Fr. John Reedy

BEAVERTON — When he turned 100 last month, Father John Reedy received fat stacks of mail. People who met him 70 years ago explained how his kind and candid words of advice and his listening ear had turned their lives around. They had the stories to prove it.

The cards are still arriving at his address, even after the death of the priest known for twinkling eyes and a golden, if mischievous, heart.

Father Reedy, the oldest priest in Oregon, died Nov. 11, two weeks after he reached the century mark. A funeral Mass was held Monday at St. Mary’s Cathedral and he was buried in the priests’ section of Mount Calvary Cemetery.

Born John Jeremiah Reedy, he attended Columbia Prep High School in Portland and then in 1927 began college at St. Joseph College in Mountain View, Calif. He later attended St. Patrick Seminary in Menlo Park, Calif. and was ordained on June 9, 1935, at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Portland by Archbishop Edward Howard.

His first assignment was as assistant pastor at St. Joseph Parish, Salem, from 1935 until 1939, when he became a chaplain at the Oregon State Correctional Institution in Salem.

He served there for four years until he was appointed pastor of St. Aloysius Parish in Estacada.

He was there a year when the Second World War began. The National Guard unit that Father Reedy chaplained was activated, and he headed off to serve as an Army chaplain until 1946.

After the war, he was appointed pastor of St. Mary Parish in Corvallis, where he served from 1946 until 1950.

At that time he was appointed pastor of St. Vincent de Paul Parish, Salem, a post he held until his retirement in 1979. He oversaw expansion of the parish and became such an institution there that people still drop by asking for him.

As a chaplain and parish priest, he presided at baptisms, weddings and funerals in numbers no one can count. He was prone to visit homes and meet with parishioners for conversation that tended to lighten their hearts and build up their faith.

“He’s one of the holiest men I’ve ever met, but also one of the most genuine,” said Marcia Moore Hull, who grew up next door to St. Vincent de Paul Church.

The priest was a good friend of the Moore family and came over for breakfast between Sunday morning Masses. Hull’s mother was a parish secretary for 30 years.
Hull says that Father Reedy kept his delicious sense of humor throughout life.

Once, years after Hull’s mother died, Father Reedy asked after his former secretary’s health. Hull haltingly explained that her mother was, well, dead. There was a brief pause and then the priest said, “No wonder I haven’t heard from her.”

Another time, Hull asked the aged man if he had run out of things to pray about after all those years. “Not as long as I know people like you,” he quipped.

After his retirement, Father Reedy took up residence at St. Joseph Parish in Salem, where he remained active until his move to St. John Vianney Priests’ Retirement Residence in Beaverton in 1993. In the last few years, declining health prompted his move to Maryville Nursing Home, where he died.

At his birthday party last month, Father Reedy was the only one of dozens there keen enough to notice that the baker had misspelled his name on the cake.

As the much-loved priest reached out, seeming to stick his finger in the frosting like a little boy, he noticed it read “Reddy” instead of “Reedy.”

“Gosh, it would have been nice if they’d spelled my name right,” he said wryly and then was a gracious guest of honor.