The Legacy of Tom Vander Woude

There is a beautiful short story that I read called The Father by Carol Hauslander, and what she emphasizes in that story is the father in the family replicates God the Father. And children learn that there is a God who loves them and has sacrificed for them through their father. There is no doubt in my mind that...

Tom Vanderwood, he was that kind of father. I can't tell you how many times I've thought about how is God going to have me die? I can only hope that if I'm in a similar situation that I react the way Dad did.

I don't think anybody is going to forget where they were when that happened. I met him when my brothers started bringing him home from practice, and he would have dinner with us. Well, he kept coming back to see me, not to see my brothers.

He would just hang out at my house a lot. We would go to movies, just go for walks together. I think we went to a couple of dances together. He was a great athlete, point guard in the basketball team, and a quarterback on the football team, and I was in high school, and I was a cheerleader, so that impressed me.

He was quiet. He was very kind. I don't know. Just the gentleness, I guess, appealed to me. Tom was accepted in the Navy with a flying billet, so we moved so many times because of his flight training and commitment to the Navy. I first met Tom, we were both going through the Navy Flight Training Command. Tom was a Naval Aviation Cadet, so I was Tom's class officer. He would be on the flight schedule every day or every other day. He'd come down to the work area, and he was a very capable guy.

So, I am the sixth of seven, Father Tom being the oldest, Steve, Dan, Bob, eight-year gap between Bob and Chris, and then Josie came along when I was five. I don't think I ever really thought about, like, being...

Part of the big Vanderwoody family, so to speak. That idea of this big, big family that a lot of people have heard the name, that didn't exist. And then when you got out of the Navy, you flew with the airlines, and we moved around with the airlines. Dad was an airline pilot after he flew A7s off the carrier, which, and talk about wanting to inspire your sons, you know, hear your dad talk about landing in the pitch black. On a carrier, it's pretty impressive.

You kind of think your dad's invincible. I was praying, and I read about this school in a periodical. You know, I said, dear, can we go up and look at this school? He said, sure, so we came up and looked at Seton. They had heard about this school called Seton School in Manassas, Virginia, and they felt that God was calling them to move the family to Virginia, primarily so that their boys could be raised in Catholic faith. That decision to get up here transformed our family.

And it was just the best thing we've ever done, I think. The best move we've ever made. So, the farm, as we call it, it was 27 acres. It used to be a dairy farm. So, we grew up having beef cattle. We boarded horses. We baled a lot of hay in the summertime. That is what my dad was all about, was raising boys in that sort of a manner. Dad knew what virtues and traits that would teach and instill in his sons without him actually having to talk about it.

He wouldn't tell us what to do so much. He'd actually be with us, working with us, whether it be the yard, whether it be on the car, and we'd be learning. What's the old phrase? Love is spelled T-I-M-E, and Dad would spend time with us. Just living the life on this farm taught us so much, especially family, but also hard work.

I mean, his hobby, he was with us, and we always knew we were loved. Especially now, as we're parents, we see a lot of the wisdom of being able to raise kids in this kind of environment. With the families that are on the farm and the grandkids now, and the cousins, it's not uncommon I come home from work and there's no less than 10 kids in my front yard or on the trampoline.

Now it's turned into monthly birthdays, because we have grandkids now that are married, and great-grandkids are being born, so schedules get busy, but it's pretty common once a month, some type of big birthday party, where we're singing happy birthday to four, five, six, seven people that had a birthday that month.

Grandkids and cousins running around playing together. It really has been a haven for us. I think I started to notice Dad as also somebody who was making his faith his own and was involving the family in that. Dad grew in his faith. I mean, Mom and Dad, they began praying the family rosary every day. That was when I was about six or seven years old, and then gradually going to Mass more often to the point where he is going to try to get to Mass every day.

I always saw my dad kneeling down, and he was leading the rosary. No matter how much I wanted to go to this game on a Friday night, if we didn't say the rosary first, no one was going anywhere. There was... No negotiation about Mass, certainly on Sundays, but other days of the week as well. Dad would be kneeling, even though he was missing cartilage in his knee or missing an ACL in his knee. He did it in such a way that I could see that he was not doing this to be seen.

He was doing this because he had a devotion to our Lord and our Lady. He was a man's man. I mean, he cut off half of his finger changing a saw. And barely said, I mean, he gritted his teeth. He did things that were uncomfortable, and I always remember him encouraging us to do things that were uncomfortable, to push ourselves. More than anything, that toughness, seeing him kneeling, saying the rosary every night. The faith was always paramount. He did not like people messing with his children's Catholic faith.

He did not like people messing with his Catholic faith, and if you wanted to see him get fired up, Joseph messed with his children's faith, and a fire will be lit. That was a huge example of what fathers do, right? I mean, they stand up for their family and their children, and they protect them, and they defend them. Joseph was born when I was in college, and they told us that they thought he had Down syndrome.

Mom and Dad were so open to life and treasured life that that wasn't a concern at all. What we witnessed right away is that because Mom and Dad have this great sense that all life is a gift from God, every child is loved, and Mom and Dad showed us that in a tremendous way with Joseph. Another image of my father is... A dad who was gonna do whatever he needed to do to help his child. I remember my father helping his two-year-old downed son learn how to crawl, and it was a process that did not come easy to Joseph at all.

I witnessed a dad who was extremely patient and joyful. To be with his down son, to show him how to move the left arm while the right leg is pushing, and how the right arm moves and the left leg pushes. It got to the point where this had to be... A process every day that they would do this therapy, and it would start to cause calluses or blisters on your arms, your elbows, and so Dad got these old tube socks, and he cut the foot part out of it, and he would put them over his arms, and he would put something on Joseph's arms as well, and they would crawl all over the house.

They would go outside on the lawn, and they would crawl on the lawn. I don't know what Dad's age was at the time, but it was just a profound image and witness to his sons in college, to his sons in high school, of a father's love for a son.

Love is always outward-looking, and so that's the way I would say Dad is. As he got older, it's even more and more what Mom and Dad's focus was, help them to love our Lord. To love others, especially with Josie. Most of us remember Josie trailing Tom everywhere he went. Josie was always there, and he said Tom was always so compassionate and loving and supportive of Josie, and I think we all remember that.

Tom was flying the Trump shuttle from D.C. to New York and back again. That was his job. He would get up at 4.30 in the morning, fly the shuttle, come back home and coach basketball practice, and then not get home until 7 o'clock sometimes when we'd have dinner. Sports was always something that my dad viewed as beneficial. For most of our lives growing up, dad was our coach. It was a big commitment, but he loved working with the boys. Dad was very involved at Seton School coaching us.

So, he wanted to find a way that Joseph could be involved. Joseph gets a uniform, and lo and behold, we're playing this team, and I saw Dad go up and talk to the coach before the game. And I could tell that he was up to something, and I wasn't sure. He had talked to the referees before the game. I didn't know that, hey, I have a special needs child that if it's a good situation in the game, would you mind if I went ahead and I put him in the game?

The other coach said, oh, that would be fantastic, no worries at all. After Seton was up by about 20 points, I see Dad motion to Joseph and send him over to the score table, and I got this sense inside like, oh, no.

He has Joseph covering the point guard on the other team, so he's around the ball a lot, and Joseph thought it was okay to have contact. He didn't understand what a foul was, and so anytime this guy tried to make a move and go by him, Joseph would clothesline him. And he was moving his feet. He was really intense, and the ref would blow his whistle and call a foul. And he looked confused. And Dad was explaining to him, you know, all right, you're doing fine, but just don't hit him.

These guys are trying to set Joseph up to score, and I think he did score in the game. Of course, Joseph shot the ball every time it hit his hands. Crowd loved it. He was a favorite. Everybody enjoyed it. This was just another example of a father. To try and find a way to do what was best for his son. That is an image that I am always going to hold on to when it comes to dad's relationship with Joseph.

After Dad coached, and he was kind of retired to the farm, he had a daily routine. He and Mom would go to Mass, and Joseph would serve every day, so they would bring him to Mass. They would come home, and Dad would... Kind of start his day. He went to mass that day. He was working outside. Next to the pool, we have a septic system, and there is a lid on the septic system, and I think Dad had cleaned the pool the day before, and Joseph was over messing around, cleaning it, or taking out leaves, or doing something, and he was standing on this lid, and the lid is a two-by-two.

A heavy-duty sheet metal lid, and Joseph fell through the lid into the septic tank, and the septic tank was three-quarters full, and so Dad came around and somehow found Joseph in the tank. Dad went down into the tank, so he went through this two-by-two opening to get Joseph and try to get him out.

We spoke to one of the guys that was working on the house that day. Dad yelled for help. He came over, and Dad had Joseph around the thighs, and he was lifting him up into this opening so that he could have fresh air. Because of the fumes in that tank, obviously, they could kill you.

He lifted Joseph up, and when this fellow came to the opening, and he is an elderly man, Dad said, I will push, you pull, and we will get him out. And this fellow had a hold of Joseph, I guess, from the top.

And what he told us was, Dad's eyes closed, he succumbed to the gases, and submerged into the sewage. We have learned later, and I have talked to different folks, that the auction is gone, and this fellow is holding Joseph, and he was yelling for help, and my mom came over. He said, call 911. She called 911. She came to the opening, and they are holding on to Joseph, and she said that she could not even recognize Joseph, and she looked at this man, and she said, where is Tom?

And he said, he is in there. And at that point, Mom knew that Dad was dead. She still had Joseph in the opening, and so they managed to get a strap of some sort around him and kind of hold him in place. The rescue squad arrived. They took Joseph out. They laid him down. He had ingested sewage, and so they're working on his oxygen.

As I understand it, I don't know if a person went into the tank or they found Dad with some apparatus, and they pulled him out of the tank. They continued doing CPR on Dad. They put him in the ambulance at some point. The driver of the ambulance said to Mom, He is dead. When I was there at the emergency room, I remember going over and zipping the sack, and then anointing dad. Dad died that day, you know, doing… Really, what he had been doing his whole life.

He prepared for that last day on a daily basis, waking up in the middle of the night and going to church to pray, running six miles three to four times a week, even though he didn't have an ACL in his knee. Doing these hard, physically uncomfortable things, those types of things were the things that steeled him throughout his life, to the fact where His son falling into his sewage tank, doesn't even think twice. This great act of self-sacrifice for his son and giving his life for Joseph was exactly who our dad was.

Dad was never going to die, and there was just nothing that dad couldn't do or find a way to do. You just picture him like, oh, he's going to be like that guy. He's 102 years old, and he's still giving you wisdom.

And so, just like that, it just rocked all our world. My faith was the only thing that sustained me. I kept going to Mass and Holy Communion, of course, every day for the strength and the grace to accept whatever was happening. God said, no greater love has a man than to lay down his life for his friends. So, if we believe that, and we believe, then, yeah, it hurts, and we are bawling our eyes out.

But obviously, then the focus turns to mom and to Josie for us brothers. Before they put Josie out, because they put him out for about two or three days in the coma, let his lungs heal. You know, I just told Josie right before they put him out, I said, Josie, repeat after me. Jesus, help me. Mary, help me.

And at that point... Good to go. I still remember exactly where I was standing the day that I got the phone call, but I remember I wasn't at all surprised. It didn't surprise me. I knew that that was exactly what Tom would have done, and I think it was certainly eloquent of his whole life. His whole life was service to others in one way or another. He would have done it for any of the boys. Yeah, no, that's a fatherly love.

In my vocation as a Catholic priest, you speak to people as Christ. You try to be Christ to others. Ultimately, we're all called to love. When it comes to the way Dad gave up his life, the parallel with our Lord is not lost, that our Lord lays down his life. He comes into this world of sin, this world of muck. We're all born to live, he's born to die, as Bishop Sheen would say. Well, this is what Dad did for Josie, so Josie could actually be alive and live.

Every day we see Joseph walking around, and who knows what miracle took place that day. It was Dad's sacrifice of his life that the Lord blessed Joseph with life. We will all tell you that Joseph has been one of the greatest gifts our family has had. Joseph loves like no... Other person, and he's made the whole family love in a better way. Now that mom is getting older, Joe's is right there, and Joe's is a strong kid. He's there for mom.

He's at her side all the time. Joseph runs up and down the stairs for me. We go grocery shopping, and he'll go and get the cart for me. Brings all the groceries in the house afterwards and helps me put them away. I never dreamt that he would be there to help take care of me in my senior years.

You have countries nowadays that will say that they have resolved their Down syndrome rates, and we all know what that means. They've aborted every baby that supposedly has Down syndrome. For dad to give his life for somebody that the world claims shouldn't even have the right to live, I think it just stands in so opposition of the difference between kind of God's plan and man's plan. Every life. is sacred from conception until natural death life is all about giving your life for somebody else and we had a profound example and legacy in our father of what it means to be a husband what it means to be a father what it means to be a brother Whatever our vocation is, priest, married man, single.

I am sure dad could have flown a much bigger plane and gone flying to Europe to bring in the serious bucks so that he could be driving a real nice truck. But then he would not be around his sons. He would not have been able to coach. He would not have been able to help raise Joseph. He died as he lived. He gave up his life for his wife and his family, and he died giving up his...

Life for Joseph, yes. True love is always self-sacrificing. True love wills the good of the other, so your whole focus is on the other, and I think Tom embodied that. We have this tremendous legacy and testament in front of us, where we can look to Dad's example with Joseph, but also all those countless little situations in our upbringing of a father who would have done this for any one of his sons. The example that he set for us to be men that live our faith, live it boldly, be ready to defend, and to do the...

When it's tough to pray, you think about Dad on his knees. Being his sons, it's kind of like always in your forefront. Like, hey, Dad did this. Dad did this. How are you doing? How are you living up to it? A true man is a man of God and is a spiritual man and is a prayerful man. This is a part of masculinity and part of manhood. What is the magic recipe for families to not only survive but to flourish? And for us, the thing that I keep coming back to is, we prayed together as a family, and we had a healthy fear of our dad.

And that was going back to that masculine component, and how absolutely necessary it is. Fatherhood is considered one of the most important elements in the raising of not only of a family, but of a civilization. The amount of people...

That had been impacted by Dad's story. I mean, the viewing lasted 10 hours, and there were some people that came saying, I never met your dad. But seeing him in the pew with your mom, and seeing how he interacted with Joseph, that's changed my life. When Tom first met me, I was not really a practicing Catholic. I am now.

I've never been so moved as I was by his death. We've heard of... Priests talking about Dad's story in the Philippines, in Canada, in Texas. These blessings, these stories from around the world that we're hearing of Dad, his story being told. I know of people that read the story, and they literally, like, I'm doing a holy hour once a week, and I'm doing the family rosary because that's what Tom Vandewanney did.

It was one of the seminal events in my faith. I felt like, you know, a guy I know is a saint. Coach Tom is part of my daily prayers, just in some of those tough days. The chapel is right up the hill. I like to just sit in quiet. But I know Coach Tom, you know, you would see him sometimes, just a quick five-minute stop at the chapel, the comfort of the chapel. His message of his life has infused all of us.

It's infused all of the young men who participate in athletics at Christendom College. You know, a big part of Dad's legacy and his connection is with Christendom. He had impacted a lot of people there, the courts named after him. Some of our prayers, we always say, Coach Tom, pray for us. I know he still has a... Positive impact on what we're doing. You know, there's three there now. The next generation, we'll call them. The legacy of Tom is continuing. It's going to continue not only through his sons, but through his grandchildren. Tom Vanderwoordy left a legacy to the world of who God truly is.