I grew up in Roselawn. My dad, a Navy veteran, was a pharmacist and had his own drug store in St. Bernard. My mom was a graduate of Good Samaritan Hospital School of Nursing and worked at Good Sam until I came along. Mom and Dad were so very pleased and amazed with their first-born they decided to have a few more – a boy and two girls.
Our family was very active in the life of our parish, Our Mother of Sorrows in Roselawn – now closed. All of the King kids attended O.M.S. grade school. My fifth-grade teacher is a member of Guardian Angels! I was an altar boy and on Saturdays, I ran off the bulletin on the parish’s mimeograph machine in the rectory basement.
After grade school, I attended Purcell High School. After graduating from high school, I attended St. Gregory Minor Seminary in Mt. Washington – now Mt. St. Mary’s. After St. Greg’s, I was off to the major seminary in Norwood, Mt. St. Mary’s Seminary of the West. I served as a Deacon at Our Lady of Visitation Parish in Mack from June to December 1972. On June 2, 1973, I and 19 other handsome young men were ordained to the priesthood of Jesus Christ by Archbishop Bernadin, the largest single ordination class in the history of the Archdiocese.
My first priestly assignment was Guardian Angels, followed by St. James in White Oak, St. William in Price Hill, and St. Dominic in Delhi. In 1991, I became pastor of St. Therese the Little Flower Parish in Mt. Airy. After eleven years at Little Flower, I received a phone call from the Priest Personnel Board that I had been named the new pastor of Guardian Angels. All my life is a circle and I returned to Guardian Angels in August of 2002. And as they say, my friends, the rest is history.
