Tom Wakely for Congress

January 4th, 2026

 

When my wife and I were living in Austin, TX, I was working as the Executive Director of the Economic Justice Foundation. Now the foundation was pretty much just a policy type of non-profit, discussing things like raising the minimum wage and a tax on the assets of the uber-rich. Not too different from a host of other non-profits doing the same thing now as we did back then. However, we were a different type of policy organization in that we had two subsidiary non-profits, the Praxis Corporation and the Corporation for Affordable Housing.

 

The Corporation for Affordable Housing wasn’t a policy non-profit. We actually built affordable housing, renovated old housing; we even put in a small subdivision with streets, sewer lines and sidewalks. Our service area was rural communities in central Texas. We even won a contract to rehab some public housing units right north of Austin. The Praxis corporation on the other hand raised money to support the small contractors, like electricians, plumbers, carpenters, pretty much anyone working in the building trades, who worked on our construction projects. Anyway, what we found out after a year or so doing this type of hands-on work, building and lending, that there just wasn’t enough money available to all these small, minority owned contractors. So, one of our Board members, a Catholic priest, Robert Mahoney who was better known simply as Fr. Bob, came up with a brilliant plan. But what that plan was, is another story for another day.

 

Now Fr. Bob was no ordinary Catholic priest. He was born in 1928, a year before the great depression started. He said he never knew his dad as he passed away shortly after he was born. His mom raised him, his three brothers and his sister, he said. She cleaned other people’s houses to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. But there was never enough money. It was 1944. The U.S. had already entered the second World War. Bread lines were still everywhere and food shortages were common. So, at the age of fifteen, Bob came up with his 1^st brilliant plan. 

 

He said he and his three brothers agreed to stage boxing matches on street corners in downtown South Bend, Indiana. They would take turns beating the hell out of each other, taking bets from the assembled crowd as to who would win the match. Sometimes he fought one of his brothers, sometimes he would collect the bets. The only problem with this money raising venture Bob said was that he and his brothers would have to skip school to fight. Each time they skipped school the priest who oversaw the Catholic school they all attended would report them to their mom. She would then use the spanking paddle on him and his brothers along with the admonishment to never skip school again. But when they all skipped school again, for the fourth time in as many months, he said they were all afraid to go home and face their mother. His brothers said they would go on home and face the wrath of their Irish mother. Bob said, he thought about it and decided that joining the Army was better than facing his mom again. 

 

When he went to the Army recruiting station, he said he told the Sergeant he was seventeen and about to turn eighteen. But the recruiter told him he wasn’t old enough and that he could either wait until he turned eighteen and come on back or he could get his parents’ permission to enlist now. He said he told the recruiter he would get his dad’s permission as he wanted to enlist now and was handed a permission slip. Bob said that then went down to one of the bars near where he and his brothers fought, found someone willing to sign his permission slip for the price of a beer. 

 

After basic training Bob said he assigned to the 3^rd Battalion, 503^rd Parachute Infantry. When said he remembered his first jump very well. They were flying over the Island of Noemfoor, off the coast of Dutch New Guinea and he was crying. Pleading with the sergeant not to make him jump. That he was only fifteen, and that he had lied to join. Too bad the sergeant said as he pushed him out of the plane. There were significant casualties that day, but he survived unharmed. For the next year he fought his way around the Pacific, island to island, until the war ended.

After his discharge he didn’t go home, as he was still afraid of his mom, he said. So, enlisted in the Navy, serving in the 1^st Marine Division. He said he was part of the amphibious landing at Inchon, Korea. When that war was over, he said that he was tired of killing people and all the death around him. He entered Saint Mary’s Seminary in La Porte, TX. He died in 2009.

 

Then reason I remember Fr. Bob so fondly was that he married my wife and me. As we knelt before him, at San Fernando Cathedral in downtown San Antonio, Tx., he looked at me and then proceeded to slap me upside my head. “You do know that the only reason you might get into heaven is because of this woman you are marrying. She’s a saint, and your not. You understand me.” I looked at him, then at my soon to be wife and said, “I understand.”

 

Over the years Bob and I talked a lot about war and peace, and all he had seen in both wars. While there were a few things he told me, most of the time he didn’t share what he had done or seen. But he did say one time, that while he had joined the Army in WWII to get away from his mom, he soon came to realize that it was everyone’s duty to fight fascism. And today I wonder what Fr. Bob would say about Trump and his ordering American troops to invade Venezuela and capture their President all in the pursuit of oil. I suspect Bob would probably say what he said about the Korean War, that it was a political war. And he would be right. But he would also say, that any President who would go to war over oil, was no better than Hitler. And again, I would say he was right.