I remember one evening in 1966, a couple of months after I was ordained a priest. The phone rang where I was living in Little Chute, and a call came in for a priest to respond to a car/train accident, about one mile away. None of the other priests were around, so I grabbed my holy oil and stole (a piece of colored cloth with the front lined in dark purple).
When I got to the train crossing, I saw several police cars, an ambulance, a fire truck, and several automobiles. It was just getting dark. So I got out of my car, put the stole around my neck over my black shirt with white Roman collar, took my holy oil, and walked toward the ambulance.
An EMT employee walked me past the ambulance over to a hearse, where the driver greeted me and told me there was a dead man inside the hearse. The man lived only a few houses past the crossing. A policeman told me that as the young man was driving home and approaching the railroad crossing, he stopped the car to look for a train, as there was no crossing bar at that crossing. Apparently, his baby sitting right beside him, must have leaned forward and fallen off the front seat. As the man quickly reached over to pick up the baby, his foot must have slipped off the brake, and the car moved forward over the track.
The train heading west, going at a good clip, smashed into the car and cut the car in half, with the motor of the car landing fifty yards or so down the track. Both the young driver and his baby son were killed instantly.
The hearse driver opened a side door so I could crawl in. He turned on the inside lights and closed the door behind me. I was sitting alongside a gurney with a body lying on it, face up, covered with a blanket. When I pulled the blanket down, uncovering the man’s head, it looked like someone had taken an ax and chopped most of his face off. It was a pretty gruesome, bloody sight, but I was an old farm boy and stayed calm. So I said the Prayers for the Dead and anointed the side of his head behind his left ear with my right thumb and some holy oil. Then I covered him up again with the blanket and looked around the hearse.
Right in front of me was another gurney with a blanket covering a small body. When I moved the blanket to uncover the body, there lay a baby boy, perhaps a year and a half old, lying on his back. To my amazement, his entire body was crushed about two inches thick from top to bottom. Again, I said the Prayers for the Dead and felt I should anoint the dead baby, which I did, making the sign of the cross on his head with my thumb dipped in holy oil. I covered the tiny body again with the blanket, turned off the inside lights and got out of the hearse, closing the side door behind me.
Everyone, the hearse driver, the EMT people, the policemen, firemen, and various people all thanked me for coming. Then a policeman and the Undertaker, who had arrived, asked me to come along with them to tell the young widow about the death of her husband and baby son.
When the young wife came to the door, she screamed when she saw the three of us and started to faint, but the three of us held her up and sat her down on a couch. While the officer told her what had happened, the undertaker called the woman’s mother and told her what had happened. I held the woman’s hand and listened to her sobs while I offered some consolation, including the fact that I had anointed both her husband and her child.
Later, when I got back to the rectory (where the pastor, and four associate priests like me lived), I thought about what it was to be a priest. The other priests thanked me, and all of us talked a while. I was given the funeral a week or so later. The pastor, Monsignor Vosbeck, had the Wake Prayer Service the evening before the funeral, and told the people that Father Murphy would have the funeral. The whole village knew I had been called to the accident scene. It gave me a great insight into the sometimes unexpected end of life.
I invite you to take an interest in my recently published book, RECHRISTENING AMERICAN CHRISTIANS. It encourages all Christians, churched and unchurched, to deepen their faith-
relationship with the life and message of Jesus, the Christ. There is no other way we Christians can come together in respectful dialogue to create a country of justice, brotherhood, and peace.