September 25, 2024

Editor’s Note: Earlier this year, when the Jubilee Mass was celebrated, two priests, Father William G. “Bill” Muench and Father Philip T. Allen, were missed. Both celebrated 65 years of priesthood this year. Father Allen did not wish to be interviewed for this article.

By Darcy Fargo
Editor

“There have been so many chapters in my life,” said Father William G. “Bill” Muench. “There’s been a lot of change.”

A native of Syracuse, Father Muench said he attended Catholic grade school and public high school.

When his mother died when he was only 10, Father Bill said it was a priest who delivered the news to him.

Later, it was a religious sister who got him thinking about the priesthood and religious life.

“In high school, we had release time,” he said. “One of the sisters – I didn’t realize she was so important at the time – got me reading Thomas Merton. When I was a senior in high school, we had to do a major paper. I wrote about Trappist Monks. I was so deep into it, I talked my father into taking me to visit the (Trappist) monastery in Piffard.”

When he started considering the priesthood, a series of events led him to the Diocese of Ogdensburg.

“I had classmates from Peru, New York,” he said. “I had no idea where that was. I had classmates from Plattsburgh. I didn’t know where that was, either.

Father Muench said he enjoyed his time in seminary, first at Wadhams Hall and later at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore.

“Our program at Wadhams Hall, there were maybe 50 of us there, we had a powerful public speaking program,” he said. “Most of us were just out of high school. Father Bailey, Father Joseph Bailey, he was also the first pastor I worked with, did the program. By the time we got into parish work, we were very used to talking in front of people. Looking back, my time in seminary was very happy.”

After Father Muench was ordained on May 16, 1959, by Bishop James J. Navagh, those next chapters of his life saw him growing in his ministry and in familiarity with the diocese.

“I was ordained in 1959, and from 1962 to ’75, I was a high school teacher,” he said. “I taught religion and chemistry and physics. I coached basketball. When I run into my former students, they’re all grandparents now.”
While a teacher, he served as a parochial vicar in Gouverneur, Massena (St. Mary’s), Brasher Falls, Chateaugay, Brownville, Watertown (St. Patrick’s) and at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Ogdensburg. He was named pastor in Sackets Harbor in 1970.

Father Muench said he really enjoyed his time as a teacher and learning to work in parishes.

“That was a happy time,” he said. “I enjoyed every moment of it. When I was pastor of St. Andrew’s in Sackets Harbor, I was teaching at IHC (Immaculate Heart Central). We had a lot of kids at the parish, and I had a different group of kids at the school. One year, the football championship was between Sackets Harbor and IHC.”

When his teaching career ended, Father Muench said he was a bit sad about it at first.

“I missed it for a while,” he said. “Then I really got into parish work, and I enjoyed that, too. I enjoyed all of my parish assignments, and I loved the people I met everywhere I went, but as a rule, the last parish you were in always stands out. For me, that’s St. Mary’s in Ticonderoga.”

In addition to his parish work, he also worked in campus ministry in the 1980s at SUNY Plattsburgh, and he spent a few years at the diocese’s Peruvian Apostolate in Mollendo, Peru

He retired first in 2011, but then came out of retirement to serve for a period of time in Saranac Lake when St. Bernard’s pastor at the time, Father Mark Reilly, was serving the United States military. It was around that time that he began writing for the North Country Catholic.

“Back in my days in education, I had written some about sports,” he said. “That was an on and off kind of thing. When I was in Saranac Lake in 2012, (then NCC editor) Mary Lou Kilian stopped in and asked to take me out to lunch. She asked me to start writing. Then, I had a little space. It kept moving and moving. From that, it got to be regular, and now I have a pretty good sized space.”

Father Muench said he’s enjoyed the variety he’s experienced within his ministry.

“I’ve probably done all the things I wanted to do,” he said. “I’ve done teaching, parish work, worked with people, worked with families.”

Father Muench said a lot has changed over those years.

“The biggest change was the (Second Vatican) Council,” he said. “Those first years we were out of the seminary, we were in the old style – Mass in Latin, our backs to the people. Then along came the Council. It was startling, really. It changed who we were and what we were about.”

He’s noticed yet another change as he moves through his retirement.

“The hardest thing about retirement is that all your friends leave you,” he said. “One thing that was a big part of the last 20 to 30 years was that I traveled a lot with the same guys, (Msgr. Peter) Riani, (Father Richard) Sturtz, Father (Francis “Vinny”) Flynn. Father Flynn is the only one still alive. We went on some really neat trips over the years. China was wonderful. Tanzania was neat. We did a couple river boat tours – I remember seeing Budapest.”

Father Muench noted that he and Father Philip Allen are the only remaining members of their seminary class.

“We’re all that’s left,” he said.

Now retired in Syracuse to be closer to family, Father Muench continues to aid at the parish where he resides,

Holy Family Church. He regularly celebrates one weekend Mass and “a couple weekday Masses.”

“They’ve been really good to me here,” he said.