Father Dan White was the Parochial Vicar (formerly titled Associate Pastor) at our parish, and this past Sunday was his last day (and Mass) before moving on to his new assignment.
Father Dan is probably my favorite priest of all the priests I’ve known, rivaled only by Father Willard Jabusch, who married me and Hsuan in Chicago.
Father Dan is unusual — though maybe less unusual nowadays — in that he came to the priesthood later in life. In fact, he was an electronics engineer working in Southern California before he entered the priesthood. That alone made me feel very close to him, because we had the same scientific or technical frame of mind generally. We talked a lot about engineering and science, about the web, about technology…
He was central in getting the parish school to start holding science fairs, instead of allowing the teachers to assign group science projects. I helped judge the first two years of their science fair, and now that Father Dan is leaving, I’ll try to help more and maybe get the school to send students to the LA County Science Fair.
He was also involved on and off during his career with Boy Scouts, so we talked about camping and hiking. He was often familiar with camping in the areas that W and I would go, particularly north of LA. Additionally, he reviewed J's work on Parvuli Dei, the Cub Scouts Catholic Religious Emblem, and he signed off on J's work so that he could receive the emblem.
(After he reviewed J’s Parvuli Dei workbook, he showed us YouTube videos of the current firefighting aircraft used by California firefighting crews to fight massive wildfires.)
Additionally, he wrote letters of recommendation for W at both of the boys’ Catholic high schools to which he applied and was accepted.
Father Dan’s parents still live in the west valleys, so he got his wish for his next assignment to be closer to them, in Northridge. He takes looks after them during his “vacations."