JIMMY the Mac was talking about the day that Johnny O taught him a lesson as they flew through the bullet-filled skies of the Middle East — a day God was their co-pilot.
Jimmy the Mac is Bishop James McCarthy, from Elizabeth Seton Hall parish in Westchester, who spent 12 years as the personal secretary of John Cardinal O’Connor. He’ll never forget his days serving with the former Navy chaplain who had learned all about the logistics of war.
“On May 27, 1989, we were going from Cyprus to Lebanon in a helicopter under hostile circumstances,” Jimmy the Mac
was saying.
“Halfway through the flight, and you couldn’t hear anyone speak. He is pointing to me about sitting on a life vest in rather dramatic terms.
“When we were in Lebanon, he told me that machine-gun bullets were not fired from the heavens above, but fired from below, and it was best to secure all you had of what you sat on.”
As Cardinal O’Connor gets ready to retire, McCarthy remembers him as “not only a great man of God, but just downright funny. Nothing gets in his way.”
There was the time in Vietnam when Johnny O was once again in one of those whirlybirds.
“He was told he could go the long way around, through the bay, or the short way, through the mountains, where there was a lot of hostile fire,” McCarthy recalls.
He wanted to go the short way, over the mountains.
“He loved to smoke cigars, but on that particular day, he promised if he made it through, he would not smoke any more cigars. He made it through, and kept his promise to God.”
A general from the 3rd Marine Division in Vietnam said at that time: “No one was more effective in sustaining for all the Marines, of any religion, a particular morale.”
Some of his most potent ammunition was humor.
“He has a sense of humor that is so quiet, you need a three-second beat before you realize the comedy, and then you know he’s up there with some of the top comedians,” McCarthy said.
O’Connor would always go into the community — whatever community, military or civilian, happened to be his parish.
“As a young priest, while Father O’Connor was learning Spanish in Puerto Rico, he took me to the red-light district,” McCarthy recalled. “I was driving, and he was directing, and suddenly I saw all these ladies. I was shocked.
“And then he said to me, ‘I just wanted to show you where I spent so many years pulling sailors out of this area.’ And he had a smile of humor and a smile of sadness, that he could not have pulled more out of there.”
We are seeing an end of an era, and it is not a farewell of sadness because after all, we all will share his legacy — Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims.
“I must say, I have always felt very comfortable in St. Patrick’s Cathedral,” said one of his great friends, former Mayor Ed Koch. “As a serious Jew, I should not admit this, but I may have been to St. Patrick’s more than I have been to a synagogue.”
Once, before he was made a cardinal, Johnny O put that slight smile on his face, looked at Ed Koch, and in a quiet voice said, “How am I doing?” echoing the clarion call of that great mayor.
Well, God willing, both are still doing pretty well. And despite their message from different beliefs, they still share an eternal humor which mere mortality will not ever extinguish.