The Sem: Joe-Dad

The 5’6” statue of ‘The Holy Family’ (Joseph, Mary, baby Jesus in Mom’s arms) stood right next to the elevator leading to the 2 upper floors housing seminarians and priest-faculty at St. Thomas Theological Seminary in Denver, and an Italian beauty it was (the statue, not the Otis).


Joseph’s right arm was around Mary’s shoulders, and the left was extended outward with fingers splayed as if in a casual wave to hail a cab.


Fr. Nick Persich was short, bald, good-natured, good humored, and--above all--revered for his scholarship which had earned him an invitation to the Vatican as a consultant to the bishops and cardinals in their Vatican II deliberations, talks that would succeed in turning priests to face their flocks during Mass, and celebrating Mass in the respective languages of the people they served instead of Latin, making V-2 the delivery vehicle for these and other sweeping and historic changes.


Every so often, my ill-timed arrival at the elevator would precede Fr. Nick’s by half a minute or less, bringing a smirk and accusatory glance at my face’s angel-pose as his head swiveled from side-to-side, looking for the culprit, and muttering something about the lit Marlboro between Joseph’s fingers, prompting me to offer fetching an ashtray for “Joe-dad.”


Sometimes Fr. Bill Bogel and I (he was my ’Class Dean’) would end class and walk to the elevator, together, and he wouldn’t notice the statue missing, only that--when the doors opened--Jesus, Mary and Joe had been merrily riding the elevators up and down.


Bogel would laugh, wait til the door enclosed us with the statue, and say, “Gensle, you son-of-a-bitch,” and we’d giggle like schoolboys to my cross-fingered pleas of denial, often wondering if the statue’s adornments (lit cigarettes, cigars, a book wedged between Joseph’s thumb and index finger, a pork-pie hat on Joseph’s head, a pacifier on Jesus‘ tummy) might annoy 'old school' Fr. Nick, yet, I can’t seem to figure how or why I was always suspect (bad angel face?) because that thing weighed 200 pounds if it weighed an ounce!