Joseph Fice

82, Los Gatos

Spirituality was the through line of Joseph Fice’s life.

The son of Sicilian immigrants, including a fiercely Catholic mother, Fice and his brothers grew up attending parochial schools near their home in Maywood. After graduation, Fice enrolled at Loyola University — now Loyola Marymount — where he studied mathematics. But before long, he told his family about another calling: He was going to seminary to become a Jesuit priest.

He went on to teach at a Catholic high school in Phoenix but eventually moved back to California, where he led retreats, including sessions focused on grief for people who had recently lost loved ones — an impressive feat for someone who had long found it very difficult to speak in front of crowds.

In recent years, Fice lived at Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in Los Gatos, where he and several other priests contracted the coronavirus. He died of complications of COVID-19 on Dec. 13, three months shy of his 83rd birthday.

During weekly phone conversations, Fice and his older brother, William, 87, spoke for hours about politics, faith, philosophy and family. Their last communication was an email exchange in which Joseph expressed concern about wildfires in Orange County, where William’s daughter lives.

“Buddy,” Joseph wrote, using the family’s nickname for William, “what’s going on?”

Everyone was safe, William wrote back, but he asked to know more about COVID. He knew that Joseph had recently tested positive.

His little brother, always quick to respond, never wrote back.

These days, William said, his mind runs with memories. He thinks back to when he was 14 and playing with a cousin and Joseph, then 10, followed them around like a puppy.

“Here comes Giuseppe Brown Dog,” the cousin said, using the Italian name for Joseph. The nickname stuck.

When Joseph was 19 and looking for a job, William invited him to the steel mill where he worked. It was then — during a required physical — that Joseph learned he had a mitral valve prolapse, a heart condition that, years later, required him to have surgery replacing the faulty valve with one from a pig. From then on, William said, his brother carried a small, stuffed pig, which he named Pigoletto, with him anywhere he moved.

About 15 years ago, the brothers had a life-changing conversation in which William told Joseph that, although he’d attended Mass faithfully for years, he had never really developed a habit of praying.

“Buddy, you’ve got to learn,” Joseph responded earnestly “At the end of your life, you’re going to meet God. Do you want to go as a stranger or as a friend?”

Ever since, William has sat down for 20 minutes or so every night after dinner to read Scripture and talk to God.

“So, when you asked me about my brother,” William said, choking back tears, “you’re asking me about a person who I believe to be a real saint.”

William has gotten several letters, calls and voicemails in recent weeks, he said, from strangers telling him that his brother was the best spiritual director they’d ever had. One woman even credited him with saving her life.

“This is Giuseppe Brown Dog,” William said, softly. “But little brother, he became a giant.”

Fice is survived by his brothers William, Nicholas and Paul.