Fellow Alumknights,

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So many of you have inquired about Dr. Fran Wickham’s services that I thought it would be nice to post some of the beautiful words that were shared about her life. Dr. Wickham touched so many in our community!

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The Memorial Mass for Dr. Wickham took place on Tuesday at Saint Mary’s Catholic Church in Boise. Bishop Michael Driscoll Presided. Father Tom Faucher was the Celebrant, and gave the beautiful homily below. Additionally, there were representatives from several local churches of other faiths in attendance to celebrate Dr. Wickham’s life.

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Bishop Driscoll, Tom Vitrano – from Bishop Kelly High School, and Dan Ronfeld – representing Rabbi Daniel Fink and members of Congregation Ahavath Beth Israel each spoke. Their words were inspirational, and truly a tribute to a life well lived.

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This is a long post, but well worth the read.

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~Katie Kerby

The Bishop Kelly Foundation has recently announced that a fund has been set up to create an endowed scholarship in Dr. Wickham’s name!  If you would like to make a contribution in honor of Dr. Wickham, please contact Rita Franklin at the BK Foundation (208) 323-4789, or visit the Foundation page on the BK website. 

HOMILY FOR THE FUNERAL MASS
FOR FRANCES LYNN WICKHAM

Rev. W. Thomas Faucher

The playwright, William Saroyan, in the preface to his prize winning play, “The Time of Your Life”, written long before Fran was born, wrote these words:

In the time of your life, live—so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life that your life touches. Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding place and let it be free and unashamed…

Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are the things that hold death and must pass away. Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy by the shame and terror of the world…

In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time, you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it…

Saroyan understood, as Fran did, that each choice we make each day really does matter, even if our actions don’t make headlines, or even if no one else knows about them. As we look at the choices Fran made in her life, one of them was to ask me to be the homilist at her funeral. She also told me that if I did not do a good job she would haunt me forever. She also gave me permission to speak a little longer than I usually do.

As the readings for this celebration Fran chose the words from the Book of Wisdom which tells us that the “souls of the just are in the hand of god …. and they are at peace.” She chose some of Saint Paul’s best writing, the sixth chapter of his letter to the Romans where he intertwines baptism, life, death, and resurrection. And for the gospel she got down to the bottom line of the whole thing — the relationship we have with those around us, the way we treat others, the love for, or lack of love for, all other people is the crystal clear picture of our relationship with Jesus Christ.

Fran was an incredible, special person. She may not have known the words of playwright Saroyan [although I would not be surprised if she did], but she truly believed that life was an adventure to be lived. That phrase “Seek goodness everywhere” was one of her guiding beliefs.

For her everywhere meant just that – everywhere. She searched for and found the good in nature, science, travel, literature, and most especially people. While she never narrowed that search, she did choose to specialize it in her study of, and approach to, theology. Fran was a theologian. She took real joy in the wonders and mysteries of the interplay between god and humanity.

And, while she had a broad theological background, she found a special place in her mind and heart for the total breadth of God’s relationship with all people in all religious traditions. She made the Vatican Council’s words in Dignitatis Humanae her own:

“This Vatican Council declares that the
human person has a right to religious freedom . . .
(and) declares that the right to religious freedom
has its foundation in the very dignity of the
human person as this dignity is known through
the revealed word of God and by reason itself.

She is one of the reasons a plaque honoring Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and all religious traditions, is in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel of this church, together with that quote.

She truly loved to study, work with, understand and appreciate other religious traditions. But she did this while standing on the very firm foundation of her own Catholic faith. She understood Catholicism. She could distinguish between the essentials and the non essentials. She truly believed in the words of Saint Paul in that second reading about baptism, life, death and resurrection. She truly believed in Saint Matthew’s depiction of Jesus declaring that what we do for others mirrors our love of God. And she truly believed in the Jewish, Islamic and Christian tradition in the Book of Wisdom that proclaims that “souls of the just are in the hand of god …. and they are at peace.”

As I have thought about her and how she did all of this, I began to think about what would be her greatest theological virtue. What spiritual attribute did she have which made her possible? I think she would laugh at and truly disagree with what I am about to say. Fran’s great theological virtue was patience.

I do not mean patience in a superficial way, but the deep patience described by one of the great spiritual writers of whom both Fran and I are very fond, Jalal-ud-Din Rumi, one of the great mystics of Islam. In his great epic Mathnawi Rumi writes:

If you’ve forgotten the praise given to God by your spirit,
Listen to the praises of the saints and prophets;
Listen to the Fish of the Divine Sea.
Whoever has seen God is of God, that is certain……
True spiritual fish abound in the sea of this world;
You don’t see them, although they fly around you.
These fish stream toward you, open your eyes and see them.

And even if you don’t succeed in seeing them clearly,
You will at least have heard them praising God.
Practicing patience is the soul of all praise:
Be patient, for that is the highest praise of God.
No other kind of glorification has so high a station;
Be patient; patience is the key to consolation.
Patience is like the bridge of Surat which souls after death Must cross to come at last into the Light of Heaven.

This is the patience so well expressed in the third chapter of the book of Ecclesiastes when it says: “there is a time for every purpose under heaven.” This is the patience that creates the person which the book of wisdom calls “just.”

And on these three foundations – a zest for life, a deep spiritual faith, and theological patience – she built her life, both her professional life and her personal life.

She was profoundly in love with her family. She met Jim at a Bach Festival, which both of them say was a celebration of both great music and great beer. Her prides and joys were her son Ben, her daughter Catie, and now her son-in-law Tim.

As a mother, Fran was truly herself, able to be at one and the same time – loving, caring, demanding, encouraging, supportive, forgiving, joyful, hopeful, faithful, and a number of other things. She also gave both Ben and Catie detentions at Bishop Kelly. She loved being their mother.

And she loved being Jim’s wife. It was truly a marriage made by the blending of kindred spirits.

Becoming ill with cancer was very hard on Fran. She had so much more she wanted to do, so much more she wanted to learn, so much more she wanted to live. She found it hard to become someone who needed to be taken care of.

But with her faith and her patience she became a new kind of teacher. People appeared from everywhere to do something for her. Old friends who had known her for years and new friends who only met her in her illness visited her, sat with her, and cried with her. As one of those who took her Holy Communion said to me, “Being with Fran brought out the best in me. I am so grateful to her for allowing me to share her life at this time.”

And her rock at this time was you, Jim. You were a wonderful husband. Fran could never have been the person she was in the fullness of her life nor the person of dignity in her dying without you.

Ben and Catie and Tim, you were there for her. Sometimes from a distance and sometimes here at home, she could feel your presence and your love.

I want to end with a poem by the ninth century woman Taoist mystic Yu Xuanji. I do not know if Fran knew this poem, but I would not be at all surprised if she did. Yu Xuanji writes about what awaits us in the world after death. It is a picture of Heaven I think Fran would enjoy.

AT HOME IN THE SUMMER MOUNTAINS

I’ve come to the house of the Immortals:
In every corner, wildflowers bloom.
In the front garden, trees
Offer their branches for drying clothes;
Where I eat, a wine glass can float
In the springwater’s chill.
From the portico, a hidden path
Leads to the bamboo’s darkened groves.
Cool in a summer dress, I choose
From among heaped piles of books.
Reciting poems in the moonlight, riding a painted boat ….
Every place the wind carries me is home.

Thank you, Fran, for sharing your love of life, your faith, and your patience with all of us. “The souls of the just are in the hand of God . . . and the are at peace.” Enjoy the peace of the resurrection.

Quotations from:
The Teachings of Rumi
Andrew Harvey
Barnes and Nobel, 1999

Women in Praise of the Sacred
Edited by Jane Hirshfield
Harper Perennial, 1994

Reflections
Tom Vitrano’s Eulogy
I taught alongside Fran at Bishop Kelly for 16 or so years. Most of my remarks relate to Fran’s BK life.

Here’s a quote she had up on her door 17 years ago when I first started teaching at BK. It sums up Fran’s life of faith. It made a big impression on me. It was from Dag Hammarskjold. I can easily imagine Fran praying these words.

“For all that has been…thanks. For all that will be…yes.”

I thank the family, Jim, Catie and Ben for trusting me to speak here.

I think I speak for the students and my colleagues when we say, “Thank you, Fran, for getting us a day off. It would have been better if it came in maybe 30 more years, but we’ll take the holidays when we get em.

Fran would love this funeral. Fran loved the sacramental life and the theology of the sacred that she found in the Catholic Church. She found God in the Eucharist, in the scripture, among all in the people of God. She firmly believed that God loved all of us, regardless of how pure or how much we had sinned. She believed in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.

Fran loved wisdom. She would laminate quotes for safe keeping from prophets, sages, pundits and poets. I’ll intersperse some of these quotes as I go along.

From Goethe: “We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.” Fran was shaped and fashioned by her family. She was devoted to Jim, Catie and Ben. She was very proud of Ben’s article in the Boise Weekly about a freezing cold camping adventure Ben had in California. She loved Tucker, the grand-dog. She talked glowingly of Cattie’s life here and across the pond. Her devotion to Jim was obvious. You always knew that with Jim she was solid as a rock.
Fran loved her faith, her schools, OLP, UCSB, USF, GTU, Saint Mary’s and Bishop Kelly. All of these things shaped her.

She loved music, classical, musicals and folk music. She loved Leonard Bernstein, Peter, Paul and Mary, Pete Seeger, Simon and Garfunkel. She Loved to sing. Here’s a quote she had: “Where words fail, music speaks.” By Hans Christian Anderson.

Fran described herself as “vertically challenged” not short. Here’s a laminated saying she had: “Don’t be little yourself, be big yourself. “ Anonymous

Fran was a great theology teacher. She would say that teaching theology is hard because not only do you have to deal with the minds and behavior of students but you also have to deal with their souls. Her lesson plans were meticulous, detailed and deep. She gave a lot of homework, projects, study guides, book reports. In the current lexicon, she gave many formative assessments and followed them up with well reviewed summative assessments. She expected her students to do their homework on time. No credit for late work was given. But mercy would be shown if the student handed-in the work anyway.

Her lines of parents were long at report card time. She was not an easy grader, but she was fair and clear with her expectations. When a parent would inquire about something she had said at school, she’d reply, “How about we make a deal. You believe half of what your student says about me and I’ll believe half of what your child says about you.”

Here is a quote she had from St. Teresa of Avila: “Love turns work into rest.” Using that standard, Fran rested a whole lot.

Fran loved her Bible. This was partly, I think, due to her Protestant upbringing. She knew that God’s word is revealed in scripture in many ways, sometimes literally, sometimes metaphorically, always religiously. She was a champion of the historical critical method of scripture study and shared this with her students in a developmentally appropriate way.

Fran was not afraid of uncertainty, ambiguity, and difference. She liked her students to have different translations of the Bible so that the ambiguity and various meanings of God’s word would be heard and shared.

She liked to see her students squirm with complexity or uncertainty. She would smack her lips and rub her hands when she knew that she was bringing her students to a deeper awareness of God’s word. She liked to make them think.

Perhaps Fran’s greatest professional contribution was in the area of interreligious dialogue. Dr. Wickham created a serious, full year, comparative religions course that would rival anything taught in any college or university anywhere. She would take students to other religious services almost every weekend of the school year. Talk about devotion!!

Her doctoral dissertation, “Blind Folks With an Elephant: Comparative Religion and Adolescent Religious Development,” showed that students at BK grow deeper in their own faith and learn more about others having taken the Comparative Religions class. Fran was a true “big tent” Catholic.

This was an anonymous quote she had: “If God seems far away, who moved?”

Here’s a quote she kept from Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit, of whom she would smile and hug herself, “Joy is the most infallible sign of God’s presence.”

Fran had a dry sense of humor. She loved a good….a bad pun. Especially a Bible pun. “What’s the coolest book of the Bible?… -Dude eronomy.” “What is the first sport mentioned in bible?…. Baseball! In the “big-inning” when God created Heaven and Earth.” One day she was talking about some villain who was ruthless. She said something like, “Do you think I have any Ruth?…or am I ruthless?” (uggh)

Fran loved the epic, saga, multi-season, multi-movie phenomena wisdom tradition, “Star Trek.”

You know, “Space, the final frontier.” How many ears did Captain Kirk have, you ask? Three. The right, the left and the final front-ear….ugh.

Fran was particular about her profession. She demanded respect in the field of theology. It is easy to discount theology as a nice aside to a serious education in math, science and English. Fran took this as a personal insult. She would remind us that theology has its own vocabulary, conceptual basis, importance, methodologies. She elevated theology at BK to a high level. It was much more than “just religion class.”

She practiced democracy. This tendency is found in the Congregationalists from which Fran converted. She would expect to be heard at faculty meetings. She was not afraid to share her opinion with others. She wanted BK to be true to its mission. She would say, “What we value we institutionalize.” She would ask the students for input on issues that affected them. She was not afraid of conflict. In fact she contributed to it sometimes.

Here’s a quote she had from Thomas Jefferson: “I hold that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms are in the physical.” On the rebellion side she was not afraid to write memos to priests, bosses, or colleagues when she disagreed with something. She would remind us that many of today’s saints criticized. Even Jesus criticized.

Fran never gave up on the Church even though she was pained sometimes by it. She believed that we should, “Keep the faith but change the Church.” She’d say, “Remember Tom, God writes straight with crooked lines.” She spoke of some of her disappointments in the Church, yet heartily worked from within to help build up the body of Christ.

Fran was sort of old school. She liked the early Church Fathers. We’re talking the first four centuries after Christ. Her devotion to Shakespeare was evident, even recently she and Jim went to the Globe Theatre while in England. She loved the great John Wooden’s UCLA teams, Dean Smith’s Carolina teams, Chicago Cubs, New York Yankees. She was really old school. She and Jim liked to watch minor league baseball. That’s old school.

Here is a quote she had from Rabbi Harold Kushner comparing life to a baseball season:
“Life is like a baseball season, …Our goal is to win more than we lose, and if we can do that consistently enough, then when the end comes, we will have won it all.”

She was very competitive as a sports fan. I loved to razz her about her love for Carolina and because of Catie she also rooted for Duke. It always bothered me (being a Maryland fan) that she would root for two of the best ACC schools. I thought it was just unfair that she could root for both Duke and Carolina. I still think it’s unfair.

Fran’s name will live on at BK. She loved the Blessed Pope John XXIII and the second Vatican Council he called. For years the Theology dept. has given an award to a senior who displays ecumenical understanding by actively sharing from their own faith while seeking to learn about other people’s faith. We called it the Pope John XXIII Ecumenical Understanding award.

We won’t be giving that award anymore.

In honor of her life’s work, and having received her permission, from now on Bishop Kelly will give the Dr. Fran Wickham Ecumenical Understanding award.

Fran meant much more to all of us than just her work at BK, but she shared a great slice of life with us.

I’ll close the way I started, with the quote from Dag Hammarskjold, this time aimed at Fran. Fran, “For all that has been…thanks. For all that will be…yes.”

Dan Ronfeld’s Eulogy

The prophet Isaiah (56:7) said I will bring them unto My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer; their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices shall be acceptable upon Mine altar; for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.

If anyone I know took this verse to her heart, it was your teacher, our friend, Mrs Wickham. She taught by example in every aspect of her life. She understood that God was larger than a label and that no one has a cornerstone on truth. That to meet another person is have the chance to feel the presence of God.

She knew that faith, being the focus of humanity, requires that to embody your faith, you must embrace humanity. To that end, she led her students out of the safety of their classrooms and chapel and into our strange temples and foreign halls not just to show them how other people pray, but that every prayer comes from and goes to the same unseen place. That place where Mrs. Wickham has gone now. And that all of our thoughts and hearts prayers ascend to and attend her now on this most sorrowful of days.

Last Friday night, at our Shabbat services- I stood up for Mrs. Wickham’s memory during my congregations recitation of the Kaddish- our prayer for the dead. One only stands for a parent, a child, a spouse, or a heartstring friend. It wasn’t until then that I realized what I had truly lost.
If you don’t know the Kaddish, It is a powerful prayer that never once mentions death; but rather extols the great and awesome power of life. That life is a gift from God to be lived everyday -to the fullest- that to deny yourself any of the richness of life, is to not fully accept this most holy gift. Even in the quiet sad and eventually wordless times that doubtless accompanied our friend toward the end of her life- that those times especially were rich with the still small voice of her God that Fran knew so well.

Today, I’m here as Rabbi Finks substitute and as the representative of the local Jewish Community at Ahavath Beth Israel, I come carrying the regards and sympathies of our local Jewish community.

All the regulars knew and respected Mrs. Wickham and her always well prepared and engaged students.

I was touched by the number of people- who upon hearing I would be speaking today had a kind word or thought about Mrs. Wickham and her class. Not only because ours is such a small and close community but her Bishop Kelly class was well known for always bringing the brightest, best prepared, and the almost best dressed students. It says much about Fran, the school she was so proud of, and the community of students. You all have much to be proud of.

That is the great responsibility of being a teacher, and the joy of being a profoundly good teacher.

You touch more lives that you can possibly know.

I treasure having known Fran, and will delight remembering her. The lessons she taught, I will try and remember. I am confident you will as well.

Miss Roscoe and I were talking and she mentioned a poster that had been in the classroom of Mrs. Wickham dunking a basket- a feat that any who knew her, would know there had to be more to it that met the eye. I think the picture beautifully sums up the essence of Fran’s career- that reaching ones goal never happens alone, that lots of unseen hands need to be at work, both prayerful and physical. That help, rather than detracting from the glory of the goal, it conversely enhances the joy of success. Now, Fran will be one of the sets of unseen hands in our lives, helping us each to reach our goals.