By Robert R. Schwarz
On weekday mornings, one or two souls enter our sanctuary around six-forty-five and prayerfully embrace the silence before the seven-thirty mass begins. With votive candles flickering on both sides of the altar and the sun or early morning light illuminating the eight stained glass windows and the huge, multi-color Rosetta window high above the altar's crucifix, this silence is golden. You might, however, hear a dangle of Rosary beads upon one of the 22 hardwood pews or a clang of a metal walker being pushed down the aisle.
At ten after seven, no matter the weather or season, most of the dozen or so "regulars" are in their usual pews at the 4,000-family St. James church in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Here, a man is praying for his spouse with severe rheumatoid arthritis; behind him are three nuns—one 95 years old — from a nearby convent; across the aisle, a retired dentist and his wife; also, an unemployed chauffeur with an injured back, a CPA who is an Opus Dei member, a church deacon, a retired newspaper editor, and a financial consultant. Occasionally, you will see in the rear pews a "homeless" man or woman or a teenager—you can't help but wonder what brought either of them here— or a pregnant woman near her time. And for several weeks the first to arrive was an itinerant Catholic evangelist—she had just returned from knocking on home doors in Nova Scotia—whom you might have seen outside, in winter, kneeling before our Blessed Mary statue before entering the church to pray at length before the tabernacle.
The silence is now pierced, as on most mornings, by Tom Adams entering through the rear door after a brief walk from the home in which he has lived alone since his wife of 60 years died four years ago. He is an outgoing, feisty 85-year-old with a daily mission. Tom, a balding, blue-eyed man whose clothes and mannerisms are both youthful , doesn't break stride as he approaches the pews and begins to scan faces with a broad, good-morning smile.
Like an attentive hospital physician making morning rounds, Tom begins to weave in and out of pews, greeting the regulars (and now and then a stranger) with a hand on their shoulder and a humorous or comforting word.
In an interview with him at a McDonald's, Tom is asked why he does this: "Why not?" he replies with curmudgeon tones. “These are your own people. Most of them have got problems or they wouldn't be here. Grieving widows and widowers, men out of work, women who want to get pregnant . Thing is, nobody talks to each other. Some have sour faces but they're praying. So, why not say 'hello' to them? Make them feel good they're in church and that there are people who think about them once in a while. They're glad to see me."
It’s nearly seven-thirty. The church has been quickly populated with perhaps 90 worshipers. Tom senses he’s got time for one more pew visit until someone tells him to muffle his voice. "How's the wife?” he asks a senior. The man replies that she is still alive, and Tom pats him twice on the back.
Sure enough, Tom hears a commanding “hush!”
In McDonald's, Tom is asked if he thinks his behavior distracts people who are praying. He seizes some humor: " Hey, look: I'm helping them to pray harder!”
The young altar server rings the bell over the sacristy door. Tom goes to a pew (he seldom sits in the same one), kneels and takes out Rosary beads…
In McDonalds this morning after mass, Tom excuses himself from his coterie of coffee-drinking parishioners to join this reporter to answer questions about his past marketing and sales careers with the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News and Boston Herald before publishing a weekly newspaper in Tacoma, Washington, and, finally, the Penny Saver shopper in nearby Buffalo Grove and Mt. Prospect. Currently, he works 22 hours each week operating the freight elevator at the Arlington Park Racecourse.
It isn't easy to get him talking about those eighteen B-24 bomber missions he flew as a 17-year-old waist gunner over Romania during World War II, including the raid over Ploesti in which our Air Force lost 660 crewmen and 53 aircraft. “We got hit pretty hard by flack and I had to jump into Yugoslavia," he says. (He was rescued later and flown back to his unit by the Russian military.) One of his regrets about the war was that he never went to see Padre Pio, whose church was only a mile from Tom’s base in Italy. Was there anything for Tom to confess to the famous saint? “At my l7 years of age? Are you kidding?"
Asked what he does for fun besides walking four miles daily (twice around Lake Arlington), Tom says: "Not much. I talk, laugh. I've been with people all my life who laugh."
And with that, Tom gets up and returns to his friends. Soon everybody is laughing there, Tom the loudest.
