Eulogy For Dan.

When I was Sixteen Years Old, he told me he was a traveler from the planet Zotar and his time on earth was brief. He was here on a mission, he said, and he would have to leave as soon as he completed it.

I told him he was crazy. He shook his head. “No, I am not crazy. I’m from Zotar. And I’ll prove it to you.”

Word spread around school that Dan was from another planet. “I knew he was different,” one of our friends said, “but I honestly never took him for no alien.”

One morning Dan announced that he’d made contact with Zotar and they were sending a spaceship on Saturday.

When the time came, Dan borrowed his dad’s big Lincoln and led a parade of cars and pickups to Nap’s Lane on the south end of Opelousas. He got out hitching his pants up, and a dozen of us followed him into a field. It was dark but for a little white moon and a smattering of stars. I could see some black forms off in the distance. These were cows, staring back at us, terrified.

Jesus had twelve apostles. Dan had twelve idiots dodging cow pies and bigspine thistle. “Follow me,” he said. “They’re coming.”

Back in those days Dan wasn’t sure if he wanted to be a priest or an actor. If he was faking it…well, I didn’t believe he was. I should tell you, I was no dummy. I made good grades, and I planned to go to college. But so did all the other fools standing in the field that night waiting for Dan’s spaceship.

Dan pointed. And sure enough there was something—a couple of red lights, beating in the darkness, faraway but getting closer. But if that was the spaceship, it wasn’t much faster than a crop duster. Wait, no, that really was a crop duster, flying home.

We kept looking. And then I heard it. I heard its engine. It came up in a loud, throaty roar, then it let out a long squeal, almost like tires burning rubber. Next came a horn wailing.

Up ahead the cows took off running. I spun around just in time to see Dan driving away in his daddy’s Lincoln.

HE WAS FATHER DAN to his flock—the heroic, charismatic priest who jumped out of airplanes and gave homilies so moving that his parishioners rewarded him with ovations that rattled the windows and shook dust from the ceiling.

He was Father Dan who baptized them and married them and buried them.

Father Dan, who should’ve had his own reality TV show. Bright-eyed son of the Church, blessed with an unrivaled gift of gab and a laugh that God must’ve loved. For a while there, after he lost weight and liked the way he looked, he had a ponytail, a goatee, and the whitest teeth I ever saw.

Father Dan, who helped start missions for needy children and AIDS patients.

Father Dan, who should’ve been pope. I used to tell him that: “Hey, man, why aren’t you the pope yet?”

“Because they need me at St. Jules,” he’d say.

Father Dan, who could relate to our struggles because he’d had so many of his own. Father Dan, who had God in him after a lifetime of fighting to keep the devil out.

When we were kids, when he was still just Dan, he and Timmy Miller and I were best friends. And he often reminded us that he had four names while Timmy and I only had three. Timmy was Mark Timothy Miller, and I was John Ed Bradley. But Dan was James Daniel Joseph Edwards.

He’d hold his hand up and flash four fingers, then he’d point at me and hold up three. Like he was special and I wasn’t.

So I asked my dad, “Daddy, why does Dan get four names and I only get three?”

Daddy said, “Boy, don’t ask me that.” And he plucked the side of my head with his finger.

James Daniel Joseph Edwards. He was the youngest of six children. There was Rex and Tom and Bob and Jane and Brenda. The girls were gorgeous. And the boys were all larger than life and destined for greatness. Dan’s dad was Mr. John, a lawyer; his mom was Miss Hilda—and oh, God, was she something.

They had a swimming pool and a pool house. Timmy and I would walk from Delmas Street to the white shell road that cut through their back yard. The doors were always open. Most times we’d just let ourselves in without bothering to knock. Coming in off the porte cochere, there was a kitchen on the left, and with those four boys there was never any candy or pastry items in it. Trust me, I checked. We’d walk past Mr. John reading the Daily World in his favorite chair—"How you doin’, Mr. John?”—and enter a room full of light and art, most of it primitive paintings that Miss Hilda had collected. Then we’d head to Dan’s room.

I liked books like Captains Courageous and Robinson Crusoe. Dan at thirteen was already reading about the Vatican and the history of the Catholic Church. He knew about the saints, and he liked to talk about one in particular. This was St. Augustine.

As a teenager, Dan said, St. Augustine had lived in sin with a girl. He drank and pursued a hedonistic lifestyle. But he straightened up when he got older, and he was such a compelling orator and innovative thinker that he brought legions of followers to Christ.

“That’s gonna be me,” Dan said.

Without going into detail, I will say that Dan put the young St. Augustine to shame. As a matter of fact, when it came to committing sin, he made St. Augustine look like a rank amateur. St. Augustine lived with a girl? Oh, how scandalous. Before he went to the seminary and was ordained in 1994, Dan had so many forbidden romances somebody should’ve reported him to Guinness World Records.

Here’s another story for you, every word of it true:

In 1981, Dan went missing. He broke off all contact with his family and friends. No one knew where he was.

Miss Hilda called my mom and dad and asked them to convince Timmy and me to drive to New Orleans and look for him. All Miss Hilda knew was that he had a friend who worked at a shoe store on Canal Street.

"Go get him,” Daddy told us, like we were a couple of bloodhounds. We drove to New Orleans and parked by the river.

First thing I noticed was how many shoe stores there were on Canal Street. Every other business seemed to sell shoes. Timmy told me to take the right side of the street, and he would take the left side. We’d hit every store and ask if anybody knew Dan.

The people in those stores weren’t very nice. I was lucky to get a head shake. One guy asked me to leave. I was starting to get discouraged. I stumbled out onto the sidewalk and heard somebody yell. It was Timmy, waving for me to come over. I ran across the street.

Inside, there was a young woman writing out her address on a piece of paper. Timmy whispered, “He’s been living with her in Metairie. She has the back bedroom; he sleeps on a mattress on the floor in the front room.”

“So they’re just friends?”

“That’s right. Just friends.”

The girl gave us the paper and we drove to a dumpy little place in Fat City. Timmy banged on the door. We waited. Timmy banged again. Ten minutes must’ve gone by before Dan appeared. His eyes were bloodshot and he reeked of cigarette smoke and some other kind of smoke—not barbecue, either. He looked like a Bee Gee. You remember the Bee Gees? Feathered hair hanging to his shoulders. It must’ve been three in the afternoon. We’d woken him up. “What are you doing here?” he said.

“We came to take you home,” Timmy said. “Your mom and dad are worried.”

He didn’t want to leave. He was having too much fun. He had two jobs—one as a waiter at a restaurant in the Marriott Hotel, the other as an Arthur Murray dance instructor. When he wasn’t working, he was partying in the clubs of the French Quarter. He made it sound like he’d discovered paradise, but we managed to get him in the car, and we headed west on the interstate.

It usually takes about two and a half hours to drive from New Orleans to Opelousas. Timmy and I needed twenty hours that day with Dan. When we finally reached the driveway leading up to his parents’ house, he told us he couldn’t face them and to keep driving.

Timmy punched the gas and we drove along the side of the house and around back to the shell road. Then Dan had us drive around the block several times before he finally surrendered and exited the car.

Tim and I walked with him to the door. Miss Hilda always called us “baby” and “sugah” and “honey” and things like that. But she was quiet today, standing just inside, her eyes narrowing as her youngest thumped up the steps.

Her silence told us she didn’t approve of how he’d been living. Miss Hilda had a disco version of the prodigal son, and his name was Dan.

Timmy and I didn’t hang around. We left. And Dan left too, later that same day. He might’ve taken the bus—I never knew—but he went straight back to New Orleans.

“Hey, St. Augustine,” I told him on the phone, “when are you going to stop breaking your mama’s heart? Don’t you think it’s time you cut all that out?”

“Not yet,” he said, “but thank you for your concern.”

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NOW A FEW MORE THINGS about Dan

He was lucky to have survived infancy after he developed an infection shortly after being delivered. It was 1957. His parents took him to Ochsner Hospital in New Orleans where he received a blood transfusion. Doctors said he’d suffered brain damage that might affect Dan’s motor skills and result in his being mentally handicapped. But might he ever be normal? The doctors couldn’t say. In newborns the nervous system can rewire itself around a damaged area of the brain. The miracle was that he was alive.

As a first grader he was abused by a neighbor. In third grade, he developed tumors on a foot and bleeding ulcers. His brothers were famous local athletes. There were times when Dan could barely walk let alone run. He gained weight, and kids bullied him. When he went swimming with Timmy and me in his pool, he always wore a T-shirt. “You can take it off,” I told him. “Tim and me, we don’t care.”

He never did.

As a young teen, he was abused yet again, this time over a period of months by an adult he trusted. At nineteen he was stabbed in a random attack outside a bar in Lafayette. Once again, Dan should’ve died. He contracted hepatitis. That, too, almost killed him. In a hospital bed one night, hands folded together, he promised God that if He let him live he would become a priest.

I’ve never known anybody who loved God more intensely. I’ve never known anyone more courageous. Dan had poetry in his bones. It was in his eyelids and his fingertips. It poured from him in a stream of consciousness. He also could be hilarious. I never laughed harder than when I was with him. He could be so sweet and gentle and kind. He called my mom “the most beautiful woman in the world,” knowing how good it made her feel. Sometimes when he talked about Jesus, I would think, “Is that the boy I knew? Or is that coming from You, God?”

He lived with that lousy foot for years. Radiation had destroyed the tissue and left him crippled. I remember going to visit him one day. He was in so much pain he was shivering. He lifted his foot for me to inspect. I recoiled at the sight—it was one big open sore. I thought of Jesus and the stigmata. I always knew Dan would lose the foot, but I didn’t know that by losing it he would find himself.

Four years ago, half of it came off at a medical center in Lafayette. When Timmy and his wife Dana went to see him, they asked him if there was anything they could do for him. They were waiting for a profound reply, like “Yes, let’s thank God for keeping me alive.” Or, “Yes, let’s pray the rosary together.” Instead, Dan said, “Could you go get me some Ben and Jerry’s ice cream?”

In 2018 Dan flew to Australia to have his leg amputated. Doctors gave him a 50 percent chance to survive. The surgery cost more than $100,000. Dan was a priest—he didn’t have any money. People from here at St. Jules paid for it.

He called me before he left. “In case I don’t make it,” he said, “I just want you to know I love you.”

“You’re going to make it,” I said. “All you’ve been through? They’ll never kill you, Dan.”

In Sydney, he was alone and he was afraid. In an interview two years ago with Todd Citron, Dan started crying when he said, “I prayed to Jesus, ‘Please don’t let me die so far away from home and the people who love me.’”

I never understood why, when he got better, he suddenly had to become the world’s greatest skydiver. Maybe it was because he was from Zotar and comfortable up there in the clouds, looking down on those looking up. He would send his friends cellphone photos that showed him shooting through the ether like a bullet—I’m sure many of you got them—and I’d call him and let him have it. “Hey, brother, have you lost your mind?”

I sent him texts: “Terrifying. Please stop. Tim and I say enough. Time to stop, Dan. I mean it.”

In one reply he sent an image of a speedometer showing that he’d fallen at 298 miles an hour. Under the picture he wrote: “Fastest amputee on the planet. God is great!”

In other photos he looked content and at peace. God had saved him, and he was out of pain at last, and it was his turn and his time. He sent out a video meme of a skydiving squirrel. The squirrel hadn’t opened its parachute yet. It was falling fast. I called Dan and said, “Is that supposed to be funny? What do you think happened to that squirrel when it hit the ground?”

He said, “Hey, John Ed, I’m not a squirrel, all right.”

Strong and unafraid, he lightened his hair and grew out his whiskers. He bought a new skinny wardrobe. His homilies became more confessional. He confided aspects of his past that until then only Timmy and I knew. Because he was willing to reveal himself with a candor rarely witnessed in the pulpit, a kind of legend grew up around him. People came from all over to attend his Masses and to hear him speak. I’d get emails: “Hey, you’re from Opelousas. Do you know this guy Father Dan?”

I was so proud of him. Whatever deal he’d struck with God, it was changing the world one soul at a time. God knew what He had in Dan. And He put him to work.

I live in Mandeville now. One day a few years ago, Timmy called and asked me to meet him and Dan in Denham Springs. We could have lunch and walk around and visit the antique shops. Maybe we’d find some lost treasure.

We were in a little store. A man kept looking at us. He seemed especially interested in Dan. I could tell he was trying to figure out who he was. I decided to put him out of his misery. “Can you guess what he does for a living?” I said.

The man stared at Dan, and his eyes squeezed tight in a squint. He thought he had it. “An actor?” he said. “Is he a movie star?”

Dan beamed. He straightened his shoulders and stood tall. He struck a pose: chin out, eyes fixed on a point across the room.

“No, sir,” I said to the man. “That right there is Dan Edwards, and he is a Catholic priest.”

The man rubbed his jaw, searching for words. “Well, I’ll be,” he finally said.

It was dark in the store, and when we stepped outside it was into golden sunlight. A breeze blew. I looked at Dan and he seemed to glow. He’d suffered for so long, he’d endured so much, and God had brought him to this day when a stranger thought he looked like a movie star.

God, You have him now, isn’t he beautiful? God, isn’t he brilliant? God, isn’t he good? God, where did he come from? God, who was he really? God, why is he gone? God, please don’t take him from us. God, forgive me but we love him. God, thank you, God. Thank you for Dan, God. Thank you for Father Dan. Thank you, God.

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