Lucious

That's a person ... Lucious Newsom. He was 95 years old, and died Monday night. As I type this up, he's being waked in the Cathedral, and his Funeral Mass will be here tomorrow at 1pm. This is a BIG deal ... the Governor and the Mayor will both be in attendance and have some words at the beginning of the Funeral.

Lucious was a a champion of the poor, the homeless and the hungry in Indianapolis. He was a Baptist preacher, originally from Memphis, TN. When he can to Indy twenty-some years ago, he quickly got involved with things. And, since the Catholics were the most responsive to him and his work, he joined the Church. He wasn't a parishioner here, and I never met him, but he's very well known in these parts and for one reason or another family and friends decided to have the Rites of Death and Burial here. If you go to Indystar.com and do a recent search, several articles on Lucious should pop up. We just had some news crews filming the wake, and I understand more will be here tomorrow.

I was actually down home on the Hill for some quiet days when I got a call informing me that Lucious had died and the Cathedral was to host his funeral. So I cut my visit short and came home a day early to manage things. I'm in my element with this kind of stuff ...

Going back to the Jubilee weekend ... everything went very well and a good time was had by all. It was weird (the realization of 25 years already) but good. The climax of it all came on Monday morning when what started out as a routine dentist visit turned into a root canal. I didn't even have time to get worked up about it ... he said I needed it and he could do it right then, so I told him to go ahead. Part of my going home this week was to have the prelimary work done for a crown on that tooth ...

Guess I had better go check on things in the Church ... then soon I'll need to get set up for the 7pm Vigil Service.

Lucious was a real piece of work ... even in death ... he's laid out in bib overalls and a Colts cap.