By Tim Wenzl and David Myers

Southwest Kansas Register

When young Aloysius Preisner told his father he wanted to be a priest, his father replied, "Then be a good one."

These words were repeated by Bishop Ronald M. Gilmore to dozens of priests, friends and relatives of Msgr. "A.F." Preisner, 88, who gathered July 6 at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe to mourn his death and celebrate his life.

"I came late to Monsignor...," Bishop Gilmore said. "I came to him in the mellower reflective season of his life: the time when he was reminiscing, and remembering, and reviewing everything that had happened to him...."

While Msgr. Preisner was coming to grips with his advancing age, "you could see in him the very thing St. Paul underlined in our second reading: ‘A new form was being given to his lowly body, the Lord was remaking it according to the pattern of his own glorified body.’

"The desire to be a dedicated man of the Church was strong in him to the end," Bishop Gilmore said. "Faith remained strong in him to the end as he gradually lost everything. Hope remained strong in him to the end as he was being stripped even of self. Love remained strong in him to the end even when he could no longer express it adequately.

"And now the grain of wheat has fallen to the earth, has died, as the Gospel of John told us. Aloysius Frederick Preisner ... has entered the even deeper waters of eternity: ‘the deep and dazzling darkness of God,’ St. Augustine said.

"I know you will keep his memory alive. I know you will pray for him. I know he will certainly pray for us."

Msgr. Preisner died July 1 at Western Plains Medical Complex in Dodge City. The third of five children to Alois and Anna Huslig Preisner, Msgr. Preisner was born in Claflin where he attended grade school at Immaculate Conception School. When his family moved to Ashland, he attended the public high school before transferring to St. Joseph Military Academy at Hays.

There, he began his college studies at St. Joseph Junior College before entering St. Louis Prep Seminary and then Kenrick Seminary, both in St. Louis, Mo.

He was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Christian H. Winkelman on June 9, 1940 in the chapel at Sacred Heart College (now Newman University).

His first assignment was assistant pastor at St. Mary, Newton. After a short time he was appointed pastor at St. Agnes, Castleton, and given the additional responsibilities of the chaplaincies at St. Elizabeth Hospital and the state reformatory in Hutchinson.

During World War II he served as a military chaplain with the United States Navy. He served at Mare Island in California and on the U.S.S. Braxton in the South Pacific. He saw the devastated city of Nagasaki only days after the atom bomb was dropped. He then witnessed the signing of the papers that ended World War II in the Bay of Tokyo.

After the war, he continued as chaplain at a base in Texas before his honorable discharge in 1947.

He returned to Kansas where his pastoral assignments included St. Joan of Arc, Elkhart, with St. Helen, Hugoton; St. Mary, Aleppo; Sacred Heart, Larned, with the chaplaincy at the state hospital there; Sacred Heart Cathedral, Dodge City; St. Anthony, Liberal and St. Andrew, Wright.

Venita (Jarboe) Patzell was attending Sacred Heart School in Larned when then-Father Preisner first arrived at its doors.

"He quite often took a carload of us kids to ball games," Patzell fondly recalled. "He’d come out on the playground and play with the kids."

In high school, Patzell worked briefly as a secretary at the rectory, where she recalled the monsignor as being "very pleasant – a lot of fun." A few years later, on April 11, 1955, Msgr. Preisner presided at Patzell’s wedding to her husband, Bill.

Upon being informed of the monsignor’s death, Patzell reviewed old documents, and learned for the first time that Msgr. Preisner and her husband both attended the same military academy.

Msgr. Preisner was also remembered as being a rabid sports enthusiast, who led the school’s basketball team with the intensity of a NBA coach.

On May 9, 1959, Pope John XXIII elevated Msgr. Preisner to the rank of Domestic Prelate, and he was given the title Monsignor.

In addition to his parish assignments, Msgr. Preisner served the diocese in the following positions: Diocesan Consultor and Pro-Synodal Examiner; Dean of the Larned Deanery; Diocesan Priest Chairman of the Diocesan Development Program; Vicar General; as member of the College of Consultors, and a member of the Southwest Kansas Register editorial board.

Msgr. Preisner was awarded the Bishop Marion F. Forst Medallion for his support and dedication to the mission of St. Mary of the Plains College in 1991.

After his retirement in 1991, he moved to Dodge City. He was a member of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish.

He is survived by two sisters, Anna Strothman, and Mary Urban, both of Wichita, and his housekeeper, Bernardine Kallaus of Dodge City.

He was preceded in death by his brothers, Joseph and Frank.

Msgr. Preisner was buried in Highland Cemetery, Ashland, with Father John Strasser officiating at the interment service.

That line from Proverbs casts a light on Monsignor Preisner, I think, and on each of us who mourn him. The intention of the human heart is like deep, deep water. It is below the moving surface. It is obscure. It is hidden.

I came late to Monsignor, but I was privileged to learn of his surface (his public life), and privileged as well to be taken into some of his deeps. I came to him in the mellower reflective season of his life: the time when he was reminiscing, and remembering, and reviewing everything that had happened to him; the time when he was trying to come to terms with it; the time when he was trying to make sense of it all.

The surface was clear. His early years in Newton and Hutchinson; his service in the Navy; his first pastorate in Elkhart where he had no house to live in (Bishop Carroll once asked him where Elkhart was. When he pointed it out on a map, the good bishop simply blessed himself in silence ); his long and productive stay in Lamed; his decade at the Cathedral in Dodge; his years in Liberal; his final active years in Wright: he faced these years with the unshakeable conviction we read about in the Book of Lamentations ...the favors of the Lord are not exhausted; his mercies are not spent, they are renewed each morning.

These years and that faith shaped and honed the elements of his character. There was his reputation for being a demanding pastor, I am told (but in the days since his death, I have been pleased to hear the fond memories of some priests who lived with him, and their even fonder memories of Bernie). There was his storied and always quiet generosity

after his own beginning in poverty (one year he could not pay his laundry bill, and was almost denied re-enrollment in the seminary). There was his devotion to Catholic education. He did wonders with the school in Lamed, with the school in Dodge, with the school in Liberal, and with other schools around the diocese that most knew nothing about.

The surface was clear and the surface was impressive, but the deeps were even more intriguing to me. We talked of all manner of things when I came to the Diocese, things official and things personal. He was then coming to grips with his advancing age. You could see in him the very thing St. Paul underlined in our second reading: a new form was being given to his lowly body, the Lord was remaking it according to the pattern of his own glorified body.

He had lost his position as Vicar General. He had lost his last pastorate in Wright. He was losing his health. He came to lose his legendary ability to attend to business, others and his own. At the end, he was losing the ability to do the thing he loved most, to celebrate Mass. It was a slow and a complicated and a painful remaking. From what I could see, he faced it with patience, with courage, and with good humor.

In those conversations, I came to know what he tried to do with what he had. He lived out the fundamental intention of his human heart as best he could. He was sorry he could not do it better. So you want to be a priest, his father once said, then be a good one. His own humble struggle to be faithful to the God who called him was instructive and impressive to me. The desire to be a dedicated man of the Church was strong in him to the end. Faith remained strong in him to the end as he gradually lost everything. Hope remained strong in him to the end as he was being stripped even of self. Love remained strong in him to the end even when he could no longer express it adequately.

And now the grain of wheat has fallen to the earth, has died, as the Gospel of John told us. Aloysius Frederick Preisner, a complex man with his own deeps, has entered the even deeper waters of eternity: the deep and dazzling darkness of God, Saint Augustine said. I know you will keep his memory alive. I know you will pray for him. I know he will certainly pray for us.