Detroit — It was an unexpected encounter with some young cancer patients back in 1974 that got Fr. Russ Kohler thinking about the need for the hospitality ministry that now includes an old mansion in midtown Detroit, a transportation service and facilities out-state.
“I was in Buffalo where I was visiting an uncle who was dying of cancer, when the hospital elevator stopped at the wrong floor, and I got off and found myself in the midst of some young kids playing pool — who had all lost their face and neck to cancer,” recounts Fr. Kohler, pastor of Most Holy Trinity Parish in Detroit. “They thought I was the chaplain, and I didn’t want to disappoint them, so I talked with them awhile.”
In those days Fr. Kohler was pastor of St. Aloysius Parish, downtown.
After his encounter, he preached on Ash Wednesday about the need for a hospitality ministry for cancer patients.
“Leo Schulte, who was Cardinal (John) Dearden’s finance guy, called me that afternoon, and asked, ‘Were you serious about that hospitality ministry?’”
Schulte told him the archdiocese had a chaplain’s house on Pingree Street near Henry Ford Hospital that was for sale, but could be pulled off the market.
“I told him to let me think about it a minute, because ‘If I say yes, it’s going to tie me up for several years,’” he remembers.
Well, Fr. Kohler answered yes. Now, 36 years later, he is still tied up with it.
He named it for Pope John XXIII, who always took an interest in children with cancer, visiting those who were in Rome’s children’s hospital and having those who came to papal audiences stay afterwards for a blessing.
And Fr. Kohler tells how, when Pope John was diagnosed with inoperable stomach cancer, he consecrated his suffering to the cause of world peace.
Fr. Kohler says he had expected it to mainly serve as a place for relatives of patients being treated at Detroit hospitals, but it soon turned out that the need was mainly for patients undergoing out-patient treatment.
To give patients a refreshing change of venue between treatments, Fr. Kohler also acquired the St. Patrick’s Retreat in the Irish Hills.
When the house on Pingree was badly damaged by a fire, the ministry still continued on a limited basis. In those days, the St. Aloysius rectory took up the two top floors of the Chancery Building, next to the church, with priests’ rooms on the eighth floor. Patients and their families were accommodated in an apartment on the seventh.
Donna Dominiack was a teen-aged farm girl who had never been to a big city in 1979 when she was operated on for ovarian cancer in a hospital in South Dakota. She was told she would need to go to Houston or Detroit for chemotherapy, and chose Hutzel Women’s Hospital in Detroit. The South Dakota hospital knew about Fr. Kohler’s ministry.
“I was just five days post-op when I flew out. I was 19, and I’d never even flown before. My sister who was eight months pregnant, and my mother who had high blood pressure were with me,” says Dominiack, who was Donna Gunderson in those days.
“Fr. Russ just took us under his wing, and took amazing care of us. He took us to my doctor’s appointments. We could have never done it without him. It was a total God thing,” she says.
During the course of her 13 weeks in Detroit, her two other sisters, her two brothers and her father made it to Detroit to spend part of the time with her, and were put up at the rectory, or traveled out to the Irish Hills.
Having been diagnosed as a stage IV cancer patient, Dominiack had been told there was little hope for her, but after additional chemo treatments back in South Dakota, her cancer was found to be in remission in 1980. This year she celebrated 30 years of being cancer-free by returning to Detroit with her mother and sisters.
“We stayed at the Westin Book-Cadillac, just down the street from St. Aloysius, and Fr. Russ took us to dinner and showed us around,” she says.
For 28 of those 30 years, she has been married, to Donnie Dominiack, and they have two adopted children — daughter Devan and son Dylan — as well as a grandson, Morgan.
“My mother says I’m ‘our family miracle,’” Dominiack adds.
Fr. Kohler was able to find another home for the ministry when the current Pope John House on Second at West Alexandrine became available at a discounted price. With help from the Sage Foundation and the Michigan Bell Telephone Pioneers, the house was renovated to serve the ministry.
Built by a successful retailer, Campbell Symington, who was also a Presbyterian deacon, it was one of the finer houses built in the neighborhood just a few blocks west of the Detroit Medical Center.
Only some years later did Fr. Kohler find out that the house had been built in 1882, the year of Pope John’s birth, which he sees as an interesting coincidence.
Camille Thornton, a member of St. Michael Parish in Monroe, attests to the value of the ministry based on the experience of her mother-in-law, Willodean Davis, who battled breast cancer from 1990 until her death in May 2006.
Thornton was living in Garden City and driving her mother-in law from her home in northwest Detroit to her appointments at Harper Hospital.
But when Davis started needing to go to the hospital five times a week, it became too difficult. Fortunately, the hospital knew about the Pope John House, and Davis was able to stay there.
“She enjoyed it, because she was close to her doctor, and could feel useful by helping take care of the place,” Thornton says.
Although diagnosed with stage IV cancer at the time of her original mastectomy, Davis’ cancer would go into remission and then return several times.
“I think she stayed there about five times, and Fr. Russ was always just wonderful,” Thornton says.
Although it serves both children and adults, the ministry is officially known as Pope John Programs for Kids, because most of its beneficiaries over the years have been children.
The ministry’s transportation services also help Detroit-area children who live at home get to their out-patient appointments.
Send donations to Pope John Programs for Kids, 3977 Second Ave., Detroit 48201, or call Fr. Russ Kohler at (313) 965-4450.
