Life can change in an instant.
We all know that. One second our lives are rolling along in a normal state — whether that state is chaos or serenity — then all of a sudden the sky falls.
Loved ones become ill; they’re injured in car accidents or diagnosed with a disease. Or perhaps there’s some natural disaster, fire or flood, tornado or hurricane, and what’s normal is turned upside down.
We’ve all seen countless examples of this turmoil. The pictures of storm damage with the detritus of mother nature’s wrath hanging in trees or scattered hither and yon. We’ve seen countless pictures of refugees struggling to escape a war zone and its bombs and bullets. Children who are suddenly orphans; parents suddenly without their beloved sons and daughters. It’s a daily tragedy across the world.
Locally, we saw a visiting football player from the University of Virginia, Perris Jones, transformed in a second from a vigorous athlete into a victim. A violent collision left him motionless on the field. In that second, nearly 50,000 people at the University of Louisville’s L & N Stadium became church mice while the medical staff of both universities tended to Jones.
The football player had spinal surgery a couple of weeks ago, and he’s spending time at the Frazier Rehabilitation Center before he returns to Virginia. The night of his injury, doctors at University of Louisville Hospital said he had recovered movement in all his extremities. So there’s a bit of good news.
In fact, there is a lot of good news floating around in the ether, it’s just too often drowned out by an emotional torrent of unfortunate occurrences and bad behavior.
Here in the Archdiocese of Louisville, there are hundreds of people doing good and wonderful things. Hundreds of people doing God’s work.
And Matt Whisman is one of them.
He’s the director of the Indigent Burial Program at Catholic Charities, and in the past few weeks, he’s been engaged in doing a marvelous thing for a 97-year-old World War II veteran from Canada.
Ken Pergantes died in Louisville back on Aug. 9, and the Jefferson County Coroner’s Office tried to find relatives or friends who might provide fitting services for him. They didn’t have much luck, however, and then Whisman and his Catholic Charities program lent a hand.
Whisman found that Pergantes served in the Canadian Air Force during the last two years of the war, perhaps in aircraft maintenance. The veteran most likely moved to Louisville sometime in the 1950s or 1960s and became an insurance salesman.
“In fact, he was still selling insurance up until the last year of his life,” said Whisman. He also discovered that Pergantes was a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and that his family originated in Ottawa, Canada.
It took some doing, but after weeks of work, phone calls and communications with officials in Canada, Whisman made plans to take Pergantes back to Canada. He was to be buried in Ottawa’s Beechwood National Cemetery, Canada’s version of our Arlington National Cemetery.
He may not have served our country, Whisman noted, but he did serve the Allies during a critical time of world history.
“So it was important to honor his service and make sure he wasn’t forgotten,” said Whisman, who accompanied the body back to Ottawa the week before Thanksgiving.
It was a good thing to do. It represents the essence of the Catholic Charities program that Whisman directs.
And it’s just a small example of the quiet good works being done all around us all the time.
It’s the kind of example in which we can all take heart.
GLENN RUTHERFORD
Record Editor Emeritus
