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Dr. Jack Andonie, 84, grew up pedaling his way through life.
As a teenager attending Redemptorist High School in the Irish Channel, he woke up at 2 a.m. to begin his newspaper delivery route, 365 days a year, to help his mom make ends meet. Andonie’s father had abandoned the family, and young Jack supplemented the family’s meager income by selling shoes and working as an exterminator.
Andonie narrowed his career path on his fifth birthday when someone gave him a kiddie doctor’s kit, even though as a junior and senior at Redemptorist, he prayed seriously about entering the seminary. Friends mocked his dream to become a doctor because they knew his family couldn’t afford the tuition.
“The more they told me that I couldn’t, the more my mother said, ‘God’s going to fix it!’” Andonie said.
Her words became prophetic when the night before his high school graduation, Andonie was chosen as the sole recipient of a full scholarship to Loyola University New Orleans. Andonie went on to graduate from LSU Medical School in New Orleans, where a two-year residency caring for pregnant unwed mothers at St. Vincent’s Infant Home convinced him to become an obstetrician-gynecologist.
Over a five-decade career, he estimates he delivered more than 10,000 babies. His Catholic faith and bicycle ethic compelled him to establish a free medical clinic for women in Nicaragua and a dental clinic for the homeless at Ozanam Inn.
All of which brings us to his second-born, Patrick Anthony Andonie.
When Patrick died of COVID in August at the age of 56, he left behind what his father recognized as a patchwork quilt of grace, mercy and wonder.
Patrick was a shy teen who practiced for two years with the Archbishop Rummel High School football team but who, unlike Rudy Ruettiger at Notre Dame, never played in a game.
“He loved sports, so he went out for the Rummel football team, and I knew he would never play a down,” Andonie said. “The team loved his attitude. Finally, he came to me and said his grades were slipping because he was spending so much time at practice, so I told him, ‘Patrick, it’s not quitting when you’re doing it to improve your grades.’”
As a teenager, Patrick always had his antennae out if there was someone in the neighborhood in crisis, and he would go directly to his dad.
“He’d sit me down and say, ‘So and so is having trouble with finances and might have to leave school,’ so I knew he always had a loving heart,” Andonie said.
Patrick’s best friend, attorney A.J. Herbert, moved into a home across the street from the Andonies when he was 12. Patrick later became the best man in Herbert’s wedding and godfather to his first child.
“When we were in the car together and came to a four-way stop, there were always folks on the corner, and out came Patrick’s wallet,” Herbert said. “I said, ‘Patrick, these guys are scamming you.’ And he said, ‘If they need, I provide. If they’re scamming, that’s between them and God.’ If there was any ill motive, it didn’t faze him. He’d do the same thing the next day.”
Patrick was always on call for his friends. He loaded up a U-haul and took a three-day, cross-country trip to move Herbert to Boston University for postgraduate studies. But it was Patrick’s mission of mercy one Thanksgiving morning that Herbert, then in his 20s, will never forget.
Herbert’s uncle had died during the night, and Herbert’s aunt, who lived with her brother, called her nephew for help because she was now alone.
“She didn’t want to call an ambulance out because she was afraid the neighbors would see that she was now living alone,” Herbert said. “So she asked me to come over. I called up Patrick and said, ‘I know it’s Thanksgiving, but will you help me move my uncle?’ So we walk into the house, and my uncle’s just dead on the bed, and Patrick is just staring at me. My aunt is saying we could put him in the car and take him to the coroner’s. I was like, ‘I don’t think we can do that.’ Patrick just stared at me with bug eyes – he never said no – but he said,, ‘You asked me to help move your uncle. You didn’t say it was a body.’”
Patrick’s love for helping others led in the late 1990s to his entering Notre Dame Seminary to study for the priesthood. He completed 3 1/2 years of theological studies before leaving, and later he taught religion at Rummel, Mount Carmel Academy and St. Edward the Confessor School.
Discerning a call to help the poor more concretely, he moved to New York in 2010 and became a volunteer with Lay Apostolic Ministries with the Poor (LAMP), where he met his future wife Eve, a Catholic missionary from Poland. LAMP worked in the poorest sections of the city with the homeless, abandoned, elderly and ignored.
“He didn’t have any money, so he asked me, ‘Is it OK if I put some stuff on a credit card?’” Andonie recalled.
After a few months, the elder Andonie was receiving credit card bills of $5,000 a month.
“Finally, he came home for a visit, and I asked him what was going on with these bills,” Andonie said. “I wasn’t fussing; I just wanted to know about it. And Patrick says, ‘Well, you know Dad, a guy comes here and he doesn’t have shoes, I’ve got to go take him and buy a pair of shoes. If he’s got no clothes, I’ve got to go buy him clothes.’”
Andonie later served as a volunteer with the Share Foundation in Indiana, which operated a working farm for those who are intellectually and developmentally disabled, and then with the Bishop Grady Villa in Orlando, Florida, a residential community for the developmentally disabled.
“It was just his inherent nature to help others,” Herbert said. “He never denied anyone who asked for his help.”
When he returned to New Orleans in 2013, Patrick embarked on another career off the beaten track, perhaps as a counter to his introvert’s personality. He became a stand-up comic. The twist was his self-deprecating humor was always G-rated. He was a proud participant in the Clean Comedy Challenge, which sponsored annual conventions across the country. Some of his routines remain on Facebook and YouTube.
Patrick would try out his newest material on Herbert, arriving with jokes scrawled on a yellow legal pad and a quirky sense of humor.
“I’ve been told I’m the funniest comedian in New Orleans,” Patrick told an audience in 2018, before a pregnant pause. “My Mom never lies. … My mom’s 79. She was saying the other day, ‘I’m not afraid to die, I just want to live long enough …’ I said, ‘I know, Mom, you want to see me become more successful in standup comedy.’ And she said, ‘No, I want to see the iPhone 15.’”
On getting married late in life: “It was really hard for me to finally meet somebody. I tried online dating – a site called dysfunctionalmatch.com. I met a woman with multiple personality disorder. … None of ’em liked me.”
On growing up as a second child: “I had nothing but hand-me-down clothes. It became a problem when I outgrew my sister. … My dad gave my sister a pet snake. Every day, I got a new hamster. I’ll never forget my pet hamsters … Fluffy … and Fluffy .. and Fluffy…”
On his self-deprecating nature: “National Geographic contacted me. At the bottom of the Pacific, they had found my self-esteem. They asked me if I wanted it back, and I said, ‘Nah, it’s not worth the shipping costs.’”
After Patrick’s death, his father and Herbert talked about creating something in Patrick’s honor that would live on. They came up with the idea of the Patrick Andonie Seminary Fund, which will be used at Notre Dame Seminary to help seminarians on outreach missions to the poor of New Orleans. The fund is hosted by the Catholic Community Foundation of the Archdiocese of New Orleans.
“Of course, we’re very prejudiced, but my wife and I think Patrick would have been a fantastic priest – giving, loving, concerned, charitable, the whole thing,” Andonie said. “At least that’s what I consider an ideal priest. You live your life for somebody else.”
To donate to the Patrick Andonie Seminary Fund, contact the Catholic Community Foundation at ccfnola.org or (504) 596-3045.