'I Became a Catholic and Found Happiness'

This text was written by my father, Arnold Brandt in 1959 at the time he converted to Catholicism and just before he received the sacrament of Confirmation at the Church of St. Joseph on Pacific St.. It was published in The Tablet, the Catholic faith newspaper of Brooklyn. This article was transcribed from a yellowing proof version that I found among his possessions after his death in 1996. 

In one of his last acts as pope, Benedict XVI designated the Pacific Street church as co-cathedral of the Brooklyn Diocese – sharing responsibilities with the smaller St. James Cathedral Basilica in Downtown Brooklyn. The churches will house the chair of the bishop, and split duties hosting major diocesan events. Read more about this church in the NY Times...

ONE OF SUNDAY'S CONVERTS

Arnold E. Brandt

This coming Sunday, May 25 (1959), I will be one of the converts to be confirmed at St. Joseph's Church, Brooklyn. Last Saturday I received my first Holy Communion when my six-year-old daughter (Sigrid) received hers. Anyone who has received these Sacraments knows what a happy week this has been for my family and myself.

Both my parents were born in Sweden, but they were brought to this Country when they are quite young. Living in a small Connecticut city (Hartford), they first met when they joined with other young people of Scandinavian background in a program of building a new church. The church, of course, was Lutheran, because the Swedes have been Lutherans for many centuries.

My father (Eric Brandt) at one time had though of entering the Lutheran ministry. In preparation for entering a seminary, he finished two years of college. But then he decided not to go on for the ministry.

Worked for Government

The home in which I grew up with my brothers and sisters was a religious one, which mirrored the deep faith and devotion of both my parents. Sundays in my family mean attendance at church service. And among my earliest recollections are the small cookies, tasting vaguely perfume, which my thoughtful mother would slip from her purse, to quiet a small boy who sometimes squirmed in the pew when is concentration on the services began to waver.

My mother died the day after I graduated from high school (Hartford Public HS). With her death and my preoccupation with finding a career, I gradually drifted from any steady religious practice.

After moving from job to job, finally I was accepted for a government post in Washington, D.C. Anxious to improve myself, I applied for admission to Georgetown University while working in the capital. Previously my attempts to enter other schools had been frustrated by lack of money. The Jesuit Fathers at Georgetown raised no such barrier.

This new effort to continue my education was applauded in many quarters and, in particular, by one of my fellow workers (name?) who himself resigned to take "a better job." He entered the seminary and is now a priest.

War interrupted the cycle of work and education for me. After the war, however, I was back in the same pattern. As I continued At Georgetown, I learned a great deal about Catholicism.

Upon graduation, I received a very fine promotion on my job, which brought me from Washington to New York. My first date in New York was with a beautiful girl (Marcella) who worked in the same office. This wonderful girl was a graduate of a Catholic college. We continued to date. We often discussed religion. And I talked and talked over again about the Catholic Church.

Well, we were married by the priest (Rev. Philip Shannon). We have been blessed with three wonderful children.

Early in our married life we attended Mass together. But with the arrival of babies it seemed a pleasant arrangement for me to stay home and take care of the family while my wife went to church.

Our oldest girl entered a Catholic school. I was impressed with the training she is receiving. I knew that soon she would be receiving her first Holy Communion. I decided that I must receive mine along with her.

Accordingly, I made the special effort required to get to early Mass on Sundays, so that I still would be able to take care of the little ones when my wife would go later. I learned to follow the beautiful action of the Mass by use of a missal which my wife had given me. I read the Latin. A language which I first had been able to decipher almost forty years earlier when I stumbled across a Latin grammar among my father's old books.

Thought I already knew quite a bit about the Catholic religion, I realized that I still needed some systematic instruction. And so, I attended one of the instruction centers of the Diocesan Apostolate. Happily I became a Catholic in time to make my First Communion the same day my little girl received hers.

I have many friends who have been Catholics all their lives. I had to find my way in the Church for myself. With my heartfelt thanks to those many friends, who prayed for me, I now can tell them that at last I have found way into the Catholic Church. I have been helped to this complete conversion by the grace of God, the good example of my wife and the blessing of my children.

Meeting Walter Cronkite

As we mourn the loss of the venerable newscaster, Walter Cronkite, ironically just days before the 40th anniversary of one of his most famous broadcasts, the web has been full of remembrances and tributes. Mine is far from unique or noteworthy, but I thought I would share it just the same.

For the last four years I lived in New York City, I had a part time job driving a taxicab. It was the real thing; a licensed medallion cab driven through the five boroughs. And, I lived to tell about it. Well, it wasn’t all that scary, but it was a heady time in the NYC cab industry, just before the fleets disappeared and at a time you could still make a living wage ferrying around New York’s elite.

At that time, many college students drove cabs in NY. We mostly worked on weekends when the regular drivers took some time off. And in the last few years on that job I was making more per hour than I would make in my real first job working for a mental health agency in northern Maine. Go figure.

It was a bright Sunday afternoon in early fall with the sun just setting. I was cruising in the upper East Side looking for a fare to take me out to the airport (the NYC airports could be gold mines on Sundays) or a long fare back downtown. I was on York Ave heading south and I think it was around 84th St when I spotted a young man on the corner. Instincts kicked in and I almost willed the kid to raise his hand to flag me down. As we made eye-contact he signaled me to make the turn east on to 84th. This was a good sign because it meant we were going to pick up someone on the block and they might have luggage, and they might be going to Kennedy, and…anyway, you get the point.

The handsome young man, maybe in his early 20s, jumped in and directed me to the middle of the block of handsome townhouses and brownstones. He explained that I would be picking up their housekeeper and taking her home to her apartment on 96th and East End.

My enthusiasm faded instantaneously as I recognized that this was not a long haul. This was a short hop and one that would take me further way from my desired goal. I groaned to myself and was contemplating my next move when I saw him. He was instantly recognizable and I was immediately drawn to his bright eyes and silver hair attenuated by the piercing late afternoon sun gracing him like a long follow-spot. I want to say he had blue eyes, but I can’t be sure, the golden light washed out any actual color. But the silver hair and the trademark mustache were unmistakable…this was Walter Cronkite.

As directed by the young man in the back, I pulled the cab as far to the left side of the one-way 84th as I could right in front of the man who I had been watching on TV since I was in diapers. The most trusted man in television. The man who had interviewed presidents and kings, who was there on the night men walked on the moon and who told us over and over again on countless replays “…President Kennedy died at 1:00 pm Central Standard Time, 2:00 o’clock Eastern Standard Time, some 38 minutes ago…”

This was a lighter moment. Walter reached for the cab’s door handle just as the young man opened the door from the inside. There were others in the small entourage that surrounded a small Asian woman, obviously my fare, who was being escorted into my cab. But I didn’t really see any of them; Walter held my fascination and my attention his eyes squinting in the sun.

The meeting was but an instant. The only words exchanged were between Walter and the woman now in my cab. He closed the door and through the opened window thanked her in that trademark mid-western speech style. She thanked him back and I knew that my brief moment with stardom was over. I pulled the cab back into traffic and picked up my trip sheet, instinctively entering the address, time and destination. The Asian lady in the back explained that that was “Mr. Walter Cronkite” and that she was his housekeeper. And yes, she said this with a thick Asian accent that include a mispronunciation of his last name. “That was, Mr. Chip…” she added. “He’s very nice, he’s Mr. Cronkite’s son, he’s very nice.”

The trip was indeed a short one, nary ten blocks, but during the fare she explained that Mr. Cronkite had been away on vacation and had just returned. She had been staying at this house for the duration, watching over things. It seemed she had been in his household staff for some time and that she really enjoyed her job.

I made an asterisk on my trip sheet with the abbreviation "WC" so I would be able to find the address again if need be. And after dropping off the lady on 96th St, I turned my cab back south into obscurity.

“And that’s the way it was….”

~j