[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 80 (Tuesday, June 3, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7231-S7233]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       HONORING REV. BOB WELLISCH

 Mr. COLEMAN. Mr. President, I ask that the following three 
tributes honoring the life of the late Rev. Bob Wellisch, St. Paul, MN 
native, priest for the Hmong Catholic community, and respected college 
professor, be printed in the Record.
  The material follows.

                 [From the Star Tribune, May 26, 2003]

                           (By Nolan Zavoral)

      The Rev. Robert Wellisch, Pastor to Twin Cities Hmong, Dies

       The Rev. Robert Wellisch, who built bridges between the 
     Catholic establishment and the Twin Cities Hmong community, 
     died in a traffic accident Saturday night.
       Wellisch, 62, was driving back alone to the Twin Cities 
     from Mankato when his car struck a horse on Hwy. 169, 4 miles 
     north of Le Sueur, and slid into a ditch, according to the 
     Minnesota Highway Patrol. Wellisch, who was wearing a seat 
     belt, died at the scene.
       A St. Paul native and longtime English professor at the 
     University of St. Thomas, Wellisch was named chaplain for the 
     Twin Cities Hmong Catholic community in 1984 by then-
     Archbishop John Roach. Eleven months ago, the present 
     archbishop. Harry Flynn, appointed him as pastor of the 
     largely Hmong parish of St. Vincent De Paul, in St. Paul's 
     Frogtown area.
       About 20 people from the congregation's leadership gathered 
     informally Sunday at the church to mourn.
       The Rev. Kevin McDonough, who oversees administration in 
     the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, joined them.

[[Page S7232]]

       ``One of the elderly Hmong ladies came up to me, and she 
     said, as it was translated to me, `We are like a family that 
     has lost its parent.' '' McDonough said.
       ``Father Wellisch was a very quiet, unassuming guy, but it 
     was clear to the Hmong people that he had their interest at 
     heart.''
       ``He loved the Hmong,'' said Michael Mikolajczak, chairman 
     of the St. Thomas English Department. He recalled attending a 
     Hmong fundraiser nine years ago with Wellisch.
       ``They wound bits of yarn around his wrists in appreciation 
     of all he'd done,'' Mikolajczak said. ``Had it been I, I 
     would have cut [the yarn] off the next day.
       ``He wore them for a whole week.''
       Va Thai Lo, deacon and administrator at St. Vincent De 
     Paul, said in a St. Thomas news release that Wellisch ``would 
     go everywhere to assist (Hmong) families--to their homes, to 
     where they worked and to the hospitals.
       ``This is a tragic loss for us.''
       Among Wellisch's accomplishments at St. Vincent, McDonough 
     said, was to help administrators with budgeting.
       ``He did a fine job of encouraging them along,'' McDonough 
     said. ``This year we had a very mature budgeting process.''
       It was unclear what led Wellisch to dedicate much of his 
     life to the Hmong. The Rev. Ed Flahavan, a retired St. Paul 
     priest who keeps in touch with many local Catholic clergy, 
     said he thought that the Rev. Daniel Taillez--a French priest 
     who had once served in Vietnam--introduced Wellisch to that 
     segment of Southeast Asia's population.
       Wellisch learned to say the mass in Hmong.
       ``He even learned to preach in Hmong--he'd learned it that 
     well,'' said the Rev. James Reidy, a retired priest and 
     friend of Wellisch's. ``He had the ability to pick up 
     language very quickly,''
       Wellisch is survived by three cousins. Funeral arrangements 
     are pending. He earned an undergraduate degree St. Thomas in 
     1962 and a master's degree and doctorate in English from the 
     University of Minnesota. He was ordained in 1969 and served 
     as an associate pastor at St. Mark's Catholic Church in St. 
     Paul until 1971, when he joined the St. Thomas faculty.
       ``He was the kindest, gentlest, most supportive colleague 
     you could want, ``Mikolajczak said. ``He loved literature--
     Victorian, mainly, but everything, really.
       ``He'd teach the modern tradition if I'd want. He'd teach 
     the classical tradition if I'd ask. He wasn't afraid to pitch 
     in.
       ``He was a priest the lay faculty accepted as a colleague. 
     He claimed no special privileges because of his collar.''
                                  ____


                            (By Casey Selix)

                 [From the Pioneer Press, May 26, 2003]

                     St. Paul Priest to Hmong Dies

       Some St. Vincent de Paul parishioners would drive 100 miles 
     round-trip Sunday mornings to hear the Rev. Robert Wellisch 
     celebrate Mass in Hmong.
       More than half of the members of the church in St. Paul 
     don't speak fluent English, so it means a lot to worship in 
     their native language, said Kou Ly, who translated the 
     priest's sermons into Hmong and coached him on pronunciation.
       When Kou Ly and other parishioners arrived at church and 
     found locked doors Sunday morning, they started worrying and 
     praying.
       About 10 p.m. Saturday, Wellisch died after his car hit a 
     stray horse on U.S. 169 in LeSueur County, causing him to 
     veer through the median and into a ditch, according to the 
     State Patrol. Wellisch, 62, who was wearing a seat belt, died 
     at the scene.
       As one grieving Hmong elder told the Rev. Kevin McDonough 
     through a translator Sunday, ``We are like a family that has 
     lost its only parent.''
       Besides appreciating his Hmong services, parishioners just 
     plain liked the priest, who cared enough to show up at their 
     children's birthday parties and other important social events 
     in the Hmong community.
       ``He would do much more than a regular priest. . . . He was 
     so good-hearted,'' said Kou Ly, adding that Hmong-speaking 
     Catholic priests are a rarity.
       It was Father Bob's good heart that took him to Mankato, 
     MN, on Saturday to attend a pre-confirmation retreat with 
     parish youth and their parents. And his good heart led him to 
     drive back alone late Saturday so he could celebrate Mass the 
     next morning with the rest of the flock. About 150 families 
     belong to the church.
       ``It's a tragic loss at a number of levels,'' said 
     McDonough, vicar general of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and 
     Minneapolis. ``Father Bob Wellisch was one of those very 
     gentle souls that his brother priests had a great deal of 
     respect for. This is a real personal loss on the part of the 
     priests and the people he served. In the last 15 years, he 
     was in one way or another so critical to the development of 
     the Hmong Catholic community.''
       Wellisch, a St. Paul native, also was a full-time associate 
     professor at the University of St. Thomas, where he was 
     considered an expert in Victorian literature and where he 
     taught in the Catholic studies department.
       ``He so loved the literature and the discipline and he was 
     so kindly attentive to students that I have never heard a 
     complaint about him,'' said Michael Mikolajczak, chairman of 
     the English department. ``He was teaching a full load here 
     and then ministering to the Hmong community, and he didn't 
     stint on anything. He was just remarkably generous.''
       St. Vincent de Paul Deacon Va Thai Lo had known Wellisch 
     for 20 years. ``He was very nice, and he loved all the people 
     very much. Any time our members called him, he would visit 
     them at their homes if they wanted--even go to their birthday 
     parties.''
       Each morning, Wellisch would wake up at the St. Thomas 
     faculty residence and head to St. Vincent de Paul to 
     celebrate the daily Mass, Va Thai Lo said. Then he would 
     return to campus to teach. On weekends, he gave services at 
     the church in English and Hmong. In between, he tended to his 
     parishioners' needs.
       The deacon recalls Wellisch once confiding that he might be 
     ``too old'' to learn the Hmong language.
       Even so, Wellisch persevered--sometimes with amusing 
     results, said Kou Ly, who worked with Wellisch on 
     pronunciation.
       ``He would pronounce the words funny,'' Kou Ly said. ``When 
     you mispronounce a word in Hmong it can mean a totally 
     different thing--such as the word for stick. If you vary the 
     tone a little it can mean blanket. We would just keep doing 
     it, and he would laugh about it.''
       After Wellisch underwent heart bypass surgery a few years 
     ago, about 30 members of the Hmong community performed a 
     healing ceremony.
       As they tied strings around his wrist, they expressed 
     wishes for good health and a long life for him. ``Culturally, 
     we believe that whatever we say will stay in that string,'' 
     Kou Ly said.
       Though Hmong recommend that the strings remain in place for 
     three days, Wellisch wore his for longer than that, friends 
     recall.
       Wellisch graduated from St. Paul's Cretin High School in 
     1958 and summa cum laude from St. Thomas in 1962 with a B.A. 
     in English. He received a master's degree and a Ph.D. in 
     English from the University of Minnesota. He was ordained by 
     the archdiocese in 1969 and served at St. Mark's in St. Paul, 
     the Cathedral of St. Paul, St. Paul's Priory and Holy Trinity 
     Catholic Church in South St. Paul.
       In 1984 he was appointed chaplain for the Twin Cities Hmong 
     Catholic Community. He also was chaplain of the Hmong 
     American National Catholic Association. He became pastor at 
     St. Vincent de Paul last June.
       Survivors include three cousins, Dale Bowen of Fridley, 
     Alice Bowen of Sioux Falls and Gretchen Myers of Cedar Falls, 
     Iowa.
       Funeral services are pending.
                                  ____


                 [From the Pioneer Press, May 31, 2003]

                    Hmong Honor Life of Late Priest

                           (By Stephen Scott)

       As they followed the casket out the back of the sanctuary, 
     it was clear the Hmong men and women could scarcely let go of 
     their priest.
       With the death of the Rev. Robert Wellisch, they felt as if 
     they'd lost a parent.
       ``You can see by the pain in their eyes what a great priest 
     he was,'' Archbishop Harry Flynn said after Wellisch's 
     funeral Friday. ``There is such sadness in their faces. They 
     just keep saying to me, `Remember us. Remember us.' ''
       Wellisch was the Roman Catholic chaplain to the Twin Cities 
     Hmong community since 1985. He learned their language so he 
     could say Mass for them. He attended their birthday parties, 
     visited their sick, and confirmed and married their children.
       Now there is much that a deeply grieving Hmong community 
     cannot understand. Why now? Why a car accident? Why on a 
     church youth trip? Why a horse?
       ``Right now, our people are very, very sad because of the 
     way he died,'' said Va Thai Lo, deacon at St. Vincent de Paul 
     Church in St. Paul, home to Hmong Catholics in the Twin 
     Cities.
       Wellisch, 62, died last Saturday night when his car hit a 
     stray horse on U.S. 169 in LeSueur County. Wellisch was 
     returning from a confirmation retreat for St. Vincent's Hmong 
     youth in Mankato, Minn.
       The Hmong Catholics share their grief with Wellisch's other 
     ``families''--faculty at the University of St. Thomas, where 
     he taught literature; the English-speaking Catholics who make 
     up a fourth of St. Vincent's parish; and three cousins who 
     survive him.
       But in life, Wellisch made the Hmong community feel as if 
     he was all theirs.
       ``His absence won't be just missed,'' said a letter from 
     parishioners in the back of the church. ``We have lost our 
     only parent. We are left as orphans who expect a parent that 
     would never return.''
       The funeral Mass at St. Vincent's reflected the life of a 
     priest with a diverse calling.
       One hundred priests and deacons processed to the hymn ``Los 
     Peb Los Cav Txog Tswv Ntuj.'' They recessed to Amazing 
     Grace.''
       The youth choir sang Bryan Adams' ``I Will Always Return.'' 
     They followed with ``Khoom Plig Zoo,'' with lyrics they 
     adapted in memory of Wellisch. One phrase translates: ``When 
     we think of you our tears come out.''
       The Rev. James Reidy's homily focused on Wellisch's life as 
     a professor. At his death, Wellisch worked full time at St. 
     Thomas in addition to serving as the priest at St. Vincent's.
       ``He had a steady, tireless ministry to all he was called 
     to serve,'' Reidy said.
       The Hmong especially have been tireless in their mourning. 
     Nearly 50 of them remained in the sanctuary all night after 
     Thursday's visitation, just to be near Wellisch's body.

[[Page S7233]]

       ``We watch over him and look over him,'' said Ah Thao, 
     whose daughter attended the retreat where Wellisch was last 
     seen alive. ``We don't want to leave him alone. We guard him 
     until he is buried.''
       The community is anxious about what happens next.
       ``It is too big of a scope to say right now,'' said Kou Ly, 
     a parishioner who helped Wellisch learn the Hmong language, 
     ``He's not replaceable.''
       Va Thai Lo will continue to serve St. Vincent's as a 
     deacon, and various backup clergy will say Mass until an 
     interim pastor or permanent priest is appointed.
       ``Whenever we needed him, he was there spiritually and 
     morally,'' Khamsy Yang said in a eulogy. ``We will still have 
     faith in God, who will bring us a new priest.''
       The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis also has 
     ministries dedicated to Hispanics, Vietnamese, Koreans, 
     Poles, Eritreans and American Indians.

                          ____________________