FROM THE EDITOR -- You’re a good man, Father Bob—I’ll miss you

If you read Central Florida headlines, there was a truly awful one out of Brevard County just over a week ago. A man killed three people, then brandished his gun at police at a party; cops had to use deadly force to end the treat.

The day after the party, police detectives went to the home of who owned the car the shooter was driving—and had loaded with an arsenal of weapons. There they found a retired Catholic priest and his sister, Fr. Robert and Sally Hoeffner, shot to death.

Why do I sit here in Kissimmee, writing about a crime that occurred over 50 miles to our east? Because this is a story that hits home.

The priest who perished? He was a man I called “Father Bob” for over a decade. And I’d met Sally a few times over the years. My family was one of the founding ones of the new St. Isaac Jogues Catholic Church in Orlando around 1987. It was just a collection of people; we held service in a VFW hall, then later an old day care we called "the Care Bear Church" thanks to what was still painted on the walls, because we didn’t have a church yet.

But we had Father Bob. Few teenagers want to go to church with Mom and Dad. But Father Bob made The Word understandable … and a little bit fun. Over the years, I’d see a lot of Father Bob. Many of the youth groups I was in then – the Scout troop, the altar server sect and my confirmation class met in the temporary building that served as the office. Even our club soccer team met on a field near the church land. Father Bob always made time for us to talk, joke and ask how we were doing. He was a good man, not because he was a priest but because he was, well, a good man.

A friend relayed a story from that time when he was working in a convenience store near the church and Father Bob came in to pick up “the essentials"—a six-pack and some smokes. My buddy could only stammer, “I-I-I didn’t think you could …”

“Sex, David. I can’t have sex.”

In 1998, Father Bob left St. Isaac’s for a church near his ailing parents on the coast. It was a bitter but understandable pill for us to swallow, but when I was (supposed to be) getting married in 2000, it wasn’t hard to find him at St. Joseph’s in Palm Bay to ask him to be the officiant. When that went down the tubes (13 days before the wedding!) and I called him to say it was off, the response was, “Come down to Palm Bay, we’ll have lunch and talk.”

Later on he’d become the face of the TV Mass you could find on Sunday mornings, but I fell out of touch with him again until about 15 years later. Then man who served has my Scoutmaster, soccer coach and confirmation teacher—for a couple years I saw him more than my own dad—lost his fight against cancer. Who was there to serve the celebration of life?

“Now that you’re here, Father Bob, I’m really gonna lose it, because now it’s all too real,” I told him before the service.

I saw him soon after at a St. Isaac’s anniversary event, but that was it, until his face came on my TV that Monday morning to tell the tale of the tragedy.

So, that’s why I’m writing about Father Bob, and happy to. I just hope you all get to write about your Father Bobs before the piece is a memorial.