THANK YOU all for coming today. Your prayers and support mean the world to me, my mother, my sisters, Laura and Joanne, and all of Donald and Anna’s grandchildren. I want to thank this beautiful faith community at St. William the Abbott. My parents have been parishioners here for half a century as they moved to Seaford the year I was born: 1969. So many of you have shared much faith, prayer, and love. Thank you!
(Download the order of service for the Funeral Mass here.)
My father was a man of prayer.
To know my father was also to know this: He utterly adored my mother. My grandfather, Antonio Pieretti made note of the gleam in my father’s eyes when he looked at my mother. Dad never lost that look. Heck, I just saw it recently. Through his love of God and my mother, countless riches flowed.
My grandmother, Gilda Pieretti said, “He was a true Christian father and husband.” That’s a pretty good endorsement coming from your mother-in-law!
SOME OF YOU KNOW THE STORY of how my parents met. It was 1954. Here’s the short version. My father always said Anita was responsible for our family even existing at all.
Anita and my mother grew up a few blocks apart in Greenwich Village. They were as close as sisters their whole lives. Picture this: On the eve of Holy Week Anita arranged for friends to go out to diner and dancing the “Athletic Club”—a very fashionable place just south of Central Park. Now, here’s the catch: It was the night before Palm Sunday. Now, if you understand my mother, Holy Week was no time for partying and dancing. It was time for meditation and prayer. She refused to go out.
Anita screamed at her and threatened to NEVER EVER again talk to my mother if she didn’t come out. Everything was set up. And she had a blind date for my mother. So my mother quite reluctantly capitulated.
That blind date was a man in uniform who was getting shipped off soon (to France — and not to the 38th Parallel in South Korea). It was my father.
So they danced the night away. But not before being mindful to stop eating and drinking a few hours before midnight. Of course in those days, one had to abstain a long time before receiving communion. So they went looking for a church and landed at St. John’s in Chelsea for Palm Sunday Mass on their first date. My parents going to Mass on their first date? Well, of course they did!
My mother was impressed with my dad’s prayerfulness and devotion to the Church. She was impressed with his broad interests in art, literature, his intellectual curiosity and interest in most anything. An engineer who taught at Cooper Union, worked on atomic-bomb proof structures for NORAD, and worked as one of only two Civil Engineers at Sperry, his intellect was indeed towering.
But his intellect hardly defined him. It was his heart and his spirit.
TO UNDERSTAND MY FATHER and my parents was to remember they had four children—not three. Many of you know, my oldest brother, Paul Vincent was born in 1961. He was born with an esophageal fistula. Outwardly he appeared bright and healthy. However, he could never eat normally a day in his life. He was subjected to countless surgeries. He suffered greatly. Born on the Feast of our Lady of Sorrows, he died a little more than two years later in my mother’s arms shortly after a failed surgery.
For many, the death of a child, especially as newlyweds, puts great strain on a marriage. One may be angry at God, and who might blame them? But my father and mother always told us that Paul strengthened their faith. There was meaning and purpose to suffering. It was witness to the sufferings of Jesus Christ, and his mother Mary.
With the death of a pure and innocent child, my mother always reminds us, we have a saint in the family.
FROM THERE MY PARENTS HAD three more healthy children. Deo gratias! With his fathering came lots of instruction, some of it with a sense of humor:
One of his catch phrases whenever we encountered any problem, great or insignificant: “Offer it up for Lent.” It didn’t matter if it was July or Christmas Eve. “Offer it up for Lent.” Offer up your sufferings, was the message—always with a dose of levity and perspective.
He showed us how to use a slide rule and the latest hand held calculators in the 1970s. He taught us tennis, took us to see John McEnroe and the greats play. He introduced us to museums, world-class jazz, opera, classical music, theater, and another of his passions: Gilbert & Sullivan.
One way he tormented Laura, Joanne, and me was through the dreaded words: “LOOK IT UP IN THE DICTIONARY.” Woe to us if he pulled out the massive two volume unabridged set. Because we knew there would be words in those endless definitions that we had no clue what they meant. Then we had to look those up. One errant word could lead to twenty minutes of searching until we understood everything.
ADVENTURES IN SAILING
My father was passionate about sailing. This alone was proof my mother loved him. A child of the concrete of Manhattan, sailing was the last thing she wanted to do. We would pack all five of us in the fifteen foot Nirvana and navigate the capricious waters of the South Shore—closely eyeing charts and maps of the tricky channels and tides. We could tell stories for days. (See Laura, Joanne, and me later for those.)
THE MARIAN MALE CHORUS
This was a group of men dedicated to Our Lady who regularly sang concerts, sang at the White House twice in the Clinton years, brought joy to nursing homes, toured the neighborhood on buses at Christmas time singing Santa Claus, You Are Much Too Fat on neighbors’ front lawns, and then took over the bar at Runyon’s. These guys had fun. And they were lifelong friends. Some of you are here today. Some came to his 88th birthday just a month ago. These are men of faith. We are deeply grateful to you.
TO TRULY KNOW my father is to know this: He didn’t care what you thought (and he could be bullheaded). But, boy did he care how you felt. My sister Joanne said something so true: He was the best listener. Even as his health declined and his body betrayed him, he was 100% attentive. Up until the end, he was a father to all three of us, listening to our difficulties, offering feedback, wisdom, and love.
My dad’s sense of humor got him through a lot of difficulty. As his mobility began to decline, he reinvented himself, becoming funnier and more charming than ever. He could command a room with his jokes. I thought “WHO IS THIS GUY? This is not the man I grew up with!” And with declining health, daily functioning could get tense. Just as the tension would crescendo, he would crack a joke at just the right moment, often self-deprecating—reminding us that life is good, and we love each other, and that’s what is truly important.
Remember, I said we have a saint in the family. Having someone in your family who is part of the Communion of Saints comes in handy. That’s someone to whom you can pray and have intercede for you. That’s pretty cool.
Just a few months ago my dad was reminiscing about my brother Paul. Quite reflectively and pensively, he said quietly to me, “Richard, you were a lot healthier than Paul.” ….and he paused……. “But Paul was a LOT holier than you!” I said, “DAD, NO TRUER WORDS THAN THAT!” and we both BUSTED OUT LAUGHING.
Perhaps we share a strange sense of humor, but it came from love, wisdom and knowing we were all safe in the hands of God.
FINALLY, MY FATHER WOULD ASK that you all pray for his soul. Now, I suspect he’s in pretty good shape. But please pray for him. My parents said the rosary together probably every day. It was a great source of strength. In the Apostle’s Creed we say that we believe in “the resurrection of the body and life everlasting…” The Body? Yes. As Catholics, we believe this. In the Requiem Mass there is the Gregorian Chant, Credo quod Redemptor: “I believe that my Redeemer lives, and that on the last day, I shall rise from earth and in my flesh I shall behold God my Savior.” This is something remarkable to consider.
I picture my dad right now playing with Paul as he did with us, and as he never had the chance to. If that isn’t heaven, I don’t know what is.
My dad knows that Christ is the center of all. Even in death, we place the Eucharist — our source of all nourishment—at the center. It is not my dad, but it is the love of Christ that gathers us here today.
I close these words with a prayer my father prayed many times a day. Please join me in your heart or on your lips if you wish:
“Hail Mary, full of grace…”
Husband, father, grandfather, friend, we love you.
—February 13, 2019, St. William the Abbott Parish, Seaford, New York
