Ray Guidry, missionary/poet laureate SVD

5th July 2011   ·   0 Comments

By Fr. Jerome LeDoux
The Louisiana Weekly Contributing Writer

Rolling back to my 5 p.m. Fort Worth Mass from my dialogue with some young and older adults at the Unity Explosion conference at the Marriott Westchase in Houston, my thoughts turned to my classmate, Raymond Guidry, who had died on June 16.

Gliding past Huntsville, I noticed the body of a beautiful, rusty-red doe lying partway on the shoulder of I-45 North – road kill stretched out in perpetual death. That rotated my thoughts immediately back to Ray Guidry’s recent going back to God.

Still ungainly teenagers, Ray, Joe Guidry and a score of us had begun our trek to the priesthood in early September of 1943 at the high school of St. Augustine Seminary in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. A veritable wilderness of huge pines and swamps back then with the adjacent Bay of St. Louis, the campus was a wonderland for young boys.

Pushed by Prefect Father Hubert Posjena and a squad of teachers, we plunged into Latin, French, Greek, the humanities and religious studies. There was a lot of swimming, the alien game of soccer and plenty of baseball in which Ray began to learn shortstop.

“I must get to Techny!” I thought as I-45 kept rolling up to greet me. “I must find my way to the big house. I must be there to show how much I appreciate Ray.”
As the shuttle from Midway neared the famous twin Techny Towers, my mind raced back to early September, 1947 when I first arrived by train from New Orleans to Chicago and was ferried from there to Techny. What a sight that was for a 17-year-old!

A city to itself, Techny sported a sizeable church, Holy Spirit Chapel, outsize, multi-winged five-story buildings made of heavy stone, its own water tower with Techny in big block letters, a complete machine shop, a printing press, a spacious apple orchard, a flour mill, a tantalizing bakery and dozens of beehives cared for by Brother Frederick.

Awesome also were the endless acres of farmland covered with wheat, rye, cattle to feed 300 members, and seasonal things like peonies that were sold to keep us solvent. It was likewise our first look at the wonder of a vineyard loaded with succulent grapes.

Likewise, we folks from the small deep-South towns of Abbeville and Lake Charles, Louisiana had never been associated with a group comprised of American boys from roots as varied as German, Italian, Lith­uanian, Czech, Polish, Irish and sundry.

We soon ran into the likes of George Heffner and August Langenkamp who joined us in Bay St. Louis in 1951, and Armand Francis Xavier Theriault who went to Bay St. Louis with his classmates Ed Baur, Jack Sheerin and Bernard Keller in 1950.

Perhaps most astounding of all was the size of our combined novitiate classes. Yes, there were two years of novitiate in those days, and every year there was always a combination of first-year novices and second-year novices. Together, we totaled 92 novices, a total that actually stood a little higher before it settled down at 92.

In these times of plunging numbers of priests and brothers, scrambling vocation recruiters can only marvel at those numbers of yesteryear. And what a glorious novitiate we had with the one-and-only Father Felix Glorious who, true to his military background in Germany, ran our spiritual training ground like an austere two-year-long boot camp!

Graced with equanimity and patience, Ray flourished amid such hardship much better than most of us. After our novitiate ordeal, we journeyed to our SVD college among the rolling hills of Epworth, a small town about 13 miles from Dubuque, Iowa where we did our first two years of college. We continued baseball, of course.

Back to St. Augustine Major Seminary in Bay St. Louis in 1951, we delved into the challenges of philosophy, geology and Hebrew for two years, then moved on to four years of theology. All the while, we were into swimming, boating, fishing and baseball. As unassuming as ever, Ray had become a slick-fielding, accomplished shortstop.

Our ordination to the priesthood on May 11, 1957 marked a moment of decision for Ray when he decided to do a missionary stint in Ghana. After ten years, his attention turned toward his oldest sister Helen who was having serious economic issues. With a plan to help her, he requested that the Society of the Divine Word allow him to enlist.

Coming in just under the 40-year cutoff age, Ray enlisted in the army where he served as chaplain for 20 years, including a stay in Vietnam, eventually retiring as Major. Thus, he was able to work for the salvation of souls and help his sister at the same time. He helped Helen until her death and later his younger sister Orelia and her children.

Ray made a retreat at the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky where former SVD Father Matthew Kelty advised him to spice his sermons with poetry. Ray followed his advice as associate at Holy Ghost Parish in Opelousas, Louisiana for eight years, as hospital chaplain in Galveston for six years, and on into retirement.

That advice stirred up what was already there, motivating him to express in poems the poetry of the Good News that he saw in every person and creature of the universe.

Always soft-spoken and sensitive, Ray blended well with any group of confreres or other folks, ever congenial, readily flashing his ivories, never criticizing or speaking ill or negatively of others, and never allowing himself to get into loud arguments.

I, for one, join the chorus of those who apply to Ray a comment we reserve for those special people who enter and frequent the personal, intimate space of our life, “Ray, you were a gift to your family, to me and many others. Thank God for you!”

Provincial Superior Jim Pawlicki, who gave a stirring homily/eulogy at Ray’s funeral, received this great summary of Ray from Memphis Bishop Terry Steib, S.V.D., “Ano­ther legend has gone. Another hero has moved on to claim his eternal reward. Another role model has gone to find his room in that place where there’s plenty good room.”

This article originally published in the July 4, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.