DARLING AN ICON TO ALL, SAYS EX-STUDENT

PERRYVILLE -- A Roman Catholic priest and educator, who was instrumental in establishing a Catholic church for blacks in Cape Girardeau during the 1940s, will be laid to rest today at the Vincentian Cemetery in Perryville following a funeral Mass.

The Rev. Willis F. "Gus" Darling, who served on the faculty of St. Vincent's College in Cape Girardeau for 11 years, died Friday at St. Mary's Seminary in Perryville. He was 91.

During his tenure at the St. Vincent's College, he helped to establish Holy Family Catholic Church in South Cape Girardeau.

The Rev. Louis J. Derbes of Perryville, one of Darling's former students in Cape Girardeau, remembered Darling as an icon and as a role model for the clergy and laity alike within the church.

"He had a predilection to help the poor, to help those people with less ability and less money," Derbes said.

While Darling was teaching at St. Vincent's, a group of black youths from the Smelterville area in the south part of the city went to the priest and told him about the need for a Catholic church in Cape Girardeau's black community. Rather than dismissing their request, he sought goods and services from area individuals and businesses to start the church.

The church -- Holy Family Catholic Church -- was formally dedicated as a mission of St. Vincent's Catholic Church on Oct. 6, 1940. The dedication ceremonies for the new church were broadcast live over KFVS radio.

"The ceremonies went off smoothly and beautifully," Darling wrote in his diary that day.

"It was truly an auspicious beginning, and with proper guidance and care the parish and congregation should prosper numerically and spiritually," he wrote.

Darling served as pastor of the church until 1944 when he was became pastor at St. Katherine's Church in New Orleans.

"He did this off the clock, on his own time," Derbes said. "He saw a need and used his spare time to fill it."

Darling was, Derbes said, a brilliant linguist who taught Greek while he was on the faculty at St. Vincent's.

Years later, when he served among the Hispanic population of Chicago, Darling used his linguistic abilities to learn Spanish so he could speak to the migrant workers and the poorest of the poor, Derbes said.

Even after he officially retired to St. Mary's of the Barrens in 1993 at the age of 87, Darling continued to minister in and around Perryville. Derbes said Darling began a ministry to the jail, hospital and nursing homes and got other priests involved.

"Nobody told him to do it," Derbes said. "He would go on his own looking for people in need at the time -- the old, the sick, those in prison."

"He will continue as a role model. Dead or alive, his spirit will live on strongly," Derbes said.