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Dead: an ex-priest turned storyteller and a maintenance man
Thursday, March 02, 2000 By Milan Simonich, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Joseph Healy, who spent 23 years as a Catholic priest then quit and married into a family with seven children, was one of the men shot dead yesterday in Wilkinsburg.
Healy, 71, was known for his lanky frame, white beard and skill at the fine art of storytelling.
He was murdered in the same neighborhood where he lived and worked on causes ranging from Head Start programs to exciting people about books and ideas.
Friends described Healy as a holy man, though he left the priesthood in 1975.
"He was open, warm, friendly and able to relate to every age group, every ethnic and cultural group," said Ada Ezekoye, once his next-door neighbor. "He was so special."
Healy was shot at a Burger King restaurant by a gunman who had already killed another man and would critically wound three others in a bloody rampage through town. Healy died at 8:41 last night at Mercy Hospital.
Also killed was John Kroll, whose last job as a handyman was to install a new door yesterday morning on Apartment 510 in the Woodside Garden Apartments. He died shortly before noon when doctors at UPMC Presbyterian were unable to save him from a bullet in his brain.
Three other men were in critical condition last night, Richard Clinger, 56, of North Huntingdon, who was in a van at a McDonald's restaurant; Steven Bostard, 25, of Swissvale, the McDonald's manager; and Emil Sanielevici, a young man who was in a car in the McDonald's parking lot.
The shooting suspect is the apartment resident, Ronald Taylor, 39, who was in custody last night.
Taylor is suspected of erupting in anger over the work on his apartment, then going on the shooting spree that left the two men dead and three others critically wounded.
Kroll, 55, of Cabot, Butler County, had worked as a maintenance man for about five years with John DeWitt at Delta Property Management.
DeWitt said Kroll was married with a family but was unsure of how many children he had. Little else was known about the man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was the first of five shot.
As for Healy, books could be written about him.
He grew up in Bridgeport, Conn., one of 13 children of an Irish bartender. Healy's first calling was the priesthood, which took him to Duquesne University, where he directed the campus ministry.
He resigned in 1974 in a dispute with the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh. The issue was over whether communion could be taken by the hand, a common Catholic practice around the world but one that was then forbidden in the United States. Healy had ignored the ban, then quit when he was challenged.
The church lost a charismatic presence when he moved on, said Angela Rutledge. She, her husband and their nine children were among the many families who had flocked to Duquesne for Healy's Sunday liturgies, even though they had no other connection to the university.
With the priesthood in his past, Healy's life went full tilt in a new direction.
Healy stepped into a ready-made family in 1977 when he married Frankie Power Alles of Wilkinsburg and became what he called "in-house storyteller"' to her seven children.
Alles, her former husband and their family had been regular participants in Sunday Masses and other programs at Duquesne University during Healy's run as a campus chaplain.
Healy's stepson, Chris Alles, said his stepfather would not have wanted any feelings of vengefulness toward the shooter.
"I think he'd just want to ask for forgiveness for the person who did this," Alles said during an interview at the family home on Wallace Avenue.
Alles said Healy earned his living for more than 20 years as a storyteller, appearing before Head Start and other groups.
One of the Head Start teachers, Julia Shook, said Healy would tell stories about why some kids didn't have both a mother and father, fashioning the parable to fit their needs.
Shook said Healy would bring out his "magic board" on which he'd sketch pictures to illustrate his tales.
Alles last night remembered his stepfather's magic board. He wasn't much at drawing, Alles said.
"It didn't matter, though, because he was so good at telling stories the pictures just kind of fit in."
One of Healy's grandchildren is a student at St. James Catholic School in the borough, and one of his daughters is an aide there, said the Rev. Warren Metzler, pastor of St. James.
"That is the thing we are all concerned about, taking care of the kids," Metzler said. "They are very traumatized. We just have to help them deal with this as best we can."
That Healy died in what some say was a racially motivated killing was cruel irony, friends said.
"He got along with everybody," Ezekoye said. "The children all knew him, and they watched for him in the Burger King and McDonald's because they knew he liked to stop at those places."
DeWitt, one of the maintenance men, said the violence that took Healy's life had nothing to do with the storyteller. It began this way: Taylor called DeWitt "a racist" and "white trash" as they argued about apartment maintenance.
DeWitt said he picked up a hammer from the floor and Taylor told him: "You're a dead man."
"I told Johnny [Kroll], 'I'm glad you heard that. I'm going to call the police,' " DeWitt said. "I don't know if that set him off or what."
DeWitt said he and Kroll left the building to put their tools in separate trucks on their way to the next job. He left Kroll with another worker, Andrew Williams, and returned to the fifth floor to check on another tenant's request.
When he got back down, he saw fellow worker Kroll with blood running down his neck as Williams tried to put him into his car.
"I went back upstairs and hugged the woman who asked me to work on her apartment," a shaken DeWitt said. "I said, 'Thank you. You probably saved my life.' "
Kroll, meanwhile, was rushed to Presbyterian hospital and underwent emergency surgery by Dr. Ricard N. Townsend. He died at 11:51 a.m., according to the Allegheny County coroner's office. His work tools were still in his Ford pickup at the Woodside Garden Apartments.
Almost nine hours later, Healy died at Mercy Hospital.
"The shock," Ezekoye said, "is incredible."
Angela Rutledge felt Healy's loss just as strongly.
When her youngest child was 2, Rutledge's 44-year-old husband died of cancer. Healy was a tremendous support throughout his illness and afterward, she recalled. When Healy believed death was near, he wrote the funeral liturgy and took it to the hospital and read it aloud to her husband. He managed to raise his eyebrow as if to say, "I'm not that good," Rutledge said.
"You know, when you go to Mass, you think that whatever you share there should sustain you the rest of the week."
Joseph Healy, she said, was able to do that.
Staff writers Robert Dvorchak, Ann Rodgers-Melnick, Johnna A. Pro and Dennis B. Roddy contributed to this report.
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