Something Else in Mind
By Vicki Mandell-King
Getting Jim Sunderland to talk about himself and his background is not an easy task. He tends to change the subject, or as he puts it, "change paragraphs." Jim always seems to have something else on his mind, something more important, like learning about you, or discussing the latest victory or defeat in the fight against the death penalty. But to avoid disappointing me and all of us, Jim did tell me a little about himself.
Jim was born on Christmas Day in 1924, and raised in Denver. He and his family were Catholics.
Jim finished one year of college before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Like most young men his age, he knew he had to go to war. He joined the Army Air Corps. (The Air Force was not established until 1948.) At that time, he had no inkling that he would become a Jesuit priest.
But Jim suffered from airsickness. As he puts it, he "washed out" of the corps. At the time, his mother said, "God must have something else in mind for you."
Years later, Jim learned that three-quarters of his squadron were killed in the war. Strangely, we really cannot tell right away if a turn of events is good or bad. Sometimes only time will tell.
So Jim Sunderland applied to and was accepted at West Point, entering in 1945. But one day, seemingly out of the blue, he suddenly had a deep sense of knowing that he should become a Jesuit priest. When I asked him to try to explain, he said he thinks he became a priest because he wanted to help people. Jim described how he felt seeing the sad, frightened faces of American soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. Sometimes it seems the most significant decisions in our lives come from some other place than the rational mind.
The Jesuit order is one of several religious orders in the Catholic Church. Inspired by a Jesuit teacher he had had while at Regis High School, Jim Sunderland chose to become a Jesuit.
Upon entering the seminary, Jim spent the first seven years studying liberal arts and philosophy. For four years after that, he studied theology. His final year was spent in retreat and prayer. Jim Sunderland was ordained in 1958 and finished his training in 1960.
Jim's first assignment was teaching. For four years he taught high school. In addition, he spent a year in Florence, Italy, living with and teaching college students. He was "really sad" to leave. He loved the history, architecture and art, and has a particular fondness for Michelangelo's statue of David. After that, for three years, he directed retreats.
In 1970, Jim was asked to serve as a hospital chaplain. He thought this would only be for six months. Six months turned into years. Although he found hospital life a "bit confining," as Jim puts it, "Jesuits do what they are told to do."
Having been gone since 1943, Jim Sunderland returned to Colorado in 1981. It was then that Jim met Charles Milligan, who had been fighting against the death penalty with Rollie Rogers for years. Charles was part of the Colorado Council Against the Death Penalty. Jim credits Charles Milligan as the one who got him involved in the fight against the death penalty, calling Charles his inspiration and mentor.
In 1983, Jim asked to be relieved from hospital chaplain work, and began searching for what he would do next. "With a snap of the fingers," he decided to become a jail house chaplain. How do we make the most important decisions in our lives? Jim calls it discernment -- there is a weighing and a knowing in your whole being. Jim had read an article about the murder of a child. In the course of burying the child, the priest said of the mother, herself involved in the murder, "she must have dies a thousand deaths." Jim was impressed with the priest's compassion -- compassion even for a murderer.
So it was the Jim became the first hired full-time prison chaplain in Denver, working for the Diocese beginning in 1983. He met inmates and people involved in prison reform. He attended national conventions on the death penalty, and came to know the leading figures in the abolitionist movement.
In 1984 Jim and others formed the Colorado Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Because the state public defenders managed to either overturn the statute, win in the guilt phase, or obtain a life sentence in the penalty phase, the movement lacked a certain urgency. While Colorado had a death penalty on its books, no execution was imminent. None-theless, for years, Jim acted as a one-man committee to keep citizens informed and concerned about the death penalty.
During these years, Jim testified on behalf of a half-dozen men. Gary Davis was one of them. I remember reading the transcript of Gary's penalty phase in 1987. At that time, Gary had only been in prison one year, and had not yet begun his journey toward sobriety, responsibility, remorse and forgiveness. As a consequence, there was not much that Jim Sunderland could say on behalf of Gary Davis. All he could testify to was his own faith that every person is capable of redemption. That was not enough to persuade the jurors to spare Gary's life.
Yet Jim Sunderland was there for Gary Davis again in the summer of 1997, when Dennis Hartley and I sought clemency from Governor Romer. Jim was first among the individuals and organizations who stood ready to help with clemency, and when that failed, to hold a vigil during the night of Gary's execution.
After the execution, those of us who had been meeting decided we should form Coloradans Against the Death Penalty, an organization built upon Jim's Coalition. At the same time, Jim retired, explaining that at 74, he was "running out of steam." Although retired, Jim remains very active. He says mass at area churches. He is the only Catholic priest who participates in the Denver Area Interfaith Clergy. He serves on CADP's Advisory Council.
Time does tell, and indeed, hindsight may be 20-20. We
can look back upon 74 years of living and discern a pattern.
Jim's mother was right years ago. God did have something
else in mind for Jim Sunderland.
Coloradans Against the Death Penalty Newsletter -- Fall 1999
[Note: Father Sunderland died in January, 2006 at age
81.]
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