Diaconate

Deacon Dave Bezusko’s comfort zone has shifted in the years between 1997 when he earned his degree in journalism from Ohio University to now in his new role as deacon.

After college he spent four years as a sports anchor, a job that requires not only knowledge of sports but also an ability to walk into a variety of situations and interview a wide range of personalities. “I enjoyed following local high school and college teams, getting to know the players and coaches and to cover their games and bring the excitement home to the TV viewer or radio listener,” Deacon Bezusko said. “Each night we were on the air, it was an honor to be invited into the homes of the viewers who, by tuning in, made us a part of their families as they got their local sports fix.” When he met his wife of now 15 years, Carrie, he knew a move would be necessary in order for them to build a life together, so he packed up and moved to Marysville where they are now raising Xavier, 10, Serafina, 7, and Zander, 4. “

After four years in TV sports, I decided to leave broadcasting and enter the world of non-profit public relations to put my God-given skills to greater use,” he said. After working for the United Way in Marysville for 12 years, he moved into the role of Executive Director of the United Way of Logan County in Bellefontaine in 2015, where he is responsible for day-to-day operations.

In spite of his daily work meeting the social service needs of Union and now Logan County residents, Deacon Bezusko feels his involvement with the youth group at Our Lady of Lourdes in Marysville has had the biggest impact on his spiritual development. He served as co-leader with Carrie. “The lessons I learned and the inspiration I received during that time with the senior high school students stoked the fire in me to new levels,” Deacon Bezusko said. “That is one of the beautiful things about service; the more you give, the more you get back.

Working with the youth, building relationships with the kids and watching them mature and grow during the years we had them is incredibly rewarding. They were also challenging me to grow along with them.”

Deacon Bezusko says one of the things he noticed about his church involvement over the years is that it has consistently challenged him to do something outside of his comfort zone. “There might be times that I was lukewarm about a commitment or task because I thought I would rather be doing something else, but I can honestly say that whenever I did something for the church, I never regretted it afterward.”

Electrical engineers like Dan Dowler look for ways to harness the power of electricity to make our daily work easier, our lives more efficient and our communication faster.

Dowler has spent more than 25 years designing electrical systems for buildings, with safety, reliability and energy efficiency at the forefront. For much of that time, he didn’t realize that somewhere deep inside he was hoping for a spark, but not of the electrical variety.

Dowler was born and raised near Chillicothe in a family that, while quite patriotic, was not attached to a particular religion.

“My family didn’t really have a deep belief in God,” he said. “We lived out in the country and the church bus would come around and pick my brother and I up to go to church in the city, so I did learn about Jesus.”

During the middle school years, a friend’s family took Dowler to a country Methodist church and, while not actually becoming Methodist, he regularly attended the church’s services.
After high school, Dowler felt as though he was spinning his wheels.

“I was going in circles and not getting anything done. I needed discipline,” he said. “The Navy really runs in my family, so I thought, ‘My dad did the Navy, so maybe it will help me.’ My dad dropped out of high school and went into the Navy. He made something out of his life with what he learned from that experience, and he did well.”

Dowler has more than a half-dozen relatives who served in the military. The Navy, where he learned to be an electrician, seemed like the right choice and gave him the discipline needed to be an adult.

“In the Navy, they had church services in boot camp and I had said I was Methodist, so I went to the services and it wasn’t like anything I’d ever experienced,” Dowler said. “The preacher was Baptist, so I asked him, ‘How does this work, because the Methodists had always taught me it’s all about the method. You do things in a certain way or you go to hell.’ He said, ‘It’s OK. You can worship with all of the Protestants for now and return later.’”

That experience set Dowler on an exploration of different faiths.

“The Methodists make a big deal that worship has to be one way, but this other guy is telling me ‘Don’t worry, it can be different.’ I got turned off from Christianity,” he said. “so I started looking for something else: Hinduism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism.”

After leaving the Navy, Dowler earned a degree in electrical engineering from Ohio University and was working as a controls engineer, still unsettled on a religion, when he met his wife, Kathy.

“I looked at these religions, but nothing hit the spark until Kathy took me to the Catholic church and then everything was crystal clear,” Dowler said. “Until I met her, I didn’t realize how much God was missing. I had been resisting God and looking for happiness everywhere.”

Thanks to the current of faith he saw in his wife, Dowler converted to Catholicism. He and Kathy have one daughter.

Dowler feels the best move he ever made in life was to become Catholic.

“Before I was Catholic I was really lost,” he said. “I did everything you’re not supposed to do. I was the ultimate sinner. My life took an incredible turn when I became Catholic.”

Jim Elchert is not the first deacon in his family. Or the second. In fact, he’s not even the third. He will become the fourth deacon in the Elchert family.

Elchert’s father is a deacon for the Fort Wayne/South Bend diocese in Indiana. An older brother was ordained for the Los Angeles archdiocese during Elchert’s three years of formation, and he has a cousin who is a deacon in Philadelphia.

“God is persistent,” he said. “It has been a gradual calling.

“ I had the first inkling when I was still in my 20s, but just starting out with a young family, I didn’t feel it was time. Every now and then that thought would come to my mind, but I never thought it was time. 

“Finally, eight years ago, the thought re-entered my mind and, by that time, my father had been ordained as a deacon. 

“I thought about it and prayed over it and talked to my wife and decided enough doors had opened in my life that I could pursue this.”

Recognizing that deacons tend to have many responsibilities within a parish, Elchert is jumping right in at his home parish, Marysville Our Lady of Lourdes, and his diaconal internship parish, Powell St. Joan of Arc. 

“Having watched Deacon Dave Bezusko and Deacon Steve Petrill, they are boundless energy. I don’t know how they get it all done,” he said.

“Maybe there’s some element to this as to why I received this call to be able to help them do what they do and take some of the burden off.”

At St. Joan of Arc, Elchert has been involved with ministries for older parishioners and for people learning English as a second language and with the parish’s St. Teresa’s Outreach, which assists food pantries and underprivileged communities and gives direct assistance to those struggling or in need.

“When the stay-at-home orders went into effect this spring, we found that families that were struggling and were used to sending kids to school and receiving lunch and other meals at school were struggling even more, because now they had to feed the children at home,” Elchert said. So we initiated a program when Masses were shut down. 

“It was a food drop on Sunday mornings where cars would come to St. Joan and pop their trunks and we would unload donations of groceries. Father (James) Black or Father (Stephen) Smith would bless the car on the way out.”

Elchert said they would deliver five to seven pickup truck loads of items each week during the height of the shutdown, helping different food pantries.

“It was gratifying to see so much participation,” he said. 

Elchert, a senior project estimator for Kokosing Construction Co., had previous experience assisting with food drives. For a few years, he has been part of a food collection program for the company. 

“Each of our offices and major project sites adopts a food pantry in the area,” he said. “We collect donations from employees and the company doubles the donations. 

While he is involved with building projects for his career, Elchert, who has three children ages 20 to 30 with his wife of 33 years, Becky, also enjoys working in his wood shop. He has built several pieces of furniture for the family’s home.

“At work, I really enjoy being a part of something that you can look at tangibly and say ‘Yes, I was a part of that project.’ At home, woodwork is a creative outlet for me,” Elchert said. “I like seeing the finished product.”

A Whopper – actually, two Whoppers – led Jeff Hurdley to the diaconate.

It was Good Friday 1996 and Hurdley, who had been deeply impacted by his father’s unexpected death and his mother’s sense of peace about it, had decided to fast all day in an effort to impress God.

“I was not walking with the Lord and practicing my faith, and losing my father was deeply unsettling for me,” he said. “I went to my mother’s house and expected her to be devastated, but she had this peace about her. As people came to pay their respects, there was a feeling in the house that was palpable. I remember thinking, ‘This is God.’”

So on Good Friday, the fast began. He was going to read the Bible all day.

“I got to 2 o’clock and I couldn’t take it any longer,” Hurdley said. “I was totally famished, so hungry.”

That’s where the Whoppers come in.

“I gorged myself and realized how pathetic I was, that I couldn’t give a day to the Lord,” he said. “I got down prostrate on the floor and asked Jesus to help me find the Father. At that moment, my life took a major course correction. It was instantaneous. It felt like buckets of joy. It overwhelmed me. I felt like my life was being rearranged. It started the process of coming back to my faith.”

Hurdley wasn’t a practicing Catholic at the time. He and his wife, Christine, and their three daughters were attending a Protestant church. Feeling like something was missing, Hurdley decided to go through the RCIA program, and that experience began his journey back into the Catholic Church.

The retired lawyer for the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency began leading Bible studies. People would tell him he should be a deacon. During a retreat at a monastery, he began to have a sense of peace about exploring the diaconate. Once he began studying to be a deacon, he dived into learning, asking difficult questions. 

“I wanted to take my hardest issues to God in the midst of having this wonderful opportunity to ask all of the challenging questions on controversial issues,” Hurdley said. “You need to take on the hard issues. If you push them to the background, then you’re not prepared for them. Jesus is truth. He is truth and love and I want to know the truth. I threw myself at it and I felt more and more called and convinced that, yes, God is calling me to this.”

Hurdley said his instructors responded to his questions with great intellect and grace.

“When two or more are gathered in Our Lord’s name, he is amongst us,” he said. “And in the midst of these conversations, there would be a revelation of something the Lord wanted to share with the group. The Lord used these opportunities to reveal not just fundamentals of the faith but who we are – who we are as a community and what He wants us to know. I began to look for it and love it.”

When Nick Klear was in high school, a military recruiter visited and, as part of the presentation, asked the students if anyone was considering going into ministry. When Klear raised his hand, his classmates gave him a look of astonishment.

While Klear’s classmates were surprised, he felt comfortable with the idea of being a priest or a deacon. His grandfather was a deacon and Klear served at many Masses with him. He once took Klear to a dinner event at which the speaker’s theme was being open to God’s call. That concept stuck with Klear.

“I was always open to what God wanted me to do, but I didn’t know what that meant – priest or deacon?” he said. “Then I met Rachel and that question was answered.”

Klear and his wife of 13 years, Rachel, met when they were students at the University of Toledo. They have five children ages  2 to 12.

Rachel saw Klear at a Catholic Student Association activity at the University of Toledo, asked a friend about him and told the friend she was going to marry him.

“That story was part of my grandfather’s homily at our wedding,” Klear said. “How do a girl from Marietta and a guy from northwest Ohio meet in Toledo? Because of divine providence. God put us in these positions to be able to meet and fall in love.”

Marriage was the selected path for Klear, but the diaconate, while not an immediate priority, remained a possibility.“

I felt like I got that tap on my shoulder again after being married a couple of years and I thought, ‘What is this?’” he said.

The Diocese of Toledo decided to start a deacon class, so Klear attended a meeting for anyone interested.

“I went to this meet-and-greet and I really surprised grandpa, because I was living in Fort Wayne, Indiana at the time,” Klear said. “I found out I was way too young, so that was a surprise. I was 26 at the time and you have to be 35 (to be a deacon) and so I was a little disappointed, but it turned out God really understood that it wasn’t the right time for me.”

During the next three years, Klear changed jobs twice, he and Rachel moved, and they welcomed three children to their growing family.

“I could not have prepared for the diaconate at that time in my life, but God watches over us to make sure everything comes through,” he said. “After those three years, it was funny because everything felt calm. I felt like I got a tap on the shoulder again and it was like ‘Hey, Nick, remember me? It’s time to think about this again.’”

Klear is a service manager and electrical engineer for APTIM Corp. and volunteers with the youth group and RCIA programs at his home parish of Ada Our Lady of Lourdes. Add five children in various activities and it seems impossible to add the diaconate preparation program to his schedule. But everything fell into place.

“It’s not us,” he said. “It’s what the Lord gives us and you follow the Holy Spirit and you get done with the week and you think ‘Wow, that’s a lot. I wonder how we did all of that.’ The Lord directs you to the things you need.”

When Deacon Michael Kopczewski was a kid and people asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he’d tell them he wanted to be an inventor and get a patent. Now he blends research, innovation, engineering and design into his position as Vice President of Design Central, an innovation and product development company.

“Industrial design provided me with the ability to cross art and engineering, all in the context of making products appropriate for end users and manufacturers,” said Deacon Kopczewski.

While he has fulfilled that childhood plan – Deacon Kopczewski holds 35 patents – though fulfilling work, he feels service to the church brings much more to his life. “Through diaconal service I am blessed to experience an indescribable and immense joy and peace,” he said.

“Whether it’s visiting the home bound to distribute communion, proclaiming and preaching the Gospel, finding ways to help those in need or helping during liturgies, I feel at home, at peace and filled with joy. It reaffirms my call to the diaconate.” Another joy in Deacon Kopczewski’s life is his wife of 21 years, Camille, and their two daughters, Michaela, 14, and Melina, 11. The family attends Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish in Grove City where Deacon Kopczewski has served in multiple roles from training altar servers to serving on the retreat and leadership teams.

Deacon Kopczewski said his call to the diaconate played out over several decades. “Since I was a child I felt a tug, a call, a gentle nudge toward serving the Church in some way,” he said. “Decades ago it was a whisper to my soul in prayer. Maybe I was too busy with other distractions in life or I could not believe that God would ask an introverted, ordinary man like me to serve Him in the Church.

Over time the whisper in prayer turned into something I could not deny. Instead of a gentle whisper it became a burning longing of my soul to fulfill my identity and God’s will in my life. It is through the great gift of the opportunity to humbly serve the people of God in diaconal ministry and by intimate prayer that I have been given the gift of seeing the beauty of God’s love in my life.”

Dr. Dave Lozowski is one of the folks who have more than one vocation. First he was called to be a doctor, to heal people, and now he is a deacon. He started off with a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Dayton, however. “I initially went into engineering because I was good at math, but I didn’t find it a good fit,” Deacon Lozowski said. “My younger brother graduated from medical school and helped to talk me into medicine which I felt would be a way to help people and avoid working at a desk.”

Deacon Lozowski went back to school and earned his D.O. from Ohio University and now he is a family practitioner at Coshocton County Memorial Hospital and a member of Sacred Heart Church in Coshocton, where he and Brenda, his wife of 23 years, live with daughters Rachel and Elizabeth, 19; Gretchen, 16; and MaryAnn, 13.

When he leaves his office, Lozowski switches from the complicated vocation of practicing modern medicine to the equally-complicated home farm where his family raises most of the food they eat. “We have a hobby farm on which we raise sheep, a few steers, chickens and vegetables,” he said. “We grow most of our own food and we also boil maple syrup. Some years we even find time to get honey from our hives.”

As with most deacons, Deacon Lozowski has the ability to manage a life full of a variety of responsibilities and interests. He is a Eucharistic Minister, Lector, Chairman of the Finance Committee and leads Altar Server training and assists with confirmation formation at Sacred Heart.

In addition, he volunteers at Hope Clinic, a Christian-based medical clinic for the indigent in Coshocton County and he organized a free community garden on land owned by his medical group. And yet he still managed to hear the call to the diaconate in spite of the busyness. “It was a gradual process for me,” said Deacon Lozowski. “It got to the point where I felt every homily was talking directly to me.”

And still, after hearing the call, he wanted to be certain. “I made a quasi-bargain with God, that if he really wanted me to be a deacon he needed to send someone to tell me I should be a deacon,” he said. “Not a week later my then 13-year-old daughter came up to me and told me I should be a deacon if that was what God wanted me to do.”

It’s not out of character for Deacon Kevin Murrin to mull over things. He earned a Ph.D. in Political Science at Ohio State by analyzing the trade patterns of the most powerful countries in the world.

His responsibilities at Huntington National Bank involve analyzing large sets of data to create credit policies. And, his path to the diaconate was a slow but steady analysis over the span of a decade. “My vocations developed slowly, or at least my realization of it did,” said Deacon Murrin. “Even when I was in college, some had asked if I wanted to be a priest. However, I never felt the call to be a priest.”

While working on his graduate degree at OSU, he met his wife, Arlene, at the Newman Center and they have been married for 19 years. The couple, members of Church of the Resurrection in New Albany, has four children: Isaac, 17, David, 15, Matthew, 11, and Elizabeth, 9.

About five years into their marriage, Deacon Murrin developed an interest in the deaconate and he began exploring this ministry. “Similar to dating my wife, the more I learned about the diaconate, the more this ministry to the church feels right,” he said. “Nevertheless, my deepening of the call continued to develop over time.” Deacon Murrin met with deacons and discussed discernment and continued his involvement in parish life, helping with Pre-Cana preparation, ministry of the sick, liturgical ministry, coaching soccer and as RCIA Director.

The pondering and considering ended abruptly as he was teaching RCIA one evening. For several years, he had been using Caravaggio’s painting “The Calling of St. Matthew” to discuss how the candidates and catechumens may be thinking about their response to God’s call to join the Catholic Church.

“It struck me that I was, in many ways, the same as St. Matthew,” he said. “I have been considering the deaconate for some time, hearing the call, yet I always found some reason why now was not the right time, why someone else would be better. I again hear the call of the Lord but this time I would put into His loving care all of the obstacles for me entering the diaconate.”

With the analysis complete, Deacon Murrin said he plans to be guided by, “the most common words spoken by Jesus after His resurrection, ‘Be not afraid.’”

Victor Nduaguba was seemingly in a trance on the day in 1992 when he met his wife. That’s not to say he didn’t know what was happening.

“How I met my wife was something miraculous because when I was looking for a wife, I said a radical prayer where I told God, ‘Look, you know I don’t know you so well, so I pray that you will give me a wife who will pull me closer to you,’” Nduaguba said.

He’s still not sure how he ended up in the right place at the right time.

“I couldn’t make out what led me to my cousin’s house that day,” he said. “For no reason, I asked my friend to join me and blindly found myself there, and Chika was also there.
“In all truth, she has brought me closer to the Church.”

When he was growing up in his native country of Nigeria, his parents were devout Catholics. Nduaguba, the third youngest of 12 children, declared when he was 6 years old that he would be a priest, which resulted in a new family nickname for him – Father Victor.

He never missed Mass, but when he had his conversation with God about a wife, his seriousness about the faith had waned. 

“My church experience in Nigeria is similar to here, but more in-depth because we spent more time in church activities and the liturgy was more acculturated,” Nduaguba said. “Music and songs are part and parcel of every liturgy. Living out the liturgy in the local languages and culture makes the spiritual experience more ardent. 

“We had chapels of Perpetual Adoration where one can spend time with Jesus any time of the day. We also had at least one hour of Holy Hour in ever parish every Sunday evening, ending with Benediction. We also had many pious societies one can belong to. I was a member of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (Society) and still am. I also enthroned my family to the Sacred Heart and Immaculate Heart, as well as consecrated myself to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”

At about the time Victor met Chika in 1992, an older brother who lived in Ohio filed papers for Victor to emigrate to the United States. That process was completed in 2004 and, by then, the Nduaguba family included two sons. The family made the move to Ohio and Victor, who already had a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from Enugu State University of Science and Technology in Nigeria, earned an Associate degree in environmental science from Columbus State Community College. He now is a design engineer for the Ohio Department of Health.

“I continued with my life until one Saturday after morning Mass at (Columbus) St. Andrew (Church), I was in the church and a thought came to me: ‘Why don’t you become a deacon?’”

Nduaguba said. “I wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking about how to take care of my family. I didn’t know anything about being a deacon.”

Sponsorship by family friends at his parish resulted in Nduaguba’s acceptance into the diaconate program “by the grace of God,” he said.

“One thing I know of myself is that I always give everything to God, because when we applied to come to the U.S., I told myself, ‘Look, I’m not desperate. I give it to God.’ I am here for him to use me for whatever he wants. If he calls, I am willing to answer. His will is my peace,” Nduaguba said.

Deacon Jason Nguyen’s family arrived in the United States in 1993 with nothing, refugees from Vietnam in a foreign land with no idea where the future would lead. It was the kindness and dedication of sisters and a local priest who helped the family and ultimately impacted Nguyen’s call to the diaconate.

“When we arrived in Utica, N.Y., we were welcomed by St. Francis de Sales Parish and Refugee Center,” said Nguyen. “We met wonderful religious sisters who treated us like family. These sisters visited, helped and assisted us to enroll in school and provided materials like pillows, blankets, food and spiritual support.

At the same time, the priest went to each Catholic refugee apartment or house to celebrate Mass daily for us. He said Mass in Vietnamese and had one of my brothers or me translate his homily.” Deacon Nguyen’s father was held in an internment camp for seven years by the communist regime and when he got home he proudly displayed a notebook with a collection of scripture passages that he wrote by memory and used to pray with others on a daily basis while in the camp. The communist regime continued to persecute Deacon Nguyen’s father after release through monitoring and controlling his movement between towns, among other things.

Deacon Nguyen and his siblings were also affected by their father’s status with their faith questioned in school and limits on what schools they could attend or their choices of college majors.

In the U.S., Deacon Nguyen was able to attend college, studying Computer Information Systems, CI Science and CI Technology in which he holds a master’s degree. He is a software engineer for Cardinal Health and belongs to St. Augustine and Gabriel Church.

He has been married to Hein Mai for 12 years and they have four children: Grace, 10; Timothy, 7; Luis, 3; and Theresa, 2. Deacon Nguyen’s call to the diaconate has been influenced by the religious who assisted his family when they arrived in the U.S. “I have seen many living saints, and I think their ministry is very noble,” he said. “So I have always wanted to follow in their footsteps.

The Catholic brothers and sisters have loved us unconditionally without agenda due to their love of God which motivates them to serve. I have admired them and looked for an opportunity to become one of them.

As a married man, I see the diaconate is the right place for me that will allow me to bring the gospel message of hope to others and to share the ministry of love and justice with others.”

As a child, Mark O’Loughlin was so fascinated with space that he learned everything he could about NASA’s missions and astronauts.

“Growing up watching videos from the moon, I was a walking encyclopedia of the space program,” he said. 

That childhood enthusiasm diminished over the years, but the interest in what lies beyond our atmosphere remained.

O’Loughlin studied physics at Ohio State and later, while working at Battelle as a technician, he found himself programming software and control systems for Battelle’s laser lab. That work led to a position designing and installing laser systems with another company, which had him flying to Germany and China to work with customers.

“In China, the grad students I worked with were expected to speak English, so they wanted to practice and speak English with me,” he said. “Coaching them was a lot of fun. They would make presentations and ask about specific words.”

At about that time, a homily on the diaconate caught his attention. It sat in the back of his head for a while.

“I called Deacon Frank (Iannarino, director of the diocesan Office of the Diaconate) a few times over the next few years,” he said. “After a few calls, I said, ‘I don’t know if I’m being called,’ and Deacon Frank said, ‘Yes, but you keep calling me, so there’s probably something there.’”

O’Loughlin who has been married to his wife, Jane, for 31 years, began studying for the diaconate, adding it to his already-busy work schedule. He also is a fireworks exhibitor, running the Hilliard July 4 fireworks show.

An occasional red-eye flight from the West Coast had him arriving in just enough time to get home, shower and get to the Pontifical College Josephinum in time for diaconate classes on Saturdays.

“It’s been interesting how things have worked together,” he said. “Things have just happened in a way so that becoming a deacon was supposed to happen. When you’re in China, you never know when you’ll have a connection to the States and can’t even get a phone call through sometimes. There was a time when I had a paper due and I had no connection to be able to send the paper until about 10 minutes before it was due. All of a sudden, it went through. Somebody up there has been watching over me.”

Looking to the sky remains an interest for O’Loughlin. This summer, he added an interest in astral photography, capturing images of Comet Neowise.

“As I learned more and more about physics and how things worked, it became more apparent that this all didn’t happen by random. There’s a plan,” he said. “You have to see God when you study physics. You have to understand that there’s something behind it all, to think about what it takes for the earth to spin and be the right distance from the sun for the plants to grow. We don’t burn up and we don’t freeze. It all didn’t happen by random.”

It was 2009 and Deacon Ron Onslow sat at St. Tom’s, the Neumann Center at Bowling Green University, still not sure why God led him to a job three hours from his home in Stone Creek, Ohio.

He had been District Executive and Program Director of the Canton Council of Boy Scouts of America for 8 years when he was recruited for a position with the Black Swamp Area Council. While with the Black Swamp Area Council, Deacon Onslow went home on the weekends and during the week he had an apartment from across St. Tom’s and he started spending his evenings there, whether at services or adoration or just reading scripture.

Then one Ash Wednesday it hit him. He had an overwhelming feeling that he was being called. “I remember thinking, ‘God, are you calling me to serve the Church?’ and I felt the answer yes,” said Deacon Onslow. “I said ‘No way,’ but then I felt the words, ‘I’ll take care of the obstacles.’ What I soon realized was that God needed to take me away from my everyday existence at home and put me over there where I could focus on listening to Him. It was then that I realized I needed to get back home and get involved in my own parish.” Deacon Onslow left the Boy Scouts position and went to work as Vice President of Marketing for Biocurv Medical Instruments in Canton.

He and his wife of 31 years, Marge, are members of St. Joseph Parish in Dover. They have four grown children: Shannon, 30; Justin, 28; Matthew, 26 and Andrew, 22. They also have two grandchildren. Deacon Onslow didn’t realize he would be nudged to grow in a way he did not expect. Marge’s uncle passed away and Deacon Onslow decided not to go to the funeral home. “Marge said, ‘You’ve got to get more comfortable with this,’” he said. “Four days later our pastor asked if I could do a wake service. Two days later he asked if I would do another.”

A week later Deacon Onslow got a call from an area funeral director asking him to be a part-time associate. “The holy spirit shows you why you’re called,” Deacon Onslow said. “I credit my time with the Boy Scouts as allowing me to recognize a call to serve the Church,” said Deacon Onslow. “It was because of scouting that I was in a position to be able to serve. It became very clear from the beginning that I was called to this so it was very peaceful and I never doubted the process. When you place your trust in God everything just falls into place.”

It was a hospital visit with a man on his deathbed that led Deacon Steve Petrill to consider the diaconate in a deeper way.

Deacon Petrill, who served as a lector, Eucharistic minister and homebound minister at his parish, St. Brigid of Kildare in Dublin, visited with the man a couple of times.

“The first time I visited him, he seemed to be doing well. We had a nice visit and all was looking up,” said Deacon Petrill. “However, the second time I visited him, he had experienced some kind of traumatic medical event that morning and was at the end of his life, surrounded by his wife and children. It made me realize how ministry sometimes calls us into the very center of the most personal parts of other people's lives.

It turned out that the gentleman who passed away was a deacon in another diocese, and although we never talked about the diaconate in our first visit, I felt a nudge from the Holy Spirit by that very fact. My experiences with him really helped me grow in my desire to serve Christ and His church in a deeper way.”

Deacon Petrill is a Professor of Psychology and Associate Dean for Research at Ohio State. He earned his B.S. in psychology from the University of Notre Dame, followed by an M.A. and Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University. In his studies and work he looks at links between biology, psychology, the environment and sociology/culture.

“The Church has reinforced the spiritual aspects as well; in particular how spirituality fits into the relations between the biological, psychological, social, and cultural aspects of who we are,” he said. “Many of our joys and struggles are how we relate these things to one another and it has helped me see the Incarnation of Jesus in a fuller way.” Deacon Petrill and his wife, Dawn, have been married for 21 years and they have three children: Nate, 16; Anthony, 13; and Emily, 10. He says that for as much has he has learned through his studies, he has also learned from his parish ministry.

“Any given day is someone’s best day and someone else’s worst day, for all kinds of different reasons with all points in between,” Deacon Petrill said.

“One has to be very flexible and attentive in order to truly serve the needs of others, in those multiple moments that are occurring simultaneously.” Choosing the diaconate was something that evolved out of a difficult period in his own life about 10 years ago, a time when many people close to him were very sick and others passed away.

Considering the many people who reached out to him and his family had an impact on Deacon Petrill. “I had to surrender to God and learn to trust Him more deeply,” he said. “By the grace of God, these experiences gelled the contemplations of my earlier adult life and led me to actively move down the path I’m currently on.”

Deacon Tom Phillips sees the role of deacon, or anyone working in a parish, as “Being there.” It sounds so simple and yet it is a concept with many dimensions of meaning and it goes back to Phillips’ childhood at St. Thomas the Apostle in Columbus, where he is still a member.

“A former pastor explained that we couldn’t serve what we didn’t know needed serving, so he encouraged every parishioner to get to know and love each other, and our neighbors, and the community in which we were planted,” said Deacon Phillips, who currently works as the bookkeeper for St. Thomas the Apostle and Sts. Augustine and Gabriel parishes.

He has been married to wife Maria for 32 years and they have two children: Laura, 25; and Thomas, 22. Deacon Phillips carries being there into not only his parish service but also into volunteer work with Habitat for Humanity and the Northeast Area Commission and said he has been blessed with an example of being fully present in his uncle, Deacon John Slatcoff of St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Lorain. “He often talks to me about the joys and sorrows of his vocation, the nuts and bolts of the process, and the hopes and fears he has going forward,” he said.

Deacon Phillips feels his uncle is a living example of discerning a call as well as formation in service. “Being there is a lot of things,” Deacon Phillips said. “In the Parish, it's awareness, having eyes and ears open to what the needs of the people, and the Pastor, may be, and then voicing the needs in the right places. If we see someone struggling, we help or find someone who can. If we hear praise, we pass it on, or complaint, we resolve or find someone who can. Not that every need gets met or complaint gets resolved; sometimes being there is simply to listen and hear or to look and see.

“Being there is stillness, providing a shoulder. Being there is action, lending our hand and arms and backs and taking on the tasks that have to get done when there's no one else doing them, then helping to get the right person there next time. It’s improvement, discernment, and serenity at each step of the way. Ultimately, as a deacon, it is conformance to the will of Christ the servant, wherever ‘there’ is.”

As the president of a company, father of four and grandfather of 12, Deacon Tom Rowlands has discovered the best way to recharge is to participate in monastic retreats. “This stems from a calling in my personal faith that is seeking an interior truth,” Deacon Rowlands said. “This is a calling that exists in everyone and in the quiet of silent retreats at many monasteries it is possible to approach, in an undistracted way, the silence of God’s loving hand as my life is being formed around the Christian faith that I follow through the teaching of the Catholic Church. 

In this quiet it is possible to find the interconnectedness between what I enjoy in working with others and my personal journey with its own failings and findings.” Deacon Rowlands applies his monastic discoveries at his job at R.S. Hanline & Co., Inc., where he has been President for 20 years as well as in his family life with Cindi, his wife of 38 years, and the families of their four children. They have 12 grandchildren. He belongs to St. Margaret of Cortona Parish in Columbus, where he has been actively involved with taking communion to the homebound. “I want to help the situations where faith is challenged and is not easy to find or claim as being present right now in a person’s life,” said Deacon Rowlands. \

These types of situations were present when after completing his B.A. in Business Administration at Ohio University, Deacon Rowlands spent time as a teacher and coached wrestling and football at Fisher Catholic High School before landing in his present job. “Teenagers have a youthful faith, where life is full of so many potential paths,” said Deacon Rowlands. “Faith is always new to those who continue to seek relationship and truth in their faith life. 

Growth at all stages in a person’s relationship with God, while exciting and fruitful, is not always comfortable. Part of Deacon Rowlands’ own faith journey has brought him to ordination. “My vocation was a quiet and persistent call that I began to discern was God’s call to the diaconate.”

Chris Walsh was in the middle of nowhere, Idaho, in 2008 when an amazing thing happened. He and a group of men on a Wilderness Outreach adventure had backpacked into a remote area and, as part of setting up camp, they were building an altar. On the bottom of a large flat rock was the handwritten inscription, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him may not die but may have eternal life.  – John 3:16.”

The group was stunned to find this in such an inaccessible location. They learned after returning to civilization that the quote probably had been written by an Englishman who came to the United States and turned his life to Jesus in the 1800s. The story goes that the man had been very wealthy in England, lost everything, then fell into a life of debauchery fueled by alcohol. When the man came to the United States, he chose to own very little and traveled through Montana and Idaho, leaving crosses in stream beds and writing Bible passages on rocks.

Walsh’s experience in Idaho about 100 years after the passage was written on the stone was one of 13 Wilderness Outreach trips in which he has participated. On the trips, a small group of men travel to a western location where they backpack and work on trail service. A priest usually joins the group and says Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours each day, with a book discussion scheduled after dinner each evening.

“Doing the Wilderness Outreach, you get away from everything … no cell phones, no television, just God and your brothers,” said Walsh, who has two daughters with his wife, Deborah. “I just fell deeper and deeper in love with Jesus and God. It just drew me deeper into the church.”

Walsh is also an avid skier, having started skiing at Snow Trails in Mansfield when he was in college. He has participated in a Catholic men’s ski trip that is similar to the hiking trips, with a small group and a priest traveling out west, usually to Colorado. Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours are said daily and the men often discuss a book.

“Every trip was just better and better,” Walsh said. “It was amazing getting away from the world and immersing yourself in nature and seeing God’s beauty everywhere.”

The trips and the connection with nature allow him to step away from his daily work as a lawyer. Walsh is a partner and trial attorney for a law firm where he specializes in defense litigation.

He tried several majors in college before settling on history, with the intent of applying to law school – something that one of his high school teachers could have predicted.

“When I was in high school, I had a government teacher who would give us tests with multiple choice and essay questions and I did pretty well,” he said. “There were some answers that he’d mark wrong, but I thought I was right, so I had to go argue my point. If I could persuade him, which happened more often than not, he would give me credit for my answer, as well as crediting any other student who chose the same answer. Because of that, my teacher called me his Philadelphia lawyer.”

Walsh’s reasoning skills will come in handy when he is a deacon.

“As an attorney, I’ve always been able to make an argument,” he said. “As a deacon, I can help people deepen their relationship with God. I have found that if you talk about your own experience and what you have learned about your experience on this planet, people are more open. My own beliefs have changed as I’ve gotten closer to the truth.”

Although Greg Waybright comes from three generations of what he refers to as “country preachers,” he never saw himself in this role. His grandfather, great grandfather and an uncle were Baptist ministers who traveled to revivals to preach, something Deacon Waybright found interesting from the perspective of an observer.

Deacon Waybright became Catholic when he was 22 years old. “For the next 20 plus years I found myself in the pews listening to many homilies from some amazing priests and deacons and never really seeing myself in those roles but soaking it all in,” he said. He has been married to Theresa for 37 years and they have four children: Marc, 36; Jennifer Guton, 34; Jessica Golovin, 29; and Sara, 24. It was in his late 40s, faced with personal challenges, that life made little sense.

“I went through several heart conditions and was told on three separate occasions by cardiologists that there was no logical way they could explain why I was still here,” he said. “Then suddenly in late 2006 my father passed away after a very brief illness, right in front of me which shook me to my very foundation.” Two months later he almost lost his mother. “I began to question everything I thought I believed so firmly in including my faith,” he said.

“My mother had so many issues with her health and I suddenly found myself thrust into the role of a primary care giver having never realized what a saint my father really was as he kept all of this from us. I found my life suddenly unraveling around me and I was lost.” One morning at Mass at his home parish St. Pius X in Reynoldsburg, while struggling to gain his spiritual footing, Deacon Waybright, normally engrossed in the homily, was focused on an image of the Blessed Mother.

“I found myself pouring out my heart and all of the troubles and confusion in my life to our Blessed Mother, realizing at the very time I needed our Lord the most I had turned my back and was facing life on my own,” he said. “I suddenly felt surrounded by the loving warmth of her motherhood and the love and forgiveness of Jesus. I asked silently how I could be service to Him and be in some way a service to others I knew going through life’s many problems much like me.” Pursuing the deaconate became crystal clear in that moment.

God has put so many interesting people in my path over the last six years who have both helped me in this journey and ones that he has allowed me to help which has been quite humbling,” said Deacon Waybright. “I grew up with a single sister and now I feel like I truly have 16 brothers in my fellow deacons.”

Watching the funeral Mass of Saint Pope John Paul II on April 8, 2005, Mark Weiner came to the realization that he was called to do something in the church, but he wasn’t clear on exactly what he was being called to do.

Deacon Weiner then increased his volunteer work at his parish, St. Rose in New Lexington. But it wasn’t enough, so Deacon Weiner and his wife, Patricia, decided to become Eucharistic Ministers. He is also a lector and member of the festival committee. He and Patricia, who have been married for 26 years, have three children: Matthew, 25; Nicholas, 22 and Alaina, 14.

“Something was telling me that it just wasn’t enough,” he said. “Then I was at a Mass and saw a deacon on the altar. It was after that Mass that I really started thinking about being a deacon. I spoke with our pastor about it and he gave me some information.” Deacon Weiner started classes but struggled academically and decided to walk away. “I thought it was just too much for me,” he said. “I didn’t go to class the next week. I was done. I decided to go to adoration one evening on my way home from work and as I knelt down I started to pray, ‘Jesus, I am yours and I’ll do whatever you ask of me.’ I left with my answer and went back to class the next week.”

When he was officially called to candidacy, Deacon Weiner was working in a job that required a lot of mandatory overtime and he felt unsure of receiving support from his supervisors. This led to his current position with the Perry County Consortium of Catholic Parishes. In his position, Deacon Weiner ministers to the homebound and those in hospitals and nursing facilities, holds baptismal meetings and assists with sacrament preparation for children.

Deacon Weiner said visiting the homebound has been enlightening for him. “They’re so thankful and appreciative of me when I sit and visit with them but they are the blessing,” he said. “I am the one that gets to learn from the wisdom of our elderly parishioners. I am nothing but a vessel that God is using the spread the good news. I thank God for using me but at the end of the day I am dust. I think that it is very important to keep that in mind. I come to serve, not to be served.”

Eric Wright was delivering food at a homeless camp in Licking County when he met a young woman of about 30 who poured her heart out to him. She had been on the streets for a couple of years and had nowhere to turn. She was crying, tired of being homeless, and ready to get out.

“I have four daughters, the oldest being 20,” Wright said. “When I met this woman, I thought about how that could be my daughter. I asked her what we could do to help. She only had the clothes she was wearing because every time she gets something new it is stolen – underwear, socks, shorts, anything.”

Wright’s visit to the camp was a part of his volunteer work with the Newark St. Francis de Sales Church outreach ministry. Volunteers load a golf cart with sandwiches and other food and take it to camps that are hidden in the woods.

“It’s a privilege to be able to go out there,” he said. “They give us their trust because they’re hiding. We’re not out there to save the world, but to make sure they have something to eat for the day and that they know they have people praying for them and who love them. Every time I go out to the camps, it tugs at my heartstrings.”

Wright and his wife of 28 years, Maggie, have seven children. He said he always has been a server. He was in the U.S. Air Force for seven years before making a career of working in civil service for the Air Force, where he is a laboratory production officer. Driving the golf cart out into the woods has been a good fit with his interest in outdoor activities such as camping and hiking.

He said it is difficult for many of the homeless to make the leap out of homelessness.

“It’s hard to get into the system. A lot of them have alcohol or drug problems or mental health issues,” he said. “There is a waiting list to get into some shelters. Before they go in, they have to test clean, but they’re so frustrated they may hit on a joint or something, and then that keeps them out.”

The St. Francis crew also visits the camps in the winter. Wright said that when he goes home at night and crawls into a warm bed, knowing the homeless are outside in 15-degree weather with a blanket, it concerns him.

“Through my service with the poor I have learned how to serve people better by humbling myself,” said Wright, who has served his parish in several other ways, including as an extraordinary minister of the Eucharist, with the Knights of Columbus, and on the liturgy committee and the parish council. “It is very humbling to do this work. It’s amazing how blessed we are with what we have, that we should not take a house or a job for granted. We’re all one or two steps away from homelessness. All it takes is one catastrophe or pandemic.”

Running is appealing to people for a variety of reasons. Some run for the health benefits. Others run to relieve stress or bring on the endorphin-induced feeling of wellness. For Doug Yglesias and his wife, Lisa, running had an unusual appeal: ministry.

Yglesias has run more than 30 marathons in locations from Boston to Atlanta, including Columbus.

“Lisa and I weren’t fast runners, but what resonated with us was the opportunity we had to minister to other runners,” he said. “Running was helping people get off the couch and get healthy. When you’re training for a marathon, you have many miles to talk, and a lot of times, we had talks about faith. When we lived in Miami, you had every religion and it was a really neat place to just minister to people who may never go to church.

“One time I was out running with a gentleman who had lymphoma. He said he was Jewish and he had a hard time thinking there was anything after life,” Yglesias said. “On another run, we spent half of a marathon discussing whether Jesus existed. Sometimes it’s not about talking about Jesus, but it’s about loving people where they’re at that makes them want to seek more about that faith. We’ve seen several people end up attending church and getting their kids baptized. It’s kind of neat.”

While full marathons haven’t been on his agenda lately – his most recent race being a half-marathon with one of his four children, a daughter, in Cleveland – he continues to lace up and hit the road.

“With my daughter, running is an incredible time to talk and catch up,” Yglesias said. “When I’m out by myself, it’s my time to talk with God. I see God in nature.”

Yglesias, who has been a parish youth minister and a teacher and assistant principal in Catholic schools, said he realized at age 16 that there is a God who loves him, which resulted in his attending a seminary for a time. His family was affected by that, with his father becoming a deacon for the Archdiocese of Miami.

“My dad has a passion for Benediction and Exposition that has become a passion of mine,” he said. “I have an incredible love for the Blessed Sacrament and Perpetual Adoration.”

That led to Yglesias starting a Eucharistic adoration group, Adoremus, at his parish, Sunbury St. John Neumann.

“The passion to serve the Lord has been planted on my heart since I was 16 and I’ve been looking to continue to do that ever since,” he said. “The parish I went to growing up in Miami had a youth group and Perpetual Adoration, and it was such a neat experience to be able to go as a teenager, when you have super highs and super lows. It was a good place to be at peace.

“There was this tangible experience of being in the presence of God. When we added singing and praise and worship, there’s something very powerful about praising God in the presence of the Eucharist. We would pray for people who would stop by. A peace comes over them. You’ve got to love them where they’re at.”