Pictured outside St. Theresa Church (now co-cathedral) in Honolulu on Dec. 5, 1981, ordination day for Hawaii’s first class of permanent deacons, are, from left, Deacons Thomas Rienzi (not a member of this class; ordained in Germany in 1979), Bill Hughes, Ronald Choo, George Christiansen, Richard Port, Bishop John J. Scanlan, Bishop Joseph A. Ferrario, George Thorp, Thomas Miyashiro, Andy Gerakas and Bob Cupp. (HCH file photo)
By Patrick Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald
Richard Port first learned of the permanent diaconate in the early 1960s in Ghana, West Africa, where he and his wife Ann (Antonette) were teaching secondary school in President John F. Kennedy’s newly established Peace Corps. There, on Sundays, the corps’ first married couple would hitchhike 25 miles to the nearest church for Mass.
“The priest there would invite us for coffee after Mass and tell us all about what was happening in Rome during Vatican II,” Port recalled in an email. “He suggested that the pope and cardinals were going to allow married men to become permanent deacons and suggested I consider that as my ministry.”
Fast forward 15 years. The Ports were now in Hawaii, Richard working for the state Department of Education, when the Diocese of Honolulu began recruiting applicants for its new permanent diaconate program.
Port signed up, along with a teacher, a construction engineer, a former business manager, a property management consultant, a state planner, a retired army colonel and a certified public accountant. That was more than 40 years ago. They became the Diocese of Honolulu’s pioneer class of eight permanent deacons, ordained Dec. 5, 1981.
The group’s active ministry in Hawaii came to a close last month with the retirement of Deacon Ronald Choo on March 30, ending an era.
The other remaining members of the class are Deacon George Thorp who retired in 2014 and Deacon Thomas Miyashiro who retired in 2020. The others have died or moved away.
Deacon Miyashiro’s diaconate call came when he and his wife were at Sunday Mass at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in Pearl City listening to Father Bernard Eikmeier talk about the diocese’s new permanent diaconate program.
“Lois and I looked at each other and knew that that was it,” he said.
“We had talked about me making a permanent commitment to the church at a Marriage Encounter Weekend five months before,” he said. The diaconate fit the bill. Even when Lois realized the commitment it required of her, she agreed.
“As a deacon, I was motivated to be a better husband, father, teacher and person,” Miyashiro said. “I could not give a homily if I held something against my wife. I kept preaching about love and became a little better husband.”
“Perfection and holiness did not come with ordination,” he said. “It is a lifelong endeavor to enrich myself and those I minister to by my example of being humble and repentant.”
A deacon’s contribution
“In early 1968 there were no permanent deacons anywhere in the world,” said Deacon John Coughlin, co-director with his wife Kathleen of deacon formation in the Diocese of Honolulu. Today, 53 years after the renewal of the permanent diaconate following Vatican II, more than 18,000 deacons serve in the United States, 80 of them in Hawaii.
Coughlin said the contribution of deacons can be measured quantitatively — by the number of Masses, homilies, baptisms, funerals, weddings, annulments, classes taught, trips to the hospice and hospital and efforts tending to the homeless — or more importantly, by the “subtle, subjective” answer to the question, “How many hearts have been changed as a result of his witness to Jesus?”
“That answer is known only to God,” Deacon Coughlin said. “As a permanent deacon living in both the spiritual and secular world, the great challenge is to be a witness to Jesus in both worlds. The goal is to be able to recognize a man as a deacon when he is not wearing a deacon’s vestments.”
A permanent deacon is not a priest-substitute in a time of scarce priestly vocations, he said, “but an integral part of clerical ranks with a special mission of witness to the secular world.”
Coughlin notes that Hawaii deacons represent many facets of secular life, active and retired — “physicians, businessmen, first responders, scientists, technicians, and many other blue-collar and white-collar careers.”
“We often remind our candidates as well as ourselves, ‘It’s not what you do, it’s who you are! Are you a witness to Christ the Servant?’” Deacon Coughlin said.
With their ordinations in 1981, Deacon Choo and his class ushered into the diocese a ministry both ancient and new. They have served four bishops, including the one who ordained them, Bishop John J. Scanlan.
The diocese has ordained nine classes of deacons. The 10th is in its final two years of formation, and the 11th class is currently being recruited. With about a dozen men per class, that amounts to approximately 100 ordained.
The diocese has lost deacons to deaths, retirements, laicizations and relocations. But it has also been the beneficiary of permanent deacons moving here from the mainland, Samoa and Micronesia.
Deacon Choo’s class prepared three years for ordination, coming together with their wives for one weekend a month for study and prayer at St. Stephen Diocesan Center. Today’s cohorts spend five years in formation, in similar weekends at St. Stephen.
The final four
As a deacon, Choo, a certified public accountant, was assigned to St. Ann Church in Kaneohe, Blessed Sacrament Church in Pauoa Valley and St. Stephen Church on the Pali Highway.
Over the years he has worked in prison ministry at the Oahu Community Correctional Center, the Women’s Community Correctional Center and the Halawa Correctional Facility. He said a highlight of that ministry was assisting at a Mass celebrated by Bishop Joseph A. Ferrario at the Oahu Community Correctional Center.
Recalling his ministry this year, the 40th anniversary of ordination, he said he was “greatly helped by the encouragement and support of my wife of 59 years. Catherine, a registered nurse with a master’s degree of religious education in theology, died on April 15.
“Our family of three children, five grandchildren and three great grandchildren have been a joy and blessing to us,” he said.
“If there is a reward to be given to us as permanent deacons it is the love, support, encouragement and prayers we receive from those whom we serve,” Deacon Choo said.
Born in Honolulu, Thomas H. Miyashiro is a convert, baptized as a senior at Saint Louis School. He earned a degree in mechanical engineering from Santa Clara University and worked for a while in California as an aerospace engineer. He returned to Saint Louis to teach in 1970. He is married to Lois Nagatoshi.
Deacon Miyashiro has served all his 40 diaconate years at Our Lady of Good Counsel, Pearl City, in marriage and baptism preparation, as a homilist and assistant at Mass, visiting nursing homes and homebound parishioners and giving pastoral care to individuals, couples and families.
He is a licensed marriage and family therapist and works part-time at the Samaritan Counseling Center Hawaii.
Deacon George W. Thorp Jr. is originally from Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has used his four decades of diaconal ministry as a strong witness to the pro-life cause. In addition to serving as director of the diocesan Respect Life Office, he was assigned to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Parish in Waikane, St. Anthony Parish in Kalihi and at St. Anthony Parish, Kailua.
A retired building contactor, the deacon was also a parish and school maintenance consultant. He was first married to Marcia Davenport Thorp who is deceased. He is presently married to Josefina Serapio Thorp.
Richard J. Port, of Chelsea, Massachusetts, came to Hawaii with his wife Ann in 1967. He was a parishioner at Sts. Peter and Paul Church, Honolulu, for 50 years, 38 of them as a permanent deacon.
The Ports moved to Massachusetts in 2019 to an independent senior living facility in Peabody. There, given diaconal faculties by the Archbishop of Boston, he has preached once and read the Gospel “a couple of times.”
Deacon Port said he misses Hawaii and his former parish of Sts. Peter and Paul. “Serving for and with parishioners who love God and try to be his disciples cannot help but enrich one’s life,” he said.
“I believe there have been a number of undeclared saints who have been parishioners there,” he said. “With the exception of God’s providing me with such a special partner as my wife, serving 40 years as a permanent deacon has been the greatest gift God has given, or could have given me.”
The others ordained
Here are the others who were ordained with the 1981 class:
- George Christiansen, retired from the U.S. Navy, worked in business and sales management before joining the maintenance crew at St. Stephen Diocesan Center.
- Bob Cupp was a self-employed property management consultant.
- Andy Gerakas worked for the State Department of Planning and Economic Development as a division head.
- Bill Hughes, a retired U.S. Army colonel, was administrative assistant to the pastor of St. John Vianney Parish in Kailua.
Technically speaking, these eight deacons were not Hawaii’s first. Preceding them by two years was U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Rienzi, who was ordained by New York Cardinal Terrence Cook in April 1979 in Heidelberg, Germany. He retired from the U.S. Army in Hawaii that year and served as a deacon at Star of the Sea Parish in Waialae-Kahala and at Tripler Army Medical Center for 13 years.
The remaining four members of the original class retain diaconal faculties — Choo, Miyashiro and Thorp for the Diocese of Honolulu, and Port (not actually retired) also for the Archdiocese of Boston.
Deacon Michael Weaver, diocesan Director of Permanent Deacons, sums up the influence of the deacon community with the words of St. John Paul II who called the diaconate “a great and visible sign of the working of the Holy Spirit.”
“Deacons have continually made manifest the working of the Spirit in the life of the church in our islands,” said Weaver, himself a second-generation deacon, the son of the late Deacon Jerome Weaver. “I believe that the presence of our deacons and their wives in our parishes has been a means for all members of the church in our diocese to have a deeper understanding of their own individual calling to act as servants to the world.”
“Deacons minister at the threshold of the church,” he said, “calling all to enter into a deeper relationship with Christ in the Eucharist and challenging all to take Christ out into the world.”
