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July
4, 2005 
VOL.
43, NO. 13Oakland,
CA
OBITUARY
Deacon
Edgerly was devoted to family, community,Church
Permanent Deacon Leo Edgerly, Sr., a long-time community
activist in the Oakland Diocese and the father of Father Leo Edgerly Jr.,
pastor of Corpus Christi Parish in Piedmont, died June 25. He was 81.
As a youth, Leo Edgerly had considered becoming a priest, but instead
he joined the Army in 1942 to help support his widowed mother and siblings.
During his time in the service, Edgerly assisted Catholic chaplains as
a driver, sacristan and altar server in India, North Africa and Burma.
After the war, he went to work at the U.S. Naval Base in Alameda.
Shortly after his marriage to Myrtle B. Smith in 1948, he joined the Knights
of St. Peter Claver. He served as treasurer of Council 95 for many years
and directed the fraternal organization’s youth programs.
In the 1960’s, he became a member of the Legion of Mary and the
St. Vincent de Paul Society at St. Andrew Parish in Oakland. It was there
that he experienced a deepening of his faith through his involvement with
both the Christian Family Movement and Cursillo. Following the consolidation
of the parishes of St. Andrew and St. Joseph, Edgerly befriended the community’s
new pastor, Father John Maxwell.
The Edgerly family “became a part of my family,” said Father
Maxwell, now the pastor of St. John Parish in El Cerrito.
With Father Maxwell’s encouragement, Edgerly helped start the parish
council and served as its president several times. Edgerly and his pastor
became founding members of the West Oakland Medical Health Center where
he served as president of its board of directors for 10 years.
He also started Trouble House, a methadone maintenance facility located
at the parish, in conjunction with the West Oakland Medical Health Center.
The busy parishioner found time to organize a parish childcare center
that eventually grew to seven satellite sites throughout the neighborhood.
“You name it, he did it,” recalls Father Maxwell. “He
was very generous with his time.”
Father Maxwell says Edgerly was a man who was “very sensitive to
people. He would see a need and reach out in a Christ-like way.”
Leo Edgerly also was a dedicated Scripture student, said the priest.
When the Diocese of Oakland established its permanent diaconate program,
Father Maxwell encouraged Edgerly to apply. He did so and in 1979 became
a member of the second class of deacon candidates. Edgerly was ordained
in 1982.
The new deacon later joined with a group of parishioners who wanted to
open a parish soup kitchen. Deacon Edgerly ran it for the next 10 years
until health problems led to his retirement.
A Mass of Christian Burial took place on July 1 at Corpus Christi Church
with burial at St. Joseph Cemetery in San Pablo.
Deacon Edgerly is survived by his wife, Myrtle, his daughter, Deborah
Ann, and his sons, Dana Matthew, David Michael and Father Leo Joseph Jr.,
plus nine grandchildren, five great grandchildren, five sisters, two brothers
and many nieces and nephews.
Sister Mercedes,
OCD
Sister Mercedes of the Immaculate Heart, who lived 59 of her 86 years
as a Discalced Carmelite, died June 19 in the community’s monastery
in Kensington. She transferred there in 1950 from the Carmelite Monastery
in Santa Clara where she had entered religious life after earning a master’s
degree in social work from Catholic University in Washington, D.C. and
working in San Francisco as a social worker in the early 1940s.
“Realizing through her work the immensity of suffering in the peoples
of the world and her own very limited abilities to relieve it, she chose
the cloistered Carmelite life of sacrificial prayer, reparative penance
and hidden suffering in order to give herself wholly to God for the world,”
said Sister Mary of the Kensington community.
Sister Mercedes was a “jack of all trades,” learning much
from the workmen whom she supervised when they came to the monastery.
“Whenever anything needed ‘fixing’ she was the one called.
Whenever unexpected work had to be done, she was the first to volunteer,”
Sister Mary said. She served as community cook for many years and used
her artistic talent to repair and repaint small statues.
The eldest daughter of John Paul Degnan and Mae Frances Barrett, she lost
her mother to childbirth when she was three. Her Degnan forebearers pioneered
in Yosemite and she spent much of her childhood in Yosemite Valley.
As a Carmelite, she was particularly devoted to the Blessed Sacrament
and consecrated her life to the Blessed Virgin Mary to whom she directed
all who sought her prayers.
Her funeral Mass was celebrated June 22.
