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Br. George Popovics, Obl.S.B.
Arrangements
The Reception of Br. George and Wake Service:
Monday, August 8 at 7:00 PM in the Abbey Church.
The Funeral and Burial: Tuesday, August 9 at 10:30 am.
Biography
Our confrere, Brother George Popovics, died at Edward Hospital, Naperville, IL, at the age of 91. Born in Holden, West Virginia, he was only one year old when his mother, for reasons of health, returned along with her children to her native region of Subcarpathian Ruthenia, at that time part of Czechoslovakia.
His father followed once a farm was purchased, and Brother George lived with his parents until the beginning of 1940, when the unsettled conditions of wartime Europe led him to come back to the United States.
He settled in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, and worked in a steel foundry until drafted into the Army after Pearl Harbor. He spent most of the war at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, only crossing the Atlantic in the conflict’s final months. The rapid advance of the Allied armies thereafter meant that his paratroop unit never saw combat.
After his discharge from the armed forces, he was involved in both restaurant and trucking work before joining Holy Trinity Priory in Pennsylvania during the mid-1950’s. After about two years, he decided to come to St. Procopius Abbey.
For personal reasons, Brother George never formally professed vows, but he lived the remainder of his days firmly and prayerfully committed to the Rule of St. Benedict. Deeply devoted to the Byzantine Rite, he spent several years with Father Demetrius Kowalchik at the Abbey’s Reunion Center in Chicago.
He also was of great assistance to Father Claude Viktora in the church unity apostolate that was then a major activity of the Abbey, and for many years he assisted at the Mass of Father Chrysostom Tarasevitch.
In every respect, Brother George was a hard worker, serving over the decades as the Abbey’s chauffeur, barber, bee-keeper, wine-maker and general jack-of-all-trades.
It was said that the best way to get a job done was to remark off-handedly to Brother George that it was really way too big for any one man to accomplish.
For nearly four decades before his death, doctors warned him that he needed to slow down. Cheerfully shrugging off that and most other advice from “lazy intellectuals” who “sit on their brains,” Brother George well into his ninth decade kept up his many activities, both at the Abbey and for the sake of others who appealed to his good heart.
Indeed, it was long expected that only one thing could ever slow him down: the time for community prayers and devotions, which he very rarely missed. In the course of 2009, however, time caught up with him in various ways, and by the following year he needed the more advanced care that Meadowbrook Manor in Naperville, could supply.
Please remember Brother George in your prayers.
Abbot Austin and Community
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