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The Lives of Father Joe Devlin |
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LARRY ENGELMANN |
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When man speaks of impossible dreams he suspects that after a struggle the summit and success must appear. Goodbye. God love you all, and I, the least of His creatures, do too. Father Joe Devlin, writing a Christmas greeting to friends from the village of Tram Chin, South Vietnam, 1970 |
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| I met James Joseph Devlin, SJ., in 1990, while I was preparing the publication of a book. I had written on the fall of South Vietnam. Over the course of my research, Father Joe’s name had come up again and again but I’d been unable to locate him. He was a legendary figure among both Americans and Vietnamese. He’d spent five years in the Delta in South Vietnam ministering and doctoring thousands of Vietnamese peasants. American military advisors in the Delta referred to him as Water Walker II because of the miracles he seemed to be working among the people of the Delta. Then, in 1975, he became one of the last Americans to be flown out of South Vietnam. He became the principal priest at the temporary refugee base in Camp Pendleton for Vietnamese refugees in 1975. Then in 1979 he traveled to Song Khla on the east coast of Thailand where he soon became known as the Boat People Priest, serving the Vietnamese boat people who survived the South China Sea and washed ashore in Thailand. I found Joe, almost by accident, within a few miles of my home in San Jose. He was living in anxious retirement at the Jesuit Retirement Home in Los Gatos. I called him and visited him and after that visited him several times and began gathering materials to write his biography. He provided me with his notebooks and journals. And I slowly began putting together his story. I found him to be intelligent and sensitive and dedicated to humanitarian work. When local Vietnamese found out this great man was living in the area they held reunions for him with hundreds of the local people he had helped and saved. They treated him as he deserved to be treated -- like a savior or a saint. | |
| Father Joe passed away on February
23, 1998 -- Ash Wednesday. At the time of his death he was serving Asian parishioners at
Our Lady of Peace Church in Santa Clara. The following is part of the narrative Joe told me as we began the work of collaborating on the writing of his life story.)
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