The Rev. Frank Toia

In my old age I find myself thinking about the days of my youth. After about 18 months after joining the United States Marine Corps, I was transferred to the Third Marine Division on Okinawa. I arrived on Christmas Eve Day, 1963.

Within a matter of days after settling in at my quarters, I attended a chapel service on a Sunday morning at Camp Hague. The minister was a young (just a few years older than I) presiding. It was an Episcopal Church service of Holy Communion from the Book of Common Prayer. After the service I met the young clergyman thinking that he was a U.S. Navy Chaplain. He was not.

Frank Toia was an Episcopal missionary and was the curate at All Souls Episcopal Church near Naha, Okinawa in a township called Machinato. The English-speaking church had a membership of mostly U.S. military personnel and their families. I wasted no time getting involved in the church family, not only on Sunday mornings but during the week, if I could.

Father Toia and the senior minister at All Souls, Father Paul Savanack, began to take me (and others) under their wings and prepared many of us for Confirmation. The bishop of Honolulu, Harry Kennedy, confirmed me and others only a few months later on March 31, 1964.

Fr. Toia and his family lived in a local Okinawa community. As time passed he continued his missionary work. I attempted to track him over the decades but apparently he was accepting calls for missionary duty around the globe. The last I heard, which was only a month or so ago, was that Frank Toia had been a missionary in Guatemala. That was good. It sounded like him and his work.

The news I learned last week from internet blog posts was that Fr. Toia is sick with recurrent pneumonia and is using his home as a hospice as he awaits his calling home.

I am grateful for - and I remember vividly - Frank Toia and his young family from all those years ago. A faithful follower of Christ, he knew no stranger. It appears that his entire ministry over the  years served people around parts of the world.

I pray that his earthly life passes peacefully and without pain. I know that his entry into eternity will be a glorious passage.

This is one of the Internet links where I learned of Frank Toia recently.
NYT article about Frank Toia and friends