Joliet’s former fire chaplain Brother Ed ‘created community’ everywhere

Joliet native Brother Ed Arambasich, a champion for firefighters, died from cancer Wednesday. He was 74.

He regularly posted spiritual reflections and updates on his health on Facebook and was active in a number of groups, especially groups that supported firefighters.

He celebrated 50 years of religious life Oct. 7, 2023, with a Mass and reception at St. Ambrose Catholic Church in Crest Hill.

Arambasich’s cancer returned earlier this year, but that didn’t stop him from connecting with people.

“Everyone else came before himself,” said Thomas Arambasich of Wilmington, Brother Ed’s brother. “[He] never thought twice about it.”

Pam Walker of Florida and Lori Wrobel of Arizona are sisters of Brother Ed. They recalled how he loved to play a good prank, tell ghost stories and organize bus trips to cemeteries. He “never found a cemetery he did not love,” Walker said.

“He just had a gift for creating community wherever he was,” Walker said. “He was like the Pied Piper. Everyone just followed him.”

Arambasich was born at the old St. Joseph Hospital on Broadway Street and raised in Crest Hill and Joliet.

He attended the former St. Ann School in Crest Hill (run by Benedictines) and then the former St. John the Baptist School (run by Franciscans) and graduated from the former Joliet Catholic High School (now Joliet Catholic Academy) in 1969.

Arambasich was an ironworker while longing to become a Joliet firefighter, like his uncle Bill Telfer Sr., but eventually answered the call to religious life, professing his monastic vows Aug. 11, 1973.

Brother Ed Arambasch, chaplain for the Joliet Fire Department, was the guest speaker for a remembrance ceremony in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, at the Will County courthouse. Arambasich had served for four weeks at Ground Zero in New York City six months after the attacks and shared some of his experiences. (Denise Unland)

He lived with the Benedictine monks at St. Procopius Abbey in Lisle from 1972 to 1992 and served as assistant dean of students at Benet Academy, a Benedictine co-education, college-preparatory school under the Diocese of Joliet.

“In my 20 years there, I learned a great deal about contemplation and spiritual development,” Arambasich said in 2017. “I will always give thanks for that.”

Arambasich left St. Procopius in 1992 and joined the Order of Friars Minor, specifically the Franciscan Province of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in St. Louis.

In 1992, Arambasich left St. Procopius and joined the Oder of Friars Minor, specifically, the Franciscan Provence of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, which is based in St. Louis, Missouri.

From 1993 to 1995, Arambasich served as chaplain to Joliet firefighters at Station No. 5, where Telfer once worked, he said, bringing his dream full circle. From 1995 to 2001, Arambasich was stationed in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he again served as chaplain, this time to the local firefighters and police officers.

After taking a sabbatical year to study applied theology in Berkeley, California, Arambasich served as chaplain to firefighters again, this time in Quincy, Ill, a role he cherished for 13 years.

"I love serving those who serve," Arambasich said. "They do an incredible job as first responders. Often they do not get enough credit because they are so humble."

In 2001, Arambasich received permission to go to Ground Zero as a critical incident debriefing chaplain after Rev. Mychal Judge was killed, he said. Judge was a Franciscan friar and Catholic chaplain for the New York City Fire Department. His death was the first official recorded death from the attacks that day.

"I'd sit with the firemen and try to get them to talk out their feelings, to get them out on the table," Arambasich said. ""One of the gifts of the critical incident debriefing chaplain is that once everybody started talking about what happened in their lives, they realized everyone was going through the same troubles." — Brother Ed Arambasich (center) served as chaplain to Joliet firefighters at Station No. 5. from 1993 to 1995. (Photo provided)

He served as chaplain to Joliet firefighters at Station No. 5 from 1993 to 1995, and then was stationed in New Orleans from 1995 to 2001, serving as chaplain to the local firefighters and police officers.

Arambasich saw similarities between firefighters and the Franciscan order, calling Franciscans “the blue-collar workers of the church.”

“Like firefighters, they go wherever they are called to go,” Arambasich said Oct. 4, 2021, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi in the Catholic Church. “We as friars do the same thing: We go where nobody else goes from the church.”

Arambasich still was stationed in New Orleans on Sept. 11, 2001, when he was sent to Station 9 in the French Quarter on standby due to fear that terrorists might “blow up the levy system,” Arambasich said in 2021.

Six months later, Arambasich was working eight-hour shifts at Ground Zero as a critical incident debriefing chaplain, sitting in a little shack and listening to grieving firefighters, many of them guilt-ridden over having survived.

“Many of them would break down and cry,” Arambasich said in 2021. “Many of them walked away and said, ‘I can never do this work again.’ They just couldn’t do it. It took everything out of them.”

Arambasich then took a sabbatical year to study applied theology in Berkeley, California, and returned to serving as a chaplain to firefighters in 2003, this time in Quincy, Illinois.

In 2013, Arambasich started a longtime blog called Fireman63, which is no longer live. He also posted regularly on CUSA, “an apostolate of persons with chronic illness or disability.”

In 2016, Arambasich was transferred to San Francisco as a chaplain at St. Anthony Foundation, where it “serves 4,000 meals a day” in an area that he called “United States Calcutta.”

A few months later, Arambasich’s kidneys temporarily failed. He was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and was sent back to St. Louis for cancer treatment.

“When we submit to emptiness and silence, we take our hands off the wheel and relinquish control to the holy spirit.”
— Brother Ed Arambasich, former chaplain to the Joliet Fire Department

He received his first stem cell transplant in March 2017, went into remission and returned to Joliet.

He lived at the St. John the Baptist Catholic Church friary in Joliet and worked in campus ministry at the University of St. Francis in Joliet and as a chaplain for the Joliet Fire Department.

On Oct. 2, 2021, the Lodd Memorial Bell Tower was installed at St. John the Baptist Church.

The bell tower honors firefighters who “died in the line of duty in Will County,” Arambasich said in 2021.

A memorial for World War I and World War II veterans (and later Vietnam War veterans) has been at that location since 1918, Arambasich had said.

“This memorial will be a lasting reminder of the kindness and generosity of firefighters who offer themselves each day for others, no matter what the cost,” he said in 2021.

Arambasich’s multiple myeloma returned in 2021, and he underwent a second stem cell transplant in 2022, which put him into remission once again, Walker said.

A visitation for Brother Ed Arambasich will be from 4 to 8 p.m. Saturday at the Fred C. Dames Funeral Home and Crematory, 3200 Black Road, Joliet. A procession will occur at 10 a.m. Wednesday to St. Ambrose and St. Anne Crest Hill. Interment will follow at Resurrection Cemetery in Romeoville.