LifeTimeline

Father Rick Curry, S.J.

    • MAR 18

      Born

    1943
    • A relic comes to Philadelphia

    1950
    • Rick becomes a Jesuit brother!

    1961
    • Graduates from Saint Joseph's University

    1968
    • Completes his masters in Theater from Villanova University

    1970
    • Founds the National Theater Workshop of the Handicapped

    • Earns a doctorate in Theater from NYU!

    1977
    • Receives the Distinguished Service Award from President George H.W. Bush

    1987
    • Fr. Curry publishes his first cookbook!

    1995
    • Founds the Wounded Warriors Writers' Program

    2003
    • Begins working as an Adjunct Professor of Catholic Studies at Georgetown University

    2008
    • SEP 13

      At 66-years-old, Fr. Curry is ordained as a priest!

    2009
    • Opens Dog Tag Bakery

    2014
    • DEC 19

      Died

    2015
  • Photo featured in "60 Minutes Presents: Brother RIck Curry."

    Born

    Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
    Richard Jerome Curry was born into a middle-class Irish family in Philadelphia, the son of John, a dentist, and Susanna, a homemaker. He was born without a right forearm. In a “60 Minutes” interview, Father Curry describes the day he was born:

    “I have a first cousin who just turned eighty years of age, and he told me just two weeks ago about what it was like the day that I was born. That his mother was called, my mother’s sister, to go and to console her, and to be with her. My father spent the time at a bar. Very hard. They just felt, I think in so many ways, that this birth into their family, that they had somehow been failures. Like they were somehow guilty.”

    (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29sF1iYyYSY)
    By Jaime Mishkin
  • A relic comes to Philadelphia

    In a Facebook post by Fr. James Martin, S.J., Jesuit priest, writer, editor-at-large for Jesuit Magazine, America, and long-time friend of Fr. Curry, Fr. Martin describes an event from Fr. Curry's childhood:

    "When he was a little boy, in the 1950s, the preserved right forearm of St. Francis Xavier, the Jesuit missionary, came to Philadelphia. Strange as this may seem to non-Catholics, this 'relic' is particularly well known: it's the arm that the Jesuit used to baptized thousands of people during his missionary days in Africa, India and Japan.

    Rick's first-grade teacher, a Catholic sister, thought it would be a good idea for Rick to see the arm--though she didn't expect there would be any sort of miraculous outcome. Neither did his mother, though she wrote a letter to have Rick excused from class to see the relic. Neither of these two women was making any connection between Rick's missing a right forearm, and the visit of the right forearm of St. Francis Xavier.

    But his Catholic-school classmates did! They were praying hard for a miracle. Maybe Rick would be healed--and be like all the other children. So when Rick's mother picked him up to drive him to the cathedral downtown, his class was thrilled.

    A huge line wound up and down the aisles of the cathedral. Because of the number of people, an announcement was made: visitors would be able only to touch the reliquary, the glass box that held Francis's arm. You wouldn't be able to kiss the reliquary, as some pious Catholics had hoped. But when several priests saw the boy without his right arm, they said to his mother, 'Oh, no, he can kiss it!' Rick, however, wanted no such 'healing.'

    So he kissed the glass case, but pressed the stump of his right arm against himself--hoping that it would not grow.

    On his way back home, on the trolley car, he kept checking his arm. But there wasn't any change. No miracle. And when he returned to class, his classmates told them how disappointed they were. Perhaps, they said, he wasn't worthy of a miracle.

    But someone else had a very different reaction. When he returned home that night, his sister Denise, who would later become a nun, was hiding behind the drapes of the living room windows. She peeked out. When she saw that no miracle had occurred, she was delighted. "Oh great!" she said. 'I'm so happy that nothing happened. Because I like you the way you are!'"

    Read Father James Martin's full post here: https://www.facebook.com/FrJamesMartin/.../53186415976496:0
    By Jaime Mishkin
  • Rick becomes a Jesuit brother!

    United States
    After graduating from St. Joseph’s Preparatory in Philadelphia, Father Curry joins the Society of Jesus at the age of 19. He professed his final vows in 1968.

    By Jaime Mishkin
  • Graduates from Saint Joseph's University

    Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
    Fr. Curry received his A.B. in English. Later, he'd return to found SJU's academic theater program and remain an active alumnus. In 2001, Fr. Curry received the SJU Shield of Loyola, which, according to the SJU website, is "awarded annually to a distinguished alumnus or alumna who has had remarkable success in his or her profession, whose life reflects the values of St. Ignatius Loyola, and who has demonstrated unparalleled loyalty to Saint Joseph’s University."

    (http://alumni.sju.edu/s/1378/index.aspx)
    By Jaime Mishkin
  • Completes his masters in Theater from Villanova University

    Villanova, Pennsylvania
    By Jaime Mishkin
  • Founds the National Theater Workshop of the Handicapped

    New York , New York
    In 1977, Father Rick walked into an audition for a mouthwash commercial. Father Rick, who was born without a right forearm and hand, was laughed at by the receptionist, who thought somebody had sent him to the audition as a joke. Always one to make the best of a situation, 36 hours later, Father Rick decided to open the National Theater Workshop of the Handicapped in NYC. Later, he would open a location in Belfast, Maine. More than 15,000 performers with disabilities have participated in NTWH's theater workshops and performances.

    "I think you are empowered when people listen to your story. What theatre does is give you a larger audience. When you’re onstage, the audience empowers you and that is a very rare thing in this world: that people allow you to speak and that they listen to you." -- Father Rick Curry to Kevin J. Wetmore in an interview in Ecumenica Journal

    (http://www.ecumenicajournal.org/special-fea/.../ck-curry-sj/)

    By Jaime Mishkin
  • Earns a doctorate in Theater from NYU!

    New York, New York
    1974-1977
    By Jaime Mishkin
  • Receives the Distinguished Service Award from President George H.W. Bush

    By Jaime Mishkin
  • Photo from http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Jesuit-B/.../rry/dp/0060951184. Book design by Joel Avirom.

    Fr. Curry publishes his first cookbook!

    In 1995, Fr. Curry published his first cookbook, "The Secrets of Jesuit Breadmaking." Seven years later, he published "The Secrets of Jesuit Soupmaking: A Year of Our Soups." In an interview with Ecumenica Journal of Theatre and Performance, Fr. Curry describes the creation of his cookbooks:

    "The books were a natural outgrowth of the work at NTWH. The disabled, like all of us, need product at the end of the day—they need to have done something, made something. People circumscribe their lives to be so limited, and we wanted to not limit the disabled. Because I was trained as a baker as a Jesuit novice, I would bake bread as a gift for our benefactors. Fortunately, the number of benefactors grew, but that meant I had to bake a lot more bread. Some of the folks volunteered to help me and that expanded. At the workshop, our actors can’t be waiters. You know, all actors in New York are also waiters, but many of our actors couldn’t do that. I thought, if I can teach them a craft, baking, then they can support themselves and have a skill on the resume that would get them work while they were working as actors. They would have something at the end of the day they could call their own." (http://www.ecumenicajournal.org/special-fea/.../ck-curry-sj/)
    By Jaime Mishkin
  • Founds the Wounded Warriors Writers' Program

    In an article from Saint Joseph University Magazine, Father Curry describes the veterans entering the Wounded Warriors Writers' Program:

    “These wounded warriors and their families have sacrificed so much,” he emphasizes. “They have been blinded, lost limbs, are paralyzed and deviled by PTSD. And no matter what you may think of the wars, these soldiers are serving us, yet their lives are in tatters when they come home. We can’t let these heroes be marginalized and forgotten.”

    (http://www.sju.edu/news-events/magaz/.../different-call-duty)
    By Jaime Mishkin
  • Begins working as an Adjunct Professor of Catholic Studies at Georgetown University

    Washington, District of Columbia
    One of Fr. Curry's most popular classes at Georgetown was "Theater and the Catholic Imagination," which followed the Jesuit tradition of using theater as a means of developing clear self-expression and exploring what it means to be human. His classes often culminated in a flash mob performance. Watch this 2015 video of Fr. Curry's students tap dancing around Georgetown's campus!
    By Jaime Mishkin
  • At 66-years-old, Fr. Curry is ordained as a priest!

    Fr. Curry sought special permission from Pope Benedict XVI to pursue the priesthood. He told SJU Magazine, "The right thumb and forefinger are anointed during ordination. There is also an Old Testament tradition that dictates a priest or rabbi must be ‘without blemish."

    But once granted an indult from the vatican, Fr. Curry began his studies at the Washington Theological Union in Washington, D.C.

    Fr. Curry had not always felt compelled to become a priest, but he was called by the veterans to consider. In SJU Magazine, Fr. Curry describes his encounter with a veteran who first persuaded him to consider the priesthood:

    “'He had so much bottled-up anger,' he recalls, 'but he felt comfortable with me, because, like him, I have only one forearm. He told me about his experiences and asked for absolution. When I said I couldn’t absolve him, he became more furious. I explained that I was a brother and had never been called to be a priest.

    'He asked, ‘What do you mean? Who has to call you?’ I said, ‘God, or the Christian community.’ He replied, ‘Well, then, I’m calling you. I want you to be a priest.'"

    (http://www.sju.edu/news-events/magaz/.../different-call-duty)
    By Jaime Mishkin
  • Opens Dog Tag Bakery

    Washington, District of Columbia
    In 2014, Father Rick Curry and philanthropist Constance Milstein opened Dog Tag Bakery in Georgetown. The bakery employs veterans to help "build a bridge to business employments and a productive civilian life for returning veterans with disabilities and caregivers." (http://www.dogtaginc.org/) In this fellowship program, Dog Tag Bakery partners with Georgetown School of Continuing Studies to teach veterans the ins and outs of opening and running a small business.

    In a Huffington Post article, Father Curry reminds us "...not [to] forget the debt we owe to our servicemen and women who have spent the past decade in conflicts overseas. These extraordinary heroes have sacrificed greatly to preserve our freedom, our nation, our very way of life, but face serious challenges upon transitioning out of the military." (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/father-rick-/.../_4299179.html)

    It is with such reverence that Father Curry and Connie Milstein opened Dog Tag Bakery in 2014. Check out this video of Dog Tag Bakery's opening day!

    By Jaime Mishkin
  • Died

    Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
    Father Rick Curry died of heart failure at the Jesuit infirmary at St. Joseph’s University at 11:30 PM.

    SJU reported that Fr. Dennis McNally, S.J. was with Fr. Curry when he took his last breath. “I felt singularly and undeservedly blessed,” said Fr. McNally. “Rick had that effect on so many people, so many." (http://www.sju.edu/news-events/news/.../icapped-passes-away)

    A life spent in service to others, there is no doubt that Father Curry has influenced thousands of people in a remarkable 72 years of life.
    By Jaime Mishkin