I was preparing the evening meal for our Glenmary district meeting when Father Rollie sauntered through the kitchen. The menu featured baked salmon, asparagus, glazed carrots and rosemary potatoes—a healthy meal by any dietary standards.

“I love salmon,” he purred. “And speaking of healthy and unhealthy meals, I remember this restaurant in Jefferson that held a fundraiser-brunch every year for heart research. It rolled out a gigantic steam table filled with all sorts of breakfast items–eggs, bacon, sausage, ham, biscuits and gravy. Ironically, it was helping the local heart association by serving all the cholesterol you could eat.”

Always quick with a story, Father Rollie is the perfect mentor for a second-generation Glenmarian like myself. Having joined Glenmary in the early 1960s, I cherish the stories that he weaves into a virtual patch quilt showcasing the early spirit of Glenmary–stories that highlight the uncommon, insignificant, or curious.

Whenever our Virginia/North Carolina/Eastern Tennessee district gathers, the conversation around the table regularly sparks memories. But nobody has more stories, with more details, than Father Rollie.

“You don’t think of these stories till guys get together and talk about the old days,” Father Rollie reflects. “One story just reminds me of others.”

Actually, he keeps his stories in categories. They span nearly 50 years in Appalachia with experiences of culture shock, outdoor preaching, convert-making and tales of general interest.

Mass in the mountains during the 1950s is one category of stories Father Rollie recalls with a subdued laugh.

One time during Mass at a small mission station in Tusquitty, N.C., a woman sat in his congregation nursing her baby while periodically turning her head to spit tobacco juice out the window.

Another time in a remote part of Scott County, Va., called Hunters Valley, Father Rollie caught sight of a delicate fawn grazing in the churchyard during his homily. Captivated by its grace, he recounts how he preached to delay returning to the altar and facing the wall. He estimates that Sunday he probably preached half the catechism.

For younger generation Glenmarians, storytelling evokes images of Appalachia before the 1960s when roads opened the mountains and government programs improved much of the region.

Father Rollie reminded me that more than a century ago Dungannon, Va., was called Osborne’s Ford, because the Clinch River ran shallow enough for an oxcart crossing and the Osborne clan populated the area. That family name appeared on various small businesses over the years, and one abandoned red-framed grocery building still stands today a mile from Dungannon on the Coeburn Road where Father Bob Berson traded.

One time in the 1950s Father Bob stopped by the Osborne store for some meat. The owner, who also repaired autos in the backyard, would crawl out from under a car when he heard a customer.

Father Bob just wanted some hamburger, but he saw that the sliding door of the meat case was left open and a cat was nibbling on the meat. When the owner entered the store and found the cat, he lifted the cat out and slid the door shut leaving the half-eaten hamburger.

Thinking fast, Father Bob asked for bologna instead. The man obliged by wiping a knife on his grease-stained trousers, cutting a pound of bologna from the roll and wrapping it for his customer. Chagrined, Father Bob headed home considering the alternative of fasting for the night.

A lot of Father Rollie’s stories about other Glenmarians capture the ordinary with a twist. In the 1950s Dungannon, Va., still followed the Appalachian tradition of open range for farm animals. One time Father Pat Breheny returned from the market with a bag of apples on the ledge under the car’s back window.

While carrying in the other groceries, he left open the back door of his Plymouth. When he returned for the apples, he faced the back end of a contented cow, hind legs on the ground, front legs kneeling on the back seat, munching Father Pat’s prized Winesaps.

Father Rollie is revealed at his storytelling best when he turns to the category of converts. With measured excitement he paints the background details as he recalls the movement of grace.

Around 1957 Fred Matthews, the Catholic owner of the local Coca Cola plant, donated some old signs to St. Therese Church in St. Paul, Va. After repainting them to publicize the church’s location and time of Mass, Father Rollie placed them around town.

Two weeks later a man knocked at the rectory and said he never before realized there was a Catholic church in town and wanted to become a member. Curious, Father Rollie asked him why he wanted to join the Catholic faith.

The fellow looked at him and simply said, “Because I want my sins taken away.” Rarely does anyone approach the church with so slight a welcome that proves so humbling.

In March 1955 Addie Cox heard Father Bob Berson preach on the radio. It sounded to her like this preacher was in favor of integration.

Based on that, Ms. Cox, principal of the new black high school in Dante, about nine miles from St. Paul, invited Father Bob to give the baccalaureate talk at the dedication and first graduation class of Arty Lee High School that May. Hundreds of African Americans from Derbe, Coeburn, Appalachia and surrounding towns in Virginia flocked to the ceremony where Father Bob found himself the only white.

Later that summer Father Rollie did some outdoor preaching in the field opposite the school in Sawmill Hollow. Ms. Cox kept asking questions about the Catholic Church and begged for more and more literature to read.

After six months she finally told him, “I’d like to be Catholic but I can’t. If I join your church you’d never have another white convert.”

“That has nothing to do with it,” Father Rollie replied, “The door of the church opens to everyone.”

Addie Cox did join the church along with her 12-year-old daughter Marcia. She became an active member of the Legion of Mary and sang in the choir. She sent Marcia to a Catholic high school in Ohio. After graduating from Clarke College, a Catholic institution in Dubuque, Iowa, Marcia went on to work for the National Council of Catholic Women in Washington, D.C.

Meanwhile in St. Paul, Va., Ethel Perry, another African American, joined St. Therese Church a few years later—and a string of whites did also. In those years, (late 1950s, early 1960s) St. Therese was the only integrated church in the entire area.

Father Rollie is a happy priest. Just turning 75, he faces autumn in his current parish of Gate City, Va., with no plans to retire. “What I like is being pastor here. I like the people. I like the area.”

Face still marked by his boyish grin, he continues to examine the unique and curious about life—and he reminds younger Glenmarians what ministry is all about.

“Stories,” he says, “are about relationships. People come in and out of your life and you continue being their friend long after they move on. It’s nice picking up new stories, you know, because it means getting new relationships.”