Life
Born as one of seven children to Irish immigrants Frank and Mary Washington, John was a religious boy from a young age, rapidly becoming an altar boy at his local church in Newark, New Jersey, where he grew up. A talented sportsman and intelligent and hard-working child, he performed well at school and was accepted into Seton Hall Preparatory School, then located in South Orange, New Jersey, where he completed high school and took courses designed to prepare him for the priesthood. Following his graduation he moved to the Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology at Seton Hall University and took minor orders in 1933, being ordained a priest in 1935.
He served at several New Jersey parishes over the next six years, before joining the Army upon hearing of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. After brief periods in Indiana and Maryland, Washington was dispatched to Harvard University where he took a course preparing him for deployment for Europe and became acquainted with the others of the Four chaplains for the first time. In January 1943 he joined them on board the Dorchester for the trip to Europe via Greenland, and set off on the fatal journey.
Read more about this topic: John P. Washington
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Neither a life of anarchy nor one beneath a despot should you praise; to all that lies in the middle a god has given excellence.”
—Aeschylus (525–456 B.C.)
“Helpless, unknown, and unremembered, most human beings, however sensitive, idealistic, intelligent, go through life as passengers rather than chauffeurs. Although we may pretend that it is the chauffeur who is the social inferior ... most of us, like Toad of Toad Hall, would not mind a turn at the wheel ourselves.”
—Ralph Harper (b. 1915)
“I never felt I could give up my life of freedom to become a man’s housekeeper. When I was young, if a girl married poverty, she became a drudge; if she married wealth, she became a doll. Had I married at twenty-one, I would have been either a drudge or a doll for fifty-five years. Think of it!”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)