Father Don Wolf  Celebrates 25 Years of Serving God and His People

Father Don Wolf celebrates Mass at a youth rally. 

By Eileen Dugan
The Sooner Catholic

DUNCAN — Father Don Wolf has served as a priest in Oklahoma for the past quarter century. To mark this important milestone, friends and family joined him as he celebrated a Mass of Thanksgiving on Friday, May 5, at Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church. Dinner and music followed at the Duncan Golf and Country Club.

When asked if his brother Don had been born with a halo, Roy Wolf, Father Wolf’s youngest brother, said, “Absolutely not! Growing up, he was just your typical brother. Like a lot of kids back then, he was fascinated with airplanes. We lived on a farm in southwest Oklahoma City near the airport, and he could always tell you what kind of planes were flying overhead.”

Father’s  sister, Mary Malaska, remembers the four oldest Wolf children as “partners in crime. Anita, Don, Kenny and I were always getting together to explore. In a pasture on our farm there was a large pile of red dirt that we called the Rocky Mountains. We loved to slide down those red ‘hills’ and dirty our britches. We thought it was fun, but mom was not always pleased.

 “There was no indication growing up that Don would become a priest. The news he was going in the seminary took me totally by surprise. Don was in ROTC at the time and was studying aeronautical engineering at OSU. We all thought he had a plan for his life, which included aeronautics and his girlfriend. We all thought they would get married someday.

Lynn Sandoval, Father Wolf’s youngest sister, remembers her brother as “studious, quiet, and always busy with our brother Kenny doing whatever dad wanted them to do.”

 “Don was the type of kid who was a ‘pleaser’,” his brother Kenny recalls. “If you told him to do something, he did it. We were pretty close. We spent lots of hours together on tractors, working on the farm.

 “Don was very studious. Growing up, he was always the smartest one in his class, and the hardest working one. He would silently get things done,” Wolf said.

Father Bill Pruett, Pastor of Saint Peter Church in Guymon, has been Father Wolf’s friend since their days together, 31- years ago, at Saint Meinrad’s Seminary, in Saint Meinrad, Indiana. They both entered Saint Meinrad’s in August of 1973 and met the following week.

Father Pruett was two years ahead of Father Wolf at the seminary. He was a graduate student in theology while Father Wolf was a third-year undergraduate, having already spent two years at OSU.

Father Wolf was offered the opportunity to go to Louvain, Belgium, to study, but he chose, instead, to stay at Saint Meinrad’s where he enrolled in the seminary program that would prepare him to minister to Hispanics. His course work took him, first, to San Antonio, Texas, and, then, to Cuernavaca, Mexico, to study the Spanish language and Hispanic history and culture, Father Pruett said.

Father Wolf remembers his decision to become a priest as a two-step process. At OSU he felt strongly that he was being called to go to the seminary, but, as yet, there was no call to the priesthood.

He answered the seminary call and enrolled at Saint Meinard’s. After two years, when he had graduated from the college seminary but had not yet studied theology, he spent the summer at Holy Name parish in Chickasha, assisting the pastor, Father Wilber Moore. “I began work in a pastoral setting for the first time, visiting shut-ins and the homebound, and I enjoyed it. That summer, for the first time, I began to think of the priesthood. By fall, when I returned to school to begin my theological studies, I had decided I really wanted to be a priest,” Father Wolf said.

Father Wolf acknowledges that Father Bob Schlitt, the campus chaplain at the student center at OSU, was instrumental in his becoming a priest. He was the first priest Father Wolf got to know. Father also acknowledges that his girlfriend had something to do with his decision. “My girlfriend and I used to go to Mass together at OSU. I was unhappy with some of the things going on in the Church at the time. She said, ‘If it’s such a big deal to you, why don’t you do something about it.’ That question got me thinking about going into the seminary,” Father Wolf said.

Father thinks that being invited into people’s lives is the best part of being a priest. But he finds that being a “lightening rod for other people” is the most challenging part. “People discharge their anger around you,” he said. “Sometimes they’re angry at God or the Church; at other times it has nothing to do with the spiritual. It can be very difficult. We just happen to be the nearest target.

“My most memorable experience as a priest was when I went down to Guatemala for the second anniversary of Father Stanley Rother’s death. We priests gathered in a side building in the town and processed through a huge sea of people, down the street and up the steps of the church, to say Mass.

“The army was still occupying the village, and there had been no priest there since Father Stanley’s death. The city was under martial law. We were in a country with all these troubles, but the people had turned out to honor Father Stanley even though it was dangerous, and we walked through that crowd and up those steps. It was something I shall never forget!” Father Wolf said.

“I don’t think being a priest has changed much in my 25 years, but my understanding as a priest has changed. I now realize what I can’t do. Twenty-five years ago, I thought it was my job to make everything work better. I now realize that sometimes things won’t or can’t get better, so I now have a lot less anxiety about what I have to do in these kinds of situations. Because of this, I think I am a better minister than I was 25 years ago.

“To those young men considering the priesthood, I’d like to say, ‘As a priest, I have had a wonderful life with lots of delightful surprises. If you are anxious or fearful about your decision, you need to talk to more priests. When I was 18, I could not have imagined how much I would enjoy the priesthood. It’s the kind of life that gives you more than life gives most people. It gives you the opportunity to receive; it is a life built on gratitude.

“‘If you think the Lord is calling you, maybe you should do something about that. If the Lord is calling you, doors will open. If He isn’t calling you, the doors will close. The Lord will provide. If He’s calling you, you will never regret acting on that. I was blessed to be called by Him on the very first day of my first class in theology. I attended Morning Prayer, and as I walked out of the chapel, I knew I would be ordained. I knew that was the thing for me!’” Father Wolf said.

 Father Donald Wolf was born at Saint Anthony’s Hospital in Oklahoma City on September 14, 1955, the son of Roseanne and Joseph Wolf. They had six children: three boys-Don, Kenny, and Roy, and three girls-Anita, Mary, and Lynn.

Roseanne Wolf, Father Wolf’s mother, was a Rother, and that made Father Wolf the cousin of Father Stanley Rother, the Oklahoma priest who had been murdered in Guatemala in July, 1981. Although the two men rarely saw each other, they corresponded, and several months before his death, Father Rother left Guatemala to come to the states. He attended Father Wolf’s ordination in May, 1981.