8 MAY 2025

A Mass of Christian Burial was celebrated for Leroy Thill by his pastor, Father Terrance Klein. A large crowd was present both for the Mass and for the vigil, also celebrated at the church, the night before.

Obituary

LeRoy Thill Obituary

 Audio of the homily

Not Able To Pull It In	Leroy Thill
Fr Terrance Klein	8 May 2025

Isaiah 40: 25-31  1 John 3: 1-3  John 21:1-14

How does faith pass from one generation to the next? That was a question a team of sociologists set out to answer.  It took them four decades. They studied 350 families, more than 3,500 individuals across multiple generations and faiths. The oldest person interviewed was born in 1881; the youngest, in 1988.  In 2013 these scholars published their work in a book called Families and Faith: How Religion is Passed Down Across Generations.

It might seem odd to begin a funeral homily with a sociological study, but it immediately comes to mind when I think of Leroy.

So much of what the researchers found runs contrary to popular belief. Even though all of us know many people who haven’t imitated their parents in matters of religion, the study found that children are still more likely to follow their parents’ faith, or lack of it, than not. It also confirmed that lackluster faith in one generation will likely lead to its absence in the next.

What’s most surprising is the single largest factor in predicting whether children follow the faith practice of their parents. And here is where Leroy enters. The scholars discovered that even though women, in all faiths, tend to be more religious than their husbands, the single largest factor in predicting the transmission of the faith into the next generation was the practice of the family’s father and his emotional closeness to his children.

These are statistical studies, so there’re always exceptions. Still, how counterintuitive and significant this study was. The father who loves his faith and his children, who is emotionally close and faithful to both, is most likely to pass on the faith to the next generation.

That’s the Leroy we knew. You would be hard pressed to find a committee, a movement, a project, or even an activity of our parish in the last sixty years without also finding Leroy and Sharla. 

They were barely married when the Second Vatican Council changed so much of the Church’s life. Suddenly lay people would read the scriptures at Mass, and who was in that first group? Leroy. In the 60s the Church began to think that perhaps those already married might be helpful in preparing engaged couples for marriage. And whom did the pastor call? Leroy and Sharla. When Saint Joseph School needed a new avenue for funding, what would eventually be called the “Living Legacy Fund,” of whom did Father Maes think?

When I was newly ordained, Bishop Gerber told me. “Of course, you will try to involve the two-thirds of your people who aren’t involved, but when that fails, there’s a reason you will turn back to the third already committed. You can’t change reality. The busiest people are the ones who do everything. That’s who they are and who the others aren’t. 

The one who did everything? That was Leroy.

Of course, the great legacy of service that Leroy leaves us came through God’s mysterious providence. When a young Jerry Thill was killed in a car accident, Saint Joseph School no longer had a basketball coach.

Jerry had always been a unique focus of his older brother Leroy’s life. The entire Thill family had been in a terrible car accident when Leroy was still a boy.  His mother was hospitalized for a long time, and Leroy took Jerry under his wing.  In 1968, a twenty-one-year-old Jerry Thill was coaching St. Joseph basketball when he was himself killed in an auto accident. Who would coach in Jerry’s place? Do you really need to ask?

Thus began a St Joseph coaching career that spanned more than four decades. And in those days, half of the young men in the town passed through the school’s halls. Evidently when the novel idea that girls might play basketball arrived, it exhausted the creativity of the parish. Initially, we couldn’t think of anyone else to coach them but Leroy Thill. 

The same would happen in the community at large when a tennis coach was needed.  Leroy did that also, almost into his eighties!

When Leroy coached at St Joseph, it was part of its own diocesan league, playing teams from St. Rose and St. Patrick in Great Bend, St John in Hoisington and Sacred Heart in Larned, even Sacred Heart in Dodge and St Mary’s in Garden City. Leroy loaded on enough wins to fill every trophy case we had or could build to fit into our halls.  But the measure of a coach isn’t his record of wins and losses. It’s the imprint he leaves upon the souls of young people.

Derek Joiner wrote to me the day after Leroy’s death was announced.

I love Mr. Thill. And many young men and women like me love him too. 

As you know, Mr. Thill coached basketball for many years for St. Joseph. I was one of the fortunate ones who played for him. As a kid, he was an almost mythical figure to me, growing up and waiting for my chance to be a part of St. Joseph basketball. I remember my very first practice. It was important for me to show Mr. Thill that I could perform a left-hand layup. My first try, I went in and executed a proper one. Mr. Thill was always on the right sideline with arms folded, resting on his Schlitz beer belly. As I ran by, I looked at him, and he gave me the slow, serious, head nod of approval. That’s all I needed to feel great....just that head nod. I got a lot of them in four years and valued each one of them. 

As you grow older, you learn your heroes aren’t perfect. But you also learn the good stuff. We had some kind of long winning streak while we played at St. Joseph. I can’t remember the number. It used to be a big deal for me. But when I moved back to Ellinwood, Mr. Thill became a hero to me in a much different form. He was a hero to me in faith, service, and family. I could see how important his faith was to him. His family had blossomed into this incredible group of smart, caring people. And I could see how important it was to be an active member in the church and community. I’ve tried to model him in many ways in faith and family. Like him, I’ve tried to be an advocate for youth in sports and education. In large part, because of him. 

When Stephanie and I got married, we asked Mr. Thill to come to Edmond, OK and be a lector at our wedding. Of course, he graciously accepted and came. Years later, Mr. Thill’s granddaughter Rachel asked me to lector at her wedding because of the small part I played in her basketball journey. Rachel didn’t know that I had Mr. Thill do the same thing at my wedding years ago. It was a great “head nod” moment for me. 

I love Mr. Thill.

It makes you wonder, what produced Leroy Thill? How do we replicate him because we sorely need the likes of him now. His education wasn’t unique. Eight years at Saint Joseph, four more at Ellinwood High School, and some college at Fort Hays.

And this certainly wasn’t a case of the well-off looking after the needs of the less fortunate. As a boy, Leroy took on every odd job imaginable to support his family: he cleaned the bank; he candled eggs at the drug store; he even went to work at the hardware store so that he could purchase a still-cherished model train.

A faithful father, who is emotionally close to his children, will most likely pass the faith to the next generation. But what produced Leroy? If only we knew, so that we could replicate the same.

The Prophet Isaiah tells us to, “Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these things” (Is 40:26).

Do you not know

or have you not heard?

The LORD is the eternal God,

creator of the ends of the earth.

He does not faint nor grow weary,

and his knowledge is beyond scrutiny.

He gives strength to the fainting;

for the weak he makes vigor abound.

Though young men faint and grow weary,

and youths stagger and fall,

They that hope in the LORD will renew their strength,

they will soar as with eagles’ wings;

They will run and not grow weary,

walk and not grow faint (Is 40:28-31).

In the end, we’ve got to acknowledge that Leroy was God’s gift to us, to all his children, their children, the parish, and the community.

God created Leroy. God loved him and redeemed him. God gave him to us, for a long while but not forever. Leroy was what God created all of us to be in the world. He was God’s net, not a basketball or tennis net, but the skein the Lord throws into the sea of souls, catching them for himself. And what a net—full to the point of breaking—that heaven celebrates in Leroy.

If only we could be like him! But can’t we see? We can be. That’s why God gave us Leroy, to lead the way, to coach us, so to speak, into eternity.