It Happened In Crawford County | Fr. Paul Fahrbach, Pt. 1

Father Paul Fahrbach, pastor of Holy Trinity and Saint Joseph churches, was born in 1956 in Fremont to Wesley and Gloria Fahrbach. Wesley used the GI Bill for college and became a manager of the Toledo Lion Department Store. Gloria, a very smart woman, was an executive buyer with Mercantile Stores in NYC. She was also head buyer for their 57 stores before moving to the Midwest.

They had eight children and mom made sure they all knew they were special. Fr. Paul thinks mothers learn to discipline through osmosis and his mom kept her head when a child misbehaved. She said “wait until your father gets home.” The drive from Toledo to Fremont left the "culprit" time to think about the misdeed. His dad was 6-foot-6-inches tall. His discipline, like in the Bible, was "just, with compassion."

Paul was greatly influenced by his family. Grandfather Fahrbach was in WWI battles and Paul’s dad was in WWII. The Army taught them how to have a strong confidence and conquer what others wouldn’t try.  Fahrbachs have that attitude, it is a generational blessing. Paul and his siblings all have college degrees, and half of them hold master’s degrees. 

Paul said he wasn’t a good student when he was younger. He had three handicaps, not conducive to grade-school learning — poor reader, poor speller and terrible handwriting. His sister, a remedial teacher, later discovered he had dyslexia. He became an oral learner. His mom taught him, “If you stay in school, you’ll get better the further you go along.”

He mastered bridge when he was 14, but couldn’t spell six-letter words. He learned he was stronger in certain subjects and became a business and math major in college. For him, it was easier taking advanced courses in math than elementary level courses in English. Paul was a natural in geometry. His mom gave him a Texas Instrument calculator, and without it he said he couldn’t have succeeded at higher levels of math.  

Scouting proved good for Paul. A tactile learner, he enjoyed the achievements, merit badges, going up the ranks, and learning lessons by trial and error. Mom gave him a Swiss Army knife, which he uses to this day. She seemed to have the right thing at the right time for him.

When Paul was a freshman in high school and working on his Eagle rank, he attended the Scout’s International Jamboree in Japan. His parent’s rule, “you save the first half and we’ll pay the second half.” Among other things, Paul learned how the Marshall Plan worked after WWII. When he was in Japan, and later in Europe, he saw many modern cities. He learned they were rebuilt by the US, which contributed 4 percent of USA gross national product. “The best way to defeat an enemy is to make them a friend.” 

He participated in football, basketball and track, and served as a goalie for water polo because of his long arms. He was a member of his school choir. There were 529 students in his graduation class at Fremont Ross in 1974 and he was proud to be their senior class president. Paul enrolled in Adrian College in Adrian, Michigan, and also worked in the field of masonry construction during the summer. He was 6-foot-4-inches tall and well-suited for basketball and track.

He enjoyed the camaraderie and traveling to nearby states for games. He said it was a good experience, being part of something bigger than one’s self. He sang in choirs from grade school through seminary, was in two different fraternities and was president of his senior class in college. Paul learned he could write music. His professor said he was an intuitive song writer, only needing to hear a song and then being able to memorize it.   

Fahrbach graduated from Adrian in 1978 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and math. He worked a year in masonry construction before entering Saint Meinrad College Seminary in southern Indiana. When he finished pre-theology courses, he asked permission to enter the seminary theology classes at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. The exams were done orally, the reason he wanted to go there. Had he continued at Saint Meinrad, he would have had to write 10-page papers every week and he knew it would be harder for him to succeed. With the European system, they can tell if the person understands and comprehends what they were teaching with 15-minute oral exams. 

The Catholic University of Louvain is famous for the historical critical method. Starting with the original sources and languages, they studied how a topic was applied in different periods of history. He is the last of the “Louvanese” i.e., the last of the priests in the Diocese of Toledo, having been formed there. Paul lived in the “American ghetto;” not good at languages, he learned more about South Koreans because he tutored them. Belgium has three cultures and he lived in the Flemish area. Louvain had two universities — one speaking Flemish, was also taught in English; the other was French. Fr. Paul’s master thesis, “An Inquiry into the American Contribution to Narrative Theology," took one year to finish in 1984. He completed nine years of college; five in the seminary and earned two master degrees from the Catholic University of Louvain. He tells his nieces and nephews, to their amazement, all nine years were completed without a computer.

To be continued next week.

Readers if you are interested in genealogy or sharing a story email or write Crawford County Genealogy Society, 931 Marion Road, Bucyrus, OH 44820 Mary Fox email Littlefoxfactory@columbus.rr.com.