If I Am Found Worthy: The Life of Willam C. Kruegler, M.M.

By Elizabeth V. Roach

Bill Kruegler of Troy, New York, was a laughing, playful child, a rough and tough football player, and an amateur thespian. Whether he was playing "Dead-Eye Dick," a detective in a high school play; or dressed in a Dutch costume leading a parade; or a big brother drying the tears of his little sister, he was always helping someone.

Later, as a priest, in Bolivia, he climbed mountains, traveled through jungles, visited the sick, consoled the lonely, and always had time to play with the children. His letters reveal a passion to serve people in need, especially children. Happy in his life and work, he seemed to be no threat to anyone. That's why his murder, while a whole town was celebrating, shocked people on two continents. High School students in Troy, New York wrote essays and raised money to build a chapel in his name. Bolivians named a school for him and almost forty years later, they are still telling his story to their children.

IF I AM FOUND WORTHY is a book for every person who struggles to be faithful to a commitment to others, especially those who love children and want to see them safe and loved.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 10, 2000
• ISBN: 9781462097906

Elizabeth V. Roach

Elizabeth V. Roach, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is a member of Maryknoll Sisters, a group of Roman Catholic women religious with missions in thirty-one nations. A high school science teacher, she has served in Bolivia, Peru, Panama, and the United States (New York and Hawaii). A graduate of Santa Maria University in Arequipa, Peru, a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators and a former writer for Hawaii Catholic Herald, she writes of the poor in many lands. Her articles and stories have been published in the United States and Latin America. She currently writes from Ossining, New York.

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All Rights Reserved © 1999, 2002 by Elizabeth V. Roach

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

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Contents

Permissions

Prologue

The Family

The Times

Teen Years

Decision Time

Fun And Fervor

Clothed In Christ

Now Or Never

Novitiate Year

Major Seminary

Bolivia At Last!

First Mission

Mission Montero

Whispers And Terror

Children In Danger

Caller At The Door

Notes

PERMISSIONS

1. MARYKNOLL MISSION ARCHIVES, Creative Works of William C. Kruegler, M.M. Quoted by permission of Maryknoll Mission Archives

2. THIS SEED FOR HARVEST by Sister Francis Marie Kruegler, C.S.J. Quoted by permission of the late author and The Society of The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet, Albany Province

3. All photos have been supplied by courtesy of Maryknoll Mission Archives. © Elizabeth V. Roach, M.M.

To

the children of all nations whose innocence whispers God’s Presence both in times of sorrow and of joy

Yesterday, I signed the formal petition to take the Society Oath for one year, if I am found worthy.

—William C. Kruegler9 M.M. August2,1954

PROLOGUE

Each year, Bolivians celebrate their independence from Spain in the first week of August. They do this with parades, games of chance, family dinners,  neighborhood parties, soccer matches, song festivals and folk dancing exhibitions.

That year, 1962, in the little town of Montero, thirty miles north of the city of Santa Cruz, it was no different. The official celebrations had ended the day before, but, on August seventh, the holiday atmosphere was fully operative. Young people strolled in the plaza. Old men lolled on the benches chatting about the events. Music blared from sound systems installed for the celebrations. And then, suddenly, everything stopped.

I will never forget that evening. Our convent was one block behind the main plaza. I was sitting in the convent living room with two Sisters. It was a little after seven-thirty, when I heard the pounding at the back gate.

Brother Camillus (Charles Heschele) had come to tell us Bill Kruegler had been shot. I grabbed a towel, and, with the other two Sisters, took off through the back way to the parish house which faces on the main plaza. Perhaps, I thought, with the towel, I could apply pressure and stop the bleeding.

When I got there, the bottom half of the door, which was a Dutch door, was still closed. People from the plaza were already pushing against it, trying to see inside. I asked them to step aside, so there would be more air. Without a word, they parted just enough to make room for me. As I looked over the door into the narrow corridor, I saw two priests and the local doctor from the parish clinic. They were bent over Father Bill, the youngest member of our parish team.

Sprawled on his back, crosswise in the narrow corridor, his eyes closed, Bill was facing me. His face was the color of alabaster. His white cassock was splotched with blood, lots of blood.

As the men stood up, I opened the door. Father James Fitzgerald lifted Bill. The other men helped him. They carried Bill to the green pickup truck parked in the plaza just outside the door. When they placed him on the truck bed, Fitzgerald held him in his arms. Pedro Domínguez, the high school principal, and Doctor Miguel Cassal got aboard. I don’t recall who got into the driver’s seat, but the motor started and they drove off toward the small hospital, ten minutes away, at the sugar mill in Guabirá.

Fr. John McCabe, one of the priests who had been with Bill in the corridor, was walking quickly toward the church. Maybe he was going to ask the people to join him in the Rosary. I knew that I should go inside the parish house, because the priests had left everything open. To avoid stepping into the pool of blood where Bill had fallen, I had to take the largest step I could, perhaps about twenty- five inches. I remember thinking, That’s too much blood! He’s not going to make it.

Some people are murdered for money, others for passion, vengeance, or hatred. Bill Kruegler’s murder shocked everyone who knew him and many who had never known him. Murdered? Yes! I had to keep telling myself that. It was hard to believe, but it was true. After the men came back with Bill’s body, young men from the parish high school formed an honor guard around it in the church. For thirty-six hours, they took turns standing by, first at the table where they laid him, and then around the casket, when it was ready.

As daylight came, people crowded into every available space. Many, who couldn’t get inside, looked in through the brick-latticed windows. Many others stood, bareheaded, in the churchyard, under the searing tropical sun. Tears trick- led down the cheeks of strong men. Young people sobbed. Grandmothers wailed.

Far away in Troy, New York, Bill’s mother received the news. Soon, her sons and daughters and their families were advised. Wherever they were, wherever they were able to gather, around their mother or in their own homes, they remembered, over and over again, the happy-go-lucky youngster, the kid brother and their own surprise when Billy, had decided to become a missionary priest.

In Bolivia, where co-workers, students and parishioners had only known Bill Kruegler as an adult, it was the same. They knew him for his laughter, his joking, his fun-loving ways.

Why, they asked? Why would anyone want to kill Bill Kruegler? Who he was, and how he came to be known as the Martyr for Youth by people on two continents is the story of this book. It’s the story of a young man who wondered if he would be found worthy to follow Jesus.

1

THE FAMILY

William C. Kruegler, the seventh son and the tenth of eleven children of Francis Andrew Kruegler and Katherine Cecilia Hernberg, was born in Troy, New York, on October 1, 1930.

Frank Kruegler, his father, had started to work at an early age in a local  company. By the time Billy was born, Frank was a clerk and bookkeeper in the Rennselaer County Treasurer’s Office. He was to continue as a County worker for the rest of his life. Before her marriage, Katherine Kruegler, nee Hernberg, inspected shirt fronts in a local factory, Cluett’s, the maker of Arrow Shirts.¹

Billy Kruegler’s parents lived all their lives in Troy, but they didn’t meet until a friend of Katherine took matters into her own hands. Years later, Katherine told her children how that meeting came about.

My friend, Gussie Staley, had a brother who was Frank Kruegler’s friend…Frank invited me to a dance at St. Lawrence’s (parish) Hall, and from there our friendship grew.

These two, as was the custom, kept company for six years. Katherine said, "He worked as an office boy, and later, as an accountant at Tim and Company in Troy…I had graduated from Eighth Grade and expected to go to high school, but my folks needed my help, and so I worked at Cluett’s.

Dad had finished school at Ninth Grade. His small earnings were needed by his folks. Later, he would also help to put his sister, Marie, through business  college, and his brother, Antone, through the Seminary.²

On October 4, 1911, six years after Katherine and Frank had first met, they were married in St. Francis de Sales Church in Troy, New York.

Billy, according to Katherine’s own account, was born at our home, 34 North Lake Avenue, in Troy. He was baptized William Charles, by his uncle, Father Anthony B. Kruegler, at Our Lady of Victory Church, just across the way from where we lived.³

When Billy was still a baby, Katherine obtained a print of Chamber’s famous painting of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She invited a Father Tibbitts, a Jesuit  missionary and frequent visitor to the Kruegler home to bless the painting.

Katherine often recalled that event in later years, because after the priest blessed the painting, he turned to her. She was holding Billy in her arms and he gave the baby a special blessing.^

Loretta, Billy’s younger sister, the eleventh child in the family, remembers how her mother used to tell Billy he had to behave because he had received that special blessing5. Then, it may have been a young mother’s effort to cajole her son into good behavior, but later Katherine would see it as a special moment in Billy’s life.

Loretta says, too, that her earliest memories of her brother were of Mom wrapping him up to take him to the hospital. She says, Once it was something like pneumonia, and another time, he fell down the stairs and hit his head on a table at the bottom.^

Katherine Kruegler had lost a child, Leo Andrew, to spinal meningitis, eight years before Billy was born. When Billy, sick with an intestinal complaint and "Swollen glands," went into convulsions, she feared for his life. Billy’s father and Kate, his oldest sister, took the baby to St. Mary’s Hospital in Troy.

Two weeks later, Billy was completely well⁷. Even so, Katherine and everyone else watched over him anxiously. There was no recurrence and Billy grew healthier every day.

Like Troy children before him, Billy Kruegler grew up learning the legends and history of his famous town and its environs. Troy, seven miles south of Albany, where the Mohawk flows into the Hudson River, had originally been the home of Native Americans. Nearby, Kateri Tekawitha, Lily of The Mohawks, had first learned the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Billy attended Public School Number 18 at Sycaway in his own neighbor- hood. He took part in catechism classes at Our Lady of Victory School, where Sister Victorine, a Sister of Mercy, was his teacher.⁸

Billy often heard the story of the North American Martyrs, Isaac Jogues, Rene Goupil, and their companions. And like Catholic children of that generation, he learned that those Jesuit missionaries announced the Good News of Jesus Christ to Native Americans at the risk of their lives. Later studies would reveal that they did this at the very same time that these native Americans were seeing their  cultures threatened, their people in great part annihilated by European explorers intent on taking possession of a New World.

Loretta, now a Maryknoll Sister with long years of experience in Panama and Nicaragua, recalls childhood moments when Billy explained to her what a martyr was. From early on, too, Billy kept a picture of Kateri Tekawitha in his room.⁹

However, not all his activities had to do with religious events or persons. Loretta remembers others. She admits Billy was a lively child. Occasionally, he got into mischief, but never anything of moment. However, one day, he  surprised everyone.

Loretta says, Something happened…I don’t remember what it was. Apparently, the rest of the family thought it was settled. Then, when they had all gone about their chores, they heard something smash in the parlor. When they rushed in, they found Billy with his hand cut and bleeding. Angry, he had punched his little fist through a pane of glass in the French doors.

As the rest of the family stared at him in shocked