Recently Retired, Getting Ready For The Next Phase Of His Life

What is an oasis? Can a visit to one be powerful enough to sustain you in your ordinary daily life?

Father Bob Nemergut says maybe it can.

There are subtle shades of an east coast accent that appear as Father Nemergut speaks. He's originally from Connecticut, but he's lived here in southern Indiana long enough that now he calls himself a Yankee Hoosier.

He's tall and thin, and he wears his grey hair back in a pony tail. Today, he's wearing a black beret with a 15-year service pin attached to it. It's from the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility in Carlisle, where he was a chaplain before retiring in early July.

As he enters this new phase in his life, he's still figuring out his retirement and he's remembering his past -- especially the two sabbaticals that served as oases in his interesting life.

Right now, he's hoping to take a third sabbatical in 2015, this time to South America. That trip will finish his trilogy of visits to developing continents.

He took his first sabbatical in 1986. Most of it was spent in India. He visited with now-deceased Divine Word Father Jerry Ziliak from the Haubstadt area, who was a missionary to Karpur, India, at the time.

He also did pastoral work in Mother Teresa's Home for the Destitute and Dying in Calcutta. When he arrived in Calcutta, the nun asked him to visit three places -- an orphanage, a home for the mentally handicapped and a home for the destitute and dying -- and then to choose one. He chose the home for the destitute and dying, and spent part of his sabbatical helping out there.

At the time, Jesuit priests from nearby Xavier College said daily Mass at Mother Teresa's motherhouse. While he was in Calcutta, they offered him the chance to take their place at the early morning Masses. There were 300 to 400 Sisters who attended these daily Masses, and "she [Mother Teresa] was right in the center," he remembers. "When you are preaching, you are looking right at her," he said, adding, "when you give the homily, you are triple humbled!"

In 1997, Father Nemergut asked Bishop Gerald A. Gettelfinger to give the approval for him to work as a chaplain at the prison in Carlisle. The bishop approved immediately. When Father Nemergut asked the bishop why "you were so quick to say 'yes'" he was told, "It's in our diocese, isn't it?"

Father Nemergut says his first goal as a prison chaplain was to last one day. Then to last five years. He lasted longer than that, and in 2008, he left the prison to take a second sabbatical, this time to Africa.

He had a friend from seminary days, Thomas Kwaku Mensah, now the archbishop emeritus of Kumasi, who lived in Ghana. "He taught me the art of hugging," Father Nemergut said of his friend, and because of that lesson the Nemergut family "became a hugging family."

The priest had no expectations for his visit to Ghana. He just knew he didn't want to be busy. Almost every day, he would walk 35 to 45 minutes downtown to the cathedral in Obasi. "I took the back roads, where there was less traffic."

During his first few days there, he spotted a small group of houses or shacks. Near one of the homes was a small wooden table with a branch placed across the middle of it. "Ping pong!" he thought. On the third day, as he walked by, he saw kids playing one of his favorite games. The branch was their net, and their paddles were made out of cardboard.

He was invited to play, and soon he had played everyone in the neighborhood. By the time he was ready to leave the area, he had forged a friendship of sorts with the residents.

"That was my ping pong experience," he says. "I was accepted, and language was no barrier. We laughed, and they were bouncing and jumping. What more enrichment could you want -- to be accepted by people because you have fun with them."

He spent the next two weeks in Kumasi because his friend Thomas was being installed as the archbishop there.

Kumasi is a large city, and one day he was introduced to a religious Sister who was going to take him shopping in the center of the city. He was told, "You walk fast. She walks faster. Keep up or you will be lost."

It was good advice, he remembers. "I was over-awed by everything." That experience made him realize "you have to be sensitive to where you are. If you get lost, you didn't have to get lost. Follow instructions."

Father Nemergut says he was able to bring the richness of both sabbatical experiences back to southern Indiana, and use it in his prison ministry work here.

There are about 2,000 men in the prison at Carlisle. Of that group, about 150 to 160 are listed as Catholics. "Most of them have never been to Mass, but they were baptized as infants. They are Catholic in name."

During his tenure as chaplain, he started a newsletter for them, which he distributed once a month. He tried to get Catholic literature into the prison for them, and most recently he brought in calendars created by the Sisters of St. Joseph of La Grange Park in Illinois. Each month features artwork by one of the Sisters, and each day has an uplifting quote. The August 2 quote asks, "Which of your talents/gifts do you nurture."

The calendars are called "Invisible Beauty." That title connects with the priest, who says he wants the prisoners "to see beauty that they don't see in themselves."

Since July 5, Father Nemergut has been transitioning from a life where he is no longer a full-time chaplain employed by the Indiana Department of Corrections to life as a part-time volunteer at the prison. For the immediate future, he plans to visit the prison on Thursdays and celebrate the Eucharist. He's also planning his third sabbatical, this time to South America.

Each sabbatical has created an oasis in his life. He has fond memories of standing at a monument in India that is dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi and thinking, "He gave his all so this place could be here."

He had the same experience when he was in South Africa and visited the island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned.

Father Nemergut has tried to share the richness of those experiences back here in southern Indiana. He found that in his prison ministry work "if the guys are open to your character and your attitude, they will help you build anything. And you can help them create an oasis."