Departed
Manuel Cabral, Jr. S.J.
BROTHER MANUEL CABRAL, JR., S.J., Jesuit Brother Manuel "Manny" Cabral, Jr., S.J., passed away on Tuesday, July 22nd, after a long battle with cancer. Brother Cabral is a native El Pasoan who grew up in Sacred Heart parish where he attended elementary school. He then attended Cathedral High School, and graduated in 1952, at which time he entered the Jesuit order. During his career as a Jesuit brother, he became an expert in construction and general building maintenance, and over the course of his career looked after the facilities at the Jesuit novitiate in Grand Coteau, Louisiana; the Jesuit House of Studies in Mobile, Alabama; St John 's Church in Shreveport, Louisiana; Loyola University in New Orleans; and Strake Jesuit College Preparatory in Houston.
Because of his knowledge and expertise he was chosen to be part of the Jesuit Brothers' Work Corp, a group of talented brothers who traveled around the country attending to the needs of various institutions. For the last 15 years, Brother Manny has been working in pastoral ministry and serving here in El Paso at Sacred Heart Church. He came to be an expert in liturgy and has served as Bishop Ochoa's official confirmation coordinator.
Sacred Heart parish will miss his attentive pastoral care that left a lasting impression on all of the parish organizations and ministries. Manny's humor and compassion will be sorely missed by his professional associates and a host of friends he has made throughout the years. In short, he was a person whom everyone loved and who reflected the love of Christ in everything that he did.
Brother Manny was preceded in death by his father Manuel Cabral, Sr, his mother María C. Cabral, his brother Luis Cabral, and his sister María Dolores Cabral. He is survived by: his brother Carlos J. Cabral, his two sons Michael and Mark, and his daughter Cristina; his sister in law Evelyn and her three sons Stephen, Martin, and Michael; also his two cousins Albert and María Inés. Visitation for Brother Cabral will be at Sacred Heart Church on Friday, 25 July, from 4 PM to 9 PM, with the Rosary prayed at 7 PM, also in Sacred Heart Church. On Saturday, July 26, there will be visitation at Sacred Heart Church beginning at 9 AM followed by a funeral liturgy at 10 AM, presided over by Bishop Armando Ochoa. Burial will follow in the Jesuit plot of Concordia Cemetery in El Paso. In lieu of flowers contributions can be made to the Sacred Heart Church Family Development Fund. Services directed by San Jose Funeral Home-Central, 601 S. Virginia St, 915-532-1856
Michael Allen Janosek
JANOSEK, MICHAEL ALLEN, March 26, 1947 - September 06, 2007, survived by wife, Gerrye Barnes ; children, Michael Adam Janosek, Amanda Janosek, Karen Mennen; step-children, Stephen Brown, Bruce Brown, Karen Shortino; three grandchildren; six step-grandchildren; mother, Madeline Janosek; Brothers,Jerry and Daniel; and sister, Genene Walker.
Timothy Allen Haggerty
On Sept. 13, 2006, God requested that his beloved son, Timothy Allen Haggerty, come home to him. Tim was born to Richard H. and Kathleen "Eleanor" Keily Haggerty Dec. 10, 1946, in Rochester, Minn., the fourth of eleven children. He moved with his family to El Paso in 1950. In the eighth grade, he met Mary Lindenberg, who would become his bride eight years later. Tim was a student of St. Charles Borromeo Seminary and a graduate of Jesuit High School, later pursuing religious studies at St. Thomas Major Seminary in Denver. Tim’s love for Mary, however, won out over the priesthood, and they were married
Dec. 28, 1968.
Tim served 2 years in the Army and was stationed in Korea during the Vietnam War. In April 1972, Tim joined the El Paso Fire Department. When he retired in December 2005, he had served the department for nearly 34 years, including two as training chief and more than 15 years as Chief of Battalion 5 in Northeast El Paso. His driver, Kenny Duryee, called him the last of the Old World, ironmen firefighters. There wasn’t anything that he would not do for any one of his guys.
We know that "Grandpa Tim" will forever watch over his little princes, Joshua Jahred Munoz, Abraham Gabriel Haggerty and the soon-to-arrive Timothy Michael Haggerty, as well as his just-arrived little princess, Darcie-Shea Haggerty. His sons, Shane Allen Haggerty and Brett Timothy Haggerty, will be constant reminders of his greatest assets. His daughter, Timi Haggerty-Munoz, will carry with her forever his unconditional love. His son-in-law, Franklin Munoz Jr., and daughters-in-law, Gloria Patricia “Pati” Nava Haggerty and Bridget Sedano Haggerty, will always hold their second dad close to their hearts. And of course, his wife Mary will hold his love in her heart until the end of time.
Tim joins in paradise his earthly father, Richard Haggerty, and his brother, Sean Dennis Haggerty. He leaves behind his mother; his brothers, Patrick, (his twin) Michael, Daniel, Brian and Jeremiah; his sisters, Kathleen, Mary (Molly), Eileen and Bridget; his sisters-in-law, Winona Tevington, Yvonne Haggerty, Cyndy Haggerty, Audrey Haggerty and Sylvia Haggerty; brothers-in-law, Michael McLaughlin, Brad Hart, Mike Maxwell and Don Lindenberg; as well as numerous nieces and nephews.
Pallbearers are Shane Haggerty, Brett Haggerty, Franklin Munoz Jr., Pat Haggerty, Mike Haggerty, Robert Vance, Kenny Duryee and Jerry Estep. Honorary pallbearers are Dan Haggerty, Brian Haggerty, Jerry Haggerty, Franklin Munoz Sr., Joshua Munoz, Abraham Haggerty, Keith Tevington, Scott Tevington and Michael Cox. We can’t adequately express the love and heartfelt appreciation we feel for the firemen and medics who worked so hard to help Tim. Our tremendous gratitude also goes out to the doctors and ER staff at Del Sol Medical Center who worked beyond every effort to keep Tim with us a little longer. It’s at a time like this that you know it’s not in our hands, but God’s. We just wish it wasn’t so soon.
Fr. Lionel Honoré
Rev. Lionel Philip Honoré. S. J., a professor of modern languages at the College of the Holy Cross from 1975 to 2005, died on Sunday, June 25, 2006.
Father Honoré, the son of the late Edward Samuel and Beatrice (Jones) Honoré, was born in New Orleans on December 20, 1934. He was predeceased by his sister, Lydia (Honoré) Abadie, and a nephew and a niece.
He received his bachelor’s degree from Xavier University in New Orleans in 1956, his master’s from the University of Wisconsin in 1957, and his doctorate from New York University in 1973. He taught at Jesuit High School in El Paso, Texas, from 1962 to 1965, before he was ordained a priest, on June 8, 1968, by Louis Abel Caillouet, the late Auxiliary Bishop of New Orleans. Having spent two years in ministry at Loyola University in New Orleans from 1973 to 1975, he began his career as a member of the faculty at the College of the Holy Cross in 1975.
The recipient of the Swords Faculty Medal for twenty-five years of service at Holy Cross, he had been a Ford, a Fulbright, and a Woodrow Wilson Fellow as well as a Martin Luther King Scholar, in addition to being a recipient of the New York University Founders Award for excellence in scholarship. He is survived by two nieces and many cousins, not to mention the Jesuits of the New England Province of the Society of Jesus of which he has been a member since coming to the College of the Holy Cross.
The wake will be at the College of the Holy Cross in St. Joseph’s Memorial Chapel, June 28, 2006, from 9:30 A. M. to 10: 30 A. M. The Concelebrated Funeral Mass of Christian Burial will follow there, after the wake, at 11:00 A. M. Immediately following the Mass, the burial will take place in the Jesuit Cemetery on campus. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Holy Cross Fund, c/o Lift High the Cross Campaign, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester MA, 01610
THE REV.
LIONEL P. HONORÉ, S. J.
(1934-2006)
As the words of today’s readings from Scripture echo in our ears, my dear brothers and sisters in the Lord, we gather here today to say goodbye to Lionel Philip Honoré who spent seventy-one years in this life. With confidence in the teachings of the Church on eternal life, we pray for him by invoking God’s tender mercy, by asking Our Lord’s consoling grace for all affected by his death, and by expressing our gratitude to Our Heavenly Father for the many blessings given to Father Honoré before his death on Sunday morning,June 25, 2006.
In commending him to God’s mercy, we remember Lionel’s life, especially his teaching career, when he shaped the character, heart, and mind of those high school and college students who became fathers and mothers, aunts and uncles, grandparents as well as those among them who became leaders in society as professionals in the arts, business, medicine, law, and yes, even religion.
Lionel was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on December 20, 1934, the son of Edward Samuel and Bernice (Jones) Honoré. The members of his immediate family, including his sister Lydia (Honoré) Abadie have predeceased him. He told me that he was named for his father’s brother and that they were of a family of twenty-four children. While his father’s family lived on a large farm, it lost the property because the blacks did not understand the tax laws in the segregated South of the time and the whites eventually paid the tax and took the land. The Honorés of his father’s generation were free blacks and field hands, not sharecroppers. Of Haitian ancestry, Lionel even had some Indian and German blood in his family.
If one reflects on the period of his youth, Lionel grew up in a South that shaped his outlook so much that the shadow of segregation continually hovered over him, emotionally and psychologically, even though he eventually moved away from the South and into New England. Nevertheless, with so many relatives, he had found his family life there in New Orleans very consoling. He remembered how, at the age of two and a half, his father held him above the casket of his paternal grandfather. For Lionel, the public transportation system in New Orleans was an easy and welcome way of visiting his many aunts and uncles and cousins in the area.
Lionel recognized and appreciated his blessings as a youngster. The other day, the wife of a classmate of Lionel, told me how her late husband, Al Mitchell, and Lionel had remained close friends from their kindergarten days to her husband’s death a few years ago. Once Lionel informed me how, as a young boy in New Orleans, he would be off to school and return with his classmates and, on the way, meet other blacks whose life took a turn in a different direction leading them to drop out of school and, sadly, become victims of drugs or some other addiction. Yet, Lionel saw in these unfortunate persons their basic decency when they would hail him and his classmates to encourage them to stay in school with something like an individual greeting of “At a way, kiddo!”
On finishing his primary and secondary education, Lionel entered Xavier University of New Orleans in 1952 and obtained his bachelor’s degree there in 1956.This is an institution founded by the recently canonized Katharine Drexel, the friend of the oppressed, and a university described by The New York Times (September 25, 2005) as “the nation’s only historically black Catholic university” and one that has produced “more future black doctors than any other undergraduate institution.” It was from Xavier’s Catholic nuns that Lionel had learned to love opera and to listen to the Saturday Texaco broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera in New York. However, he was particularly displeased when a black moved into the music directorship at Xavier and abandoned opera in favor of musicals. After Xavier, where he had made friends for life, Lionel went on to the University of Wisconsin where he earned a master’s degree in French in 1957.
Then, on August 14, 1958, Lionel respondedgenerously to God’s call and entered the Society of Jesus at St. Charles College in Grand Coteau,Louisiana. He was only the second black to enter the New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus. He did his philosophical studies at Spring Hill College in Alabama followed by his teaching experience at Jesuit High School in El Paso, Texas. Though he began his theological studies at St. Mary’s in Kansas, he finished them at Weston School of Theology (1967-1968) here in Massachusetts. By the time of his ordination, on June 8, 1968 by Louis Abel Caillouet, the Auxiliary Bishop of New Orleans, Lionel was the first black ordained a Jesuit priest in the New Orleans Province.
Although he did not say so explicitly, I suspect that what led Lionel to choose New England for his last years of Jesuit formation was the shadow of segregation which haunted him even outside the South. Once, when he spoke directly about it, he recalled how a Jesuit pastor in his province wanted to keep segregation that way and how that same pastor’s nephew, also a Jesuit, did not appreciate that Lionel, his contemporary, was superior to him academically. Later, when I informed him how I tell the Jesuits at Holy Cross that some really do not understand Lionel because they do not appreciate how much the blacks have suffered under segregation, he agreed. Certainly, his efforts with Father Greg Chisholm and other black Jesuits to advance their cause was a way to escape that shadow. Yet, before coming to Holy Cross, he contributed some of his priestly years to the South by his ministry at Loyola University in New Orleans from 1973 to 1975.
In the early 1960s, as a teacher at Jesuit HighSchool in El Paso, Lionel bore the heavy teaching load of a young scholastic and directed such extracurricular activities as dramatics and the yearbook. Not surprisingly, this was one of the happiest periods of his Jesuit life. In 2003, he returned there for an anniversary celebration of graduates of that school where, during his teaching there, thirty-five percent of the students were Mexican Americans. Lionel was wonderfully impressed because, after forty years, he had learned from them how much he had influenced their minds, hearts, and characters in a school that had a very short life span. That time and his role in having Holy Cross, in 1978, confer an honorary doctorate on Shirley Verrett, the black operatic star and, like him, a native of New Orleans, ranked high among his life’s pleasant memories.
In 1969, Lionel entered New York University and was awarded his doctorate in romance languages in 1973. While there, he wrote his dissertation on Julien Offroy de La Mettrie (1709-1751). This work dealt with the immortality of the soul and Lionel showed how that materialist of the French Enlightenment, in using the Latin of the Enchiridion Symbolorum, had failed to make the proper distinction between the dative and ablative cases in his analysis of the Latin words. While his dissertation remained on display for all these years as an example for others at the university, Lionel published it in two parts in Studies of Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century in volumes 215 (1982) and 241 (1986), for a total of some seventy-five pages. In addition to those two related articles, the MLA Directory of Periodicals lists four other articles by him. That Lionel’s mind was above that of the average Jesuit or college professor is borne out by the awards that came to him. For he was the recipient of the New York University Founders Day Award for excellence in scholarship and of a Ford, a Fulbright, and a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, not to mention a Martin Luther King Scholarship. If he was faulted at times for his irritability, this was not the case with his intellectual gifts and the balm of his apologies.
When Lionel was awarded the Swords Faculty Medal for his twenty-five years at Holy Cross in 2000, he had made his mark. Having completed during the summers of his first and second year here the requirements for the tertianship, the last year of Jesuit training, his career took off by teaching courses in French and Italian as well as in French literature. In his years at Holy Cross, he also ran the ski club and inculcated a love of the opera in his students. While I have direct testimony of his involvement in only some of these activities, I did witness how a close friend of mine of Italian descent was quite overwhelmed by the quality of Lionel’s knowledge of Italian and its many dialects. Lionel himself relished telling the story of a visit to Florence, where the best Italian is spoken, and how a native in an establishment of that city was likewise impressed by the same knowledge of the language. This person encouraged Lionel to admit, because Italians would understand, that he was so expert in Italian because he really was the son of a black American soldier who had impregnated an Italian girl in World War II and that she had taught him the language!
Lionel’s increasing interests, in his declining years, were cooking and gardening. He showed the pride of blacks in the former by baking cakes for the Jesuit community as he did Southern-fried chicken for friends, like the Bakers, the Lepines, and the McNeilswhen he was healthier. However, I was not fond of that as much as I liked his spaghetti carbonara which he went out of his way to cook for my family the evening following my mother’s funeral. As for his green thumb, he had bulbs sent to what he had named his H. C. Greenery for growing begonias, daffodils, perennials, tulips, and other flowers in the computer room of the Jesuit community.
While the shadow of segregation was a cross which Lionel endured, there were other shadows in his life, in addition to the declining health of his last four years. Perhaps most difficult for him, after theloss of his parents, was the unexpected loss of his young nephew some years back and, not long afterwards, the unexpected death of a niece who had been a medical student in Washington, D. C. Two other nieces, Angela and Monica, are still living but he was not as close to them as he was to his network of friends from his college days with whom he would renew acquaintances during his sabbaticals and summers in Paris. And, he still has cousins in New Orleans, about whom he was very much concerned in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, including one who was a prominent printer in that city.
As time passes, certain memories of a person’s religious beliefs and practices come to mind. In the case of Lionel, I recall a number that are a true reflection of him. One is the time almost twenty years ago when he and I visited Bob Healey, a Jesuit and mutual friend, as he lay unconscious in a hospital, following a transplant and how Lionel devotedly prayed over him. Another is the Mass on Monday evenings in the Holy Cross Jesuit Community and how reverently Lionel would receive the Eucharist when I handed It to him. A third is the report of Father Jim Hayes telling how Lionel, before his last departure for Massachusetts General Hospital, unexpectedly responded to the rector’s administration of the Sacraments of Absolution and Anointing by opening his eyes and saying “Thank you for coming!” when it wasunclear whether or not he was awake. And, finally, there is what Father Ned Cassem, a Jesuit psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital, related to me about Lionel informing him how, after refusing exceptional medical help on admission to that same hospital, he was moving towards a life that is completely spiritual and thinking of meeting Jesus and Mary. I mention these because Lionel was not at all demonstrative about his religious life. Yet, these individual cameos shine forth like flashes of light underscoring the strength of Lionel’s own spiritual life despite all the dark shadows that crossed the pathways of his life.
For Father Lionel, life has changed, not ended, and he has escaped in death all the those shadows of this earthly life by entering the bright dawn of eternal life. We now pray that he is achieving that goal for which he entered into the Society of Jesus and that he is enjoying eternal life with all those relatives, especially his father and mother and sister, and all those friends that have gone before him, and yes, even with those great operatic stars who sang the music that was the consolation and joy of his life.
“The great and sad mistake of many people ... is to imagine that those whom death has taken, leave us,” Karl Rahner, the late and renowned Jesuit theologian, once declared. “They do not leave us,” he continued. “They remain! Where are they? In darkness? Oh, no! It is we who are in darkness. We do not see them, but they see us. Their eyes, radiant with glory, are fixed upon our eyes . . . Oh, infinite consolation! Though invisible to us, our dead are not absent . . . They are living near us transfigured . . . into light, into power, into love.” (Quotation from George M. Anderson’s “Of Many Things,” in America November 2, 2002).
Eternal rest grant unto Lionel, O Lord, and let the perpetual light of glory shine upon him. May his soul and all the souls of the faithful departed to the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.
May the Merciful Lord bless us all!
(Homily of Rev. Vincent A. Lapomarda, S. J., at the Funeral Mass of Rev. Lionel P. Honoré, S. J., St. Joseph’s Memorial Chapel at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts, June 28, 2006.)
Ricardo Aguilar-Melantzon.
Spanish professor Ricardo Aguilar-Melantzon died today at Providence Memorial Hospital in El Paso, where he had been hospitalized for about a week following a heart attack.
He was 57. A funeral mass for Aguilar is scheduled for 1 p.m.... Saturday, Sept. 25, at Nuestra Senora del Sagrado Corazon in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The church is located at the corner of Insurgentes and Venezuela.
Aguilar, the 2003 New Mexico Professor of the Year and an NMSU Regents Professor, had been a faculty member in the languages and linguistics department for more than 10 years. He served as department head for languages and linguistics and as a member of the board of directors of the New Mexico Hispanic Cultural Center from 1994 to 1997. He also was acting director of the Center for Latin American and Border Studies from 2002 to 2003. He was known internationally for his research in Chicano literature and for his own creative writing.
"As an acclaimed writer, Dr. Aguilar-Melantzon had a distinguished national and international career," said Waded Cruzado-Salas, dean of the NMSU College of Arts and Sciences. "On behalf of the College of Arts and Sciences, I express my deepest condolences to his family, friends and colleagues."
"Dr. Aguilar-Melantzon was a gifted, caring teacher and mentor who combined high expectations from his students with great support for their work," said Jeff Brown, associate dean of the college. "He will be greatly missed by his colleagues, by his students and the staff members who worked with him and by his many friends across the United States and Mexico."
"I've lost a really good friend and wonderful colleague," said Beth Pollack, department head of languages and linguistics. "He will be missed by all."
Aguilar received his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Texas at El Paso and his Ph.D.... from the University of New Mexico.
Victor Del Valle - July 28, 2004.
DEL VALLE, VICTOR M. Victor M. Del Valle, 58, of Littleton, Colorado.
Husband of Janet. Father of Ragan, Elisa, and Andrea. Son of Elisa. Brother
of Zandra and Blanca.
Agapito Mendoza - Jan. 21, 2003.
Click here to view a site honoring Agapito Mendoza