Unexpected career turns into blessing for many

Nativity's Father Mac planned to be engineer

By Jolie Breeden

Friday, December 8, 2006

His laughter gave him away.

Booming and infectious, the laughter of Father John D. McCormick always let his parishioners know right where he was.

"You could hear it through the whole building," said Nativity of Our Lord receptionist Janice Dawson. "Everybody knew about his laugh."

The famous laugh rang out at Broomfield's Nativity of Our Lord Catholic Church for the past five years — at carnival dunking booths, during water fights with the parish children or just because someone needed to hear it.

"If you were having a bad day or something was going wrong, he would start his laugh," Dawson said. "He was a man of laughter."

Father McCormick, better known as Father Mac, died Saturday from complications of prostate cancer. He was 57.

The much-loved priest blessed Broomfield literally and figuratively since moving to Nativity from the Shrine of St. Anne in Arvada in 2001. He immediately set about making a home for himself in the community.

"He always talked about Nativity as family," said Deacon Dick Medenwaldt, who's known Father Mac for more than 20 years. "He made every person feel like they were the only person there."

It was a gift Father Mac always possessed, said his sister, Susan Pamperin of Colorado Springs. At its base were sincerity and a down-to-earth good nature.

"I think that's why so many people loved him," she said. "He could identify with them and they could identify with him. He could laugh at himself. He was just such a human being."

Father Mac was born March 13, 1939, in York, Neb., the first child of John D. McCormick, Sr. and Joan Schark McCormick. The family, which eventually included Pamperin and two younger brothers — Patrick and Bill — moved to Colorado Springs around 1947, when McCormick Sr. found work building the Air Force Academy, Pamperin said.

Although Father Mac grew up in a family of tight-knit, observant Catholics, Pamperin said she never expected her brother to become a priest — and neither did he.

"He thought he was going to be an engineer," she said. "I think he just felt a special calling."

That calling caused him to drop his course work at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs and attend St. Thomas Seminary in Denver in the early '70s. He was ordained into the priesthood in 1975 and ministered to congregations in Frederick, Erie, Colorado Springs and Mead before beginning his longest tenure at St. Anne's in 1988.

While there he did much for children's programs, school renovations and even had a community building —the McCormick Center— named for him. But only against his will.

"He didn't want that building named after him, but (the parishioners) just said 'Sorry, Father, we're going to do it anyway,'" Pamperin said. "He was just so well-loved."

Father Mac continued to inspire devotion when he moved to Nativity, Medenwaldt said.

"I think we probably have a vast, vast majority of people who truly loved him as a priest," he said.

That majority surrounded Father Mac in his last days, Pamperin said, supporting him with visits, food and anything else he needed. With his sister's care, and the support of the church, he was able to remain Nativity's pastor until he died.

"He wanted to keep going for as long as he could," Pamperin said. "He wasn't ready to throw in the towel."

But in September, Father Mac wrote a letter to the parish, whom he called "my dear family," telling them of his terminal illness. He said his last public mass on Oct. 8, but his sister said he continues to guide his flock.

"He's taught us so much," she said. "I think he's taught us through his dying, just as he taught us by the way he lived."