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"Those two big trees weren't here when I started," said Deacon Danny Boyd, pastoral administrator at St. Therese Chapel, a mission of St. Clement's in Saratoga Springs.

"That's something, when you can say you're older than the trees."

After 34 years as pastoral administrator for St. Therese, Deacon Boyd is retiring Feb. 26. There are some health issues involved, but he's also 80 years old, well beyond retirement age for many people.

He plans to stay on at St. Therese as a parishioner, celebrating weddings and baptisms as he is asked.

It's been a long road. Deacon Boyd was born Feb. 24, 1937, in Clay, Ky., to a single mother. The family relocated to New York's Allegheny County after his mother remarried, but their troubles didn't end.

"We wound up living in abandoned houses. We just lived," he told The Evangelist.

At 16, he dropped out of school, enlisting in the U.S. Army. A lieutenant took special interest in him and recommended that he started taking his education more seriously.

While stationed in Germany, Deacon Boyd earned his high-school equivalency degree -- the first step in what became a 20-year military career, a bachelor's degree in law enforcement and corrections from the University of Nebraska and a master's degree in theology from St. Bonaventure University.

"I started and I never looked back," he said.

While in the military, Deacon Boyd met and married his German wife of 58 years, Isolda, whom he calls "a beautiful blond lady." The couple has two daughters, Diana and Deborah, and two grandchildren, Daniel and Leonna.

The Catholic marriage rite says that "'two become one.' We believe that," Deacon Boyd remarked. "Every time I give a sermon, the person I want to hear from isn't the person walking out the back door; it's the person at home."

Preaching is one asepect of ministry Deacon Boyd will miss. He believes it's one of his strongest skills, though he was admittedly "a bad speller" in his youth. While serving as a special agent for the Defense Investigative Service, he would avoid spelling words he didn't know by simplifying the language.

That wasn't a bad idea. "I believe in simple things," Deacon Boyd told The Evangelist. Contrasting the 10 Commandments with the gentler Beatitudes, he said, "I think we spend too much time on, 'Thou shalt not...' and not enough time on, 'Blessed are they....' The body requires air. The spirit requires faith. Faith is serenity in your heart that God loves you exactly how you are."

Deacon Boyd is a convert to Catholicism. Raised a Baptist, he was baptized a Catholic in 1962 after being hospitalized at Fort Bragg Army Hospital for pericarditis. Waking in a fog, the deacon saw a priest by his bedside. Wrongly assuming he was receiving the last rites, Deacon Boyd decided on the spot that it was time to join his wife in the Catholic faith.

He was ordained as a deacon exactly 20 years later. "I loved the Gospel and I wanted to preach it," he said.

When Deacon Boyd was young, he hadn't even known what a deacon was. When he was first assigned to St. Therese, he said, the parishioners didn't, either: The permanent diaconate had only been restored in the Catholic Church with the Second Vatican Council in 1965 and the Albany Diocese had ordained its first deacons 11 years later. Deacon Boyd's ministry was still new to many Catholics.

Now, Deacon Boyd's shoes will be filled at St. Therese by a layperson: Robert McGough, a long-time parishioner. He started the job Jan. 1, with Deacon Boyd showing him the ropes over the past couple of months.

"There's a lot more to the job than I originally thought," Mr. McGough told The Evangelist. "All of us out here have had a high respect [for Deacon Boyd]. We knew he did a lot. But this has given me a new appreciation for how much he does to make the place run."

For instance, said Mr. McGough, he'd never put any thought into who would make sure there were candles on the altar or who changed the lightbulbs in the church hall.

"He's a wonderful man," agreed Virginia Blackmer, pastoral associate for faith formation.  "He's always there when you need him."

During her seven years as pastoral associate, she said Deacon Boyd has always helped meet the needs of both parents and children.

"You can go talk to him any time you need to and get counseling," added the faith formation director, who's glad Deacon Boyd will continue to be an active part of the parish.

As his retirement approached, Deacon Boyd said he believes he's done as good as a job as he could. He indicated his readiness to turn over the reins by quoting from Ecclesiastes 3:1: "'To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.'"[[In-content Ad]]

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