For many hundreds of Valley families, the Rev. Vernon Decoteau was there when they needed him, at baptisms and first communions. At weddings and funerals.
And though it broke hearts, they were there for him at his funeral Monday, as a shocked Catholic community mourns this priest’s unexpected death last week due to complications from heart bypass surgery.
They came 1,000-strong to the St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Belchertown to see a beloved religious leader receive rites of the faith they share. It was a moving occasion of public and private reminiscence about a man whose kindness and attention, as one mourner put it, “made everyone feel special.”
Rev. Decoteau’s final posting in his 41 years in the priesthood was at St. Francis, the church he led since 1996, after serving at Blessed Sacrament parish in Northampton from 1992 to 1996. Before that, he served as an assistant priest at St. Mary Parish in Westfield and, going back further, was chaplain of the Newman Community at Westfield State College in the late 1970s. Others knew him from his time teaching at Cathedral High School.
At 68, Rev. Decoteau, still relatively young, seemed to have years of religious leadership ahead of him.
That’s why his death has hit so many so hard.
“I just feel so much love for the man,” said Nelson Garrow, who spoke with a Gazette reporter at Monday’s ceremony, holding back tears near the entrance to St. Francis. “He was one of the nicest people I have ever known.”
That was a phrase on many lips Monday, proof that the gift of simple kindness and regard for others, one of the teachings of this and other faiths, can be everlasting.