on the western fringe of Cochabamba and would spend every weekend of my time in Bolivia helping to make adobe bricks for a new community center. No choices. I would do it.

Because.

“Because once you fall in love with a people and a community, you’ll never be the same.”

[EDITOR’S NOTE: I enjoyed writing that brief remembrance. It makes a remarkable man very present to my soul. Again. It’s true. The Dead never truly leave us. The Good are with God and God is with Us. Ergo: The Good who are with God are always with us.]

The memory of Father Higdon causes us to celebrate Australian Hugh Evans, who, in 2012 was named one of Forbes’ “30 Under 30” world leaders. 

Twelve-year-old Hugh participated in World Vision’s “forty-hour famine,” designed to raise awareness of and funds to fight global hunger and poverty. In 1998, fourteen-year-old Hugh travelled to the Philippines and, in a Manila slum, met Sonny Boy – an encounter that forever changed him. In 2017, he explained the experience to CNBC’s “The Brave Ones”:

”We went to his small shanty hut that was built on top of the rubbish dump (called) Smoky Mountain… and we went out exploring around just me and Sonny Boy. And everything looked gigantic to me. These houses were built on top of each other, it was a slum community that was cramped…”

He spent the night with Sonny Boy’s family - Hugh and six others sleeping on a concrete slab:

“And just lying there that night, it struck me that it was pure chance that I was born in Australia and Sonny Boy was born there. We don’t deserve or have no entitlement to the lottery of life that we have. And so it struck me that night that this was going to become much bigger and much more important for me. I had to do something…”

Two years after the Manilla experience, as an exchange student at Woodstock School in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas, he began to understand even more profoundly the world of the “poorest of the poor.” Writing in his memoirs, he recounted:

“The greatest injustice I witnessed this year happened, not when comparing the poor of India to the rich of India, but upon arriving home. I couldn't understand why we as Australians are so determined, even to the point of complaining, to get the latest mobile phone ... then comparing this to walking through the market of India and seeing a man with no legs, simply a piece of rubber tied to his waist to stop the skin on his pelvis from scraping away ... all he asks for is the equivalent of 20 cents.”

In 2008, as students at Australia’s Monash University and with a $60,000 grant from the United Nations and A$350,000 from AusAID, Evans and Simon Moss established the Global Poverty Project, a community education program designed in increase awareness of and actions to fight extreme poverty. They began with a dream and a motto: “Make Poverty History.” 

Since then, hundreds of thousands of young Global Citizens have raised awareness of world poverty and billions of dollars to affect changes in communities small and large. Each September, the Global Citizen Festival, scheduled to coincide with the September opening of annual United Nations General Assembly meeting, honors those young people with the massive music celebration in Central Park. It is impossible to buy tickets for the event, which features some of the world’s leading entertainers - all of whom perform for free. Tickets are earned by performing acts that affect poverty at the local, national or international levels. 

Evans explains:

“By rallying citizens together we helped persuade our government to do the unthinkable and act to fix a problem miles outside of our borders… We learned that one-off spikes are not enough. We needed a sustainable movement, not one that is susceptible to the fluctuating moods off a politician or the hint of an economic downturn. And it needs to happen everywhere, otherwise individual governments would have this built-in excuse mechanism that they couldn’t possibly carry the burden of global action alone.”

Echoing the Jesus of Matthew 25, Evans defines the Global Citizen as 

“Someone who self-identifies first and foremost not as a member of state, a tribe or a nation but as a member of the human race and someone who is prepared to act on that belief to tackle our world’s greatest challenges…   The world’s future depends on global citizens, global citizens demanding global actions…

“Good women and men who will put away, throw away ideologies and loyalties to a party or person and commit only to doing what is Right and Just simply because it is right and just. 

“Those of us who look beyond our borders are on the right side of history….”

One of ten children – nine boys and a girl – of very poor Lebanese immigrants (he was actually delivered by a “horse doctor”), Danny Thomas was a struggling nightclub singer who needed $50 in order to bring his wife and newborn baby home from the hospital. He had only $10 in his pocket. In church he prayed to St. Jude Thaddeus, Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes: “Please, please give me a sign to help me find my way in life – just a sign that I’m going in the right direction, and someday I’ll build a shrine in your name.” 

He put seven bucks in the collection basket and told St. Jude “I need ten times that amount to get my family out of the hospital.” Shortly after that, he landed a gig singing in a radio commercial. The pay was $75. When a Hollywood agent heard about the young comedian/singer, Danny Tomas entered the stratospheric world of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Sammy Davis Jr. - even a young Elvis Presley.

In those heady days, he read a newspaper article about a young African-American boy in Mississippi who was struck by a car while riding his bike. He died. Because no nearby emergency room would take a Black child. Danny Thomas carried the clipping in his wallet for years. It was the beginning of his commitment to establish a shrine to the Patron Saint of Impossible Causes. 

He built his shrine in the segregated South – in Memphis. St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital opened in 1962, the first institution in which research and treatment were conducted under one roof – “bench to bedside.” For a time, it was the only pediatric center in the U.S. designated a “Comprehensive Cancer Center” by the National Cancer Institute.

It remains committed to Danny Thomas’ the pledge “Families never receive a bill.” 

Years ago, an Australian teen tried to sleep – together with a family of six and with roaches everywhere - on a concrete slab in a “small shanty hut that was built on top of the rubbish dump” in Manilla and began to imagine a better world. Today, hundreds of thousands of young people are changing their world as Global Citizens. 

Three generations ago, an impoverished crooner, the son of impoverished Lebanese immigrants promised to build a shrine to the Patron Saint of Impossible Causes – if he could just earn the $50 necessary to bring his wife and newborn baby home. Today, at one of the world’s leading pediatric and cancer research hospitals “Families never receive a bill.”

Frank Higdon from coal-mining Kentucky, Australian Hugh Evans and Danny Thomas, the son of impoverished Lebanese immigrants, remind us of the type of men and women we want in our nation’s legislative bodies and highest offices. 

More importantly, they remind us of the type of women and men we need and deserve in public office. Not the anger-stokers. Not those driven-by and driving hate. Not the greedy and narcissistic. Not the “otherer.”

We deserve Frank Higdons, and Danny Thomases and more Hugh Evanses.

We deserve men and women who have learned Frank Higdon’s great lesson: Serve and, once you fall in love with a people and a community, you will never be the same.