The Book of Mychal: The Surprising Life and Heroic Death of Father Mychal Judge » (Reprint)

Michael Daly is a columnist for the New York Daily News. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

The inspiring story of New York Fire Department Chaplain Father Mychal Judge

His death certificate bears the number one. As chaplain to the Fire Department of New York, Father Mychal Judge was officially the first to go. A loving priest with a gift for the gab-gregarious yet humble, a healer with the ability to wipe away a widow's tears and put a smile on a fireman's face.

And on September 11th Father Mike rushed to the fires at the World Trade Center as quickly as those who fought them, losing his own life while tirelessly ministering to New York's bravest.

Father Mike recounts the colorful, astonishing and at times troubled life of a priest who saw the potential for good in everybody-in the homeless person he slipped a dollar to on the street; the alcoholic he sought to coax to an AA meeting; the early victims of AIDS he embraced and comforted; the troubled young men he visited in jail; and the thousands of firefighters he blessed as they rushed to their rigs answering the call.

Here was a priest who rejoiced in the life around him and understood that even the most terrible times present us with wonders-that good always arises from the bad in the most unexpected ways.

Or as Father Mike would say, "My God is a God of surprises."

In this touching book, author Michael Daly retraces the footsteps of Father Mike as his vocation takes us inside the firehouse, inside his friary and his Church, and inside the chaos that often befalls New York.

This is the tale of a larger than life priest who, in death, became a symbol of how much we truly lost that Tuesday in September. Father Mike is the inspirational story of a hero priest who blessed so many lives and will long be remembered by it.

Library Journal

Father Mychal Judge (1933-2001), chaplain of the New York Fire Department, was one of the nearly 3000 killed on 9/11. His death certificate was numbered one-the first official death in the terrorist attack. The Franciscan friar was almost a legend among NYFD firefighters, a man who spent his years tending both physically and spiritually to the sick, injured, and the families of the fallen. This book, powered by dialog-sometimes of conversations said to have taken place decades ago and evidently re-created by Daly (New York Daily News ) from his interviews-reads with all the immediacy of a novel. Its anecdotes, sketches, recollections, and episodes, which superficially seem unrelated, coalesce into a book that combines biography and inspirational testament. Although skeptics may question the quoted dialog, Daly, a friend of Father Mychal, offers a compelling and moving human portrait of a man dedicated to God and duty. If only each of the victims of 9/11 had a Daly to tell their stories. Recommended for public libraries.-Glenn Masuchika, Pennsylvania State Univ. Libs., University Park