Saturday, May 10, 1997

Missionary priest returns to East Texas to share memories

By VALERIE CULP WILKERSON / The Lufkin Daily News

LUFKIN, Texas - In the black hours of pre-dawn, lying in his bed in a Philippine mission, the Rev. Fred Julien daily brings Lufkin before the throne of God.

"I have gotten in the habit of waking up at three in the morning," the 88-year-old priest says, speaking at an interview at the Museum of East Texas last week. "I stay in bed and say my prayers. I take my prayers a city at a time where my friends are. I end up with Lufkin."

Julien's tender regard for Lufkin is reciprocated by the tender regard for Julien nurtured by many Lufkinites who knew him during the 23 years he lived here. For nine of those years he served as the priest for St. Patrick Catholic Church. During the other years he was busy with mission-related work.

Richard Pezdirtz of Lufkin, who has known Julien since 1949 and wrote his memoirs, "Promises Kept, Memoirs of a Missionary Priest," says Julien is the greatest man he has ever known.

"Whenever I was with Father Julien for 15 minutes or 15 days, I always came away feeling better about the world in general and life in general," Pezdirtz says. "He never failed to give me a lift."

Pezdirtz writes that Julien, in 56 years of priesthood, has celebrated an estimated 20,000 Masses, heard 40,000 Confessions, made 9,000 sick calls and officated at approximately 2,000 baptisms, marriages and funerals.

"Too," Pezdirtz writes, "he has raised the timbers, cemented the floors, painted the walls of millions of dollars worth of structures - churches, chapels, convents and dormitories for seminarians; schools, shrines and homes for priests. And with all this, he found time to touch - and touch deeply - the lives of thousands."

Julian said his recent visit will be his last to America. He says he came to promote the book and to visit his brother and sister, who live in another state.

"Marion is 94 years old and Ted is 90. I felt at my age that the law of averages is such that we can't be together much longer. I'll go back to the Philippines most likely at the end of July. I'll spend the rest of my days at the mission."

The founding of that mission is, in fact, one of the promises that Julien has kept, which led to the title for his memoirs. Proceeds from the $25 book go to the mission.

As a young priest, Julian spent three years during World War II as a prisoner of war in a Japanese concentration camp in the Philippines. Huddled under a soiled mattress, hugging the ground so closely that sharp pebbles embedded in his cheek as shot and shell exploded over his head, Julien prayed what he describes as "the one Great Promise" of his lifetime:

"Spare my life Almighty God ... mercifully spare my life and I promise one day I will return to the Philippines, where I will erect a shrine to Our Lady. I pledge to build a beautiful shrine and give a part of my life to help the Filipino people who have been so loyal to America for so long."

Dramatically and miraculously liberated from imprisonment after three years, two months, two weeks (or "1,174 terrifying days," as he puts it,) Julien started life as a free man again weighing only 87 pounds. He says prisoners were starving in the camp, and that an incident relating to ever-present hunger involving one banana "is the most magnanimous act of human charity I ever witnessed."

Early in their confinement, prisoners were allowed to stand beneath a broiling tropical sun for as long as three hours to receive one skinny banana.

"The last time the Japanese dispensed bananas," Julien says in his book, "Sister Everista, the Mother Superior of the Good Shepherd Convent in Grace Park, waited and sweltered with the rest of us. Once she had her banana, she took it immediately to a very sick man. Knowing it was the only banana she had, he refused acceptance.

"Mother Superior Everista assured the ill man she was allergic to bananas. Her insistence caused him to relent and accept the banana. I became almost tearful because I happened to know this noble nun was not allergic to bananas. She was most fond of them.

"It is easy to give away of our surplus, but to give the very last we have, especially when one is starving is indeed heroic."

The banana story is just one of many inspiring anecdotes preserved in "Promises Kept."

Pezdirtz says that as comprehensive as the book is, it doesn't contain all of Julien's stories. But it does tell how Julien kept his promise to God to build a shrine in the Philippines and help the Filipino people.

It is to that place that Julien will go when he leaves United States soil for what he says will be the last time. His life there is pleasant, he says, filled with friends who have become almost like family, and occasional priestly duties.

His rooms overlook beautiful flower gardens that he likes to walk among, and he has a daily routine built on a structure that he finds satisfying. He goes to bed each night "exactly at 7" to wake again, as long as God wills it, at 3 the next morning.

There in his bed, before he ever touches his feet to the floor to start another day, Julien will communicate with the God he serves. And the finishing touches he will put on his prayers will be words of entreaty on behalf of the Texas city he loves.

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Distributed by The Associated Press