Kenneth Ramsey now serving at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Batavia

BATAVIA – The Kenneth Ramsey most people know is a tough guy.

He was a lawman for 35 years, first in Batavia, then as a sheriff’s deputy, eventually serving as sheriff of Kane County from 1994 to 2006.

Ramsey also was a soldier, with 41 years in the U.S. Army and having served in Vietnam. He spent 10 years at the Pentagon and 10 years teaching at the U.S. Army Intelligence School. Ramsey was in training for Desert Storm when the operation ended, he said.

In retirement, the lifelong Batavia resident began a third career, that of deacon at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Batavia. He was ordained through the Diocese of Rockford on Sept. 27 after six years of instruction and preparation. As a deacon, he can marry, bury and give blessings.

Now at 66, instead of sleeping late, he assists at 6:30 a.m. Mass every weekday, as well as on Saturday and twice on Sunday. On Tuesday nights, he teaches a class for adults who are converting to Catholocism. On Wednesday nights, he teaches religious education to eighth-graders.

Although deacons in the Chicago and Joliet dioceses are allowed to wear the clerical collar, the diocese deacons do not. Ramsey said he follows a national trend of deacons wearing gray because priests wear black. His shirt has a deacon’s cross on it, a cross draped with a red sash.

Through the Holy Cross St. Michael Ministry of Compassionate Care, Ramsey also helps plan funeral services, does prayers for funerals and visits those who are homebound, sick and dying.

“I have experienced unusually high amounts of death and destruction in my life, having been both a soldier and a policeman,” Ramsey said. “I have experience with a lot of death and destruction and people at the worst time of their life – when their loved ones are dying, when they are dying. I just feel that is where I am called to serve God, with the sick and the dying.”

Ramsey’s wife of 43 years, Peg, said she is excited for him in this role.

“It’s not a new profession; it’s a calling from God,” she said. “He served the public. He served his country. This is a continuation of service, to serve God and the community at Holy Cross. It’s a gift he discerned he had, to serve in this capacity.”

The Rev. Jim Parker, pastor at Holy Cross, praised Ramsey as a deacon.

“I’m just delighted,” Parker said. “He knows the community; he knows the people. He is loved by the community. He is trusted by the community.”

• • •

The middle child of three, Ramsey was an altar boy under the late Monsignor William Donovan, the Holy Cross priest for whom Donovan Bridge was named in Batavia. He grew up in the subdivision known as Batavia Highlands, which is in Geneva School District 304, so he graduated from Geneva High School, Class of 1966.

His mother was devout; his father was not, as Ramsey recounted in the story of his faith journey, “From Carrying the Badge to Carrying the Cross,” which he shares during public speaking engagements.

“He was a volatile, brutal person that beat all of us regularly,” Ramsey wrote about his father. “In fact, my father once pushed me out of the car in front of a church one Sunday without stopping because I insisted on going to Mass. When my mother divorced him, it was a happy day for my family because we knew the beatings would stop.”

Ramsey said his mother took her children to church, but she could not receive the sacrament of communion until the church annulled her marriage.

As he was growing up, Ramsey said he went to seminary when he was 17, but that only lasted a few months.

“I knew that I had an attraction for my faith,” Ramsey said. “But I was not called to be a priest.”

• • •

Becoming a deacon was not the original plan, Ramsey said.

“My wife and I were going to move down to southern Illinois. We bought a house and we were planning to move down there,” Ramsey said. “That’s when our son got sick.”

On Jan. 9, 2008, his 32-year-old son, Kenneth Jr., was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, a totally inoperable, stage 4 neuroblastoma, he said. The couple had four living children, Ramsey said, noting they lost a fifth child who was stillborn, so facing the loss of another child was devastating.

“The day we found out about his tumor, the doctors said it would be best if I was the one to tell him,” Ramsey said.

He went to the chapel at Delnor and began praying.

“And I got thinking, here I am asking God to give me the strength and the right words to tell my son and the rest of my family that he’s dying. Why would God do anything for me? What have I done for God? And I told God, regardless of what occurred with my son, that I was going to dedicate the rest of my life to try to be a better person and serve Him and do what I could.”

The Ramseys set their plans aside, sold the downstate house and stayed in Batavia to be with their son. They saw him through chemotherapy and radiation and waited for the end.

“Miraculously, the tumor disappeared three years ago. He’s cancer-free right now ... seven years now in January,” Ramsey said. “The doctors say most likely it will come back, and more often than not, it does come back, especially brain tumors. God has been great.”

It wasn’t long after his son’s diagnosis that Ramsey began to listen to people who told him he’d be a good deacon. He said he’d heard it for years but never took it seriously.

“That night after I prayed, it seemed to sound different. Maybe God would like me to do that,” he said. “Maybe this is His way of calling me to it, having people insisting, every time I turned around, ‘Ken, ever think of becoming a deacon?’ ”

• • •

Ramsey was 60 when he started the diaconate instruction process, five years older than when the church wants its deacons to be ready to serve. Ramsey said he received a waiver for his age.

Twice a week, every Tuesday evening and every Saturday all day long, for six years, Ramsey drove out to Rockford.

“It’s a lot of theology, a lot of philosophy. All the rules, regulations, laws of the Catholic Church,” Ramsey said. “You have to write papers, take tests. It’s a very intense process .... I learned more of the in-depth knowledge of what Roman Catholicism is.”

Deacons are ordained members of the clergy, Ramsey said. Most are married, but they also take a vow of celibacy. If their wives die before they do, they can never remarry.

He also spent an extra year in study to learn the Byzantine Catholic rite.

“Whenever I get my permissions to function as a Byzantine deacon, as well as a Roman deacon, I would be the first and only bi-ritual deacon in the Rockford diocese,” Ramsey said.

Deacons in the Byzantine church cannot marry, bury or baptize or give blessings. Instead, their role is in the Divine Liturgy – known as the Mass in Roman Catholicism – reading from a 40-page script of prayers.

Ramsey would be allowed to serve as both types of deacons, should he get the proper permissions.

At Holy Cross, his main role as deacon is to proclaim the gospel every day and preach every Tuesday.

Ramsey said he would remain a deacon and not consider becoming a priest.

“Priests are very special in my mind. It takes a very special man to be a priest, and I don’t think that would be me,” Ramsey said. “I’m better in the world that I’m in.”