Kapaun football off to 4-0 start, motivated by return of ‘our hero’ Father Kapaun
Walking off the field at Stryker Sports Complex on Friday night, Kapaun Mt. Carmel senior Isaac Schmitz couldn’t help but smile when he heard it.
“It’s a good time to be a Kapaun Crusader!”
On the same night that the remains of Father Emil Kapaun were boarded on a flight from Honolulu to return home 70 years after he died in a North Korean prisoner of war camp, the Crusaders’ football team, ranked No. 4 in Class 5A, improved to 4-0 this season with a 42-7 victory over Great Bend.
The players were motivated to return Kapaun to the state power it once was in the 1970s and 80s. And now they are even more motivated for it to happen this season.
“It’s a really exciting time right now because I think everyone here has the mentality that we’re bringing the old Kapaun back,” Schmitz said. “And for that to happen the same time when we’re bringing Father Kapaun home is just amazing. He’s been lost for so long and he died for everyone else in that prisoner of war camp. The fact that he is our hero, our namesake and he’s coming home and it coincides with the year we’re doing great in football is just amazing.”
Fittingly, the school celebrated its homecoming on Friday night and the theme was intertwined with Kapaun’s own homecoming.
The football team wore specially-sanctioned black uniforms that featured the POW-MIA “You are not forgotten” patch on the sleeves. A school donor commissioned medals inscribed with “Fr. Kapaun Comes Home” on the front for the seniors and faculty at Kapaun. The Homecoming King and Queen were even announced in a prerecorded message from Father Kapaun’s nephew, Ray.
“When I was retiring from West, I prayed that I would get this job,” Kapaun football coach Weston Schartz said. “I really did. I wanted to work with these kids and be in a spiritual environment at school. And to be here right now with these kids and in this community, it’s just a really cool thing.”
Thousands in the Kapaun community are expected to attend the public vigil for Father Kapaun at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Hartman Arena. The school is off on Wednesday, so faculty and students can attend the funeral at 10:30 a.m. in Hartman Arena.
“There is a really big energy right now in our community around the spirit of Father Kapaun, which has always been with us,” Kapaun president Rob Knapp said. “The thought that we will now be able to go to our cathedral (Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception) and pray in his presence is huge for our community. It’s a miraculous event. We have no way of knowing how this could have been possible without the intercession of the Holy Spirit.”
In the Catholic Diocese of Wichita’s quest to have Kapaun declared a Roman Catholic saint, they asked a local doctor back in 2015 to examine a case of Avery Gerleman, who as a 12-year-old in 2006 recovered from a catastrophic auto-immune disorder that doctors at the time were sure would be fatal after her parents prayed to Kapaun.
That local doctor was Andrew Porter, who had just moved from Iowa to Wichita and had never heard of Kapaun.
On Friday night, Porter was on the sidelines serving as the Kapaun football team physician — he was motivated to join the school after seeing first-hand what he deemed a miracle.
“When the diocese asked me to examine her, I went about it trying to prove a miracle didn’t happen because I wanted to be real,” Porter said. “I had her come into the office and did a real thorough medical history, a lot of exams, a lot of lab work, imaging tests and everything came back that she was fully healthy. So in my opinion, there was no good medical reason for her to have such a full, spontaneous recovery outside of a miracle happening.”
Shortly after that examination, Porter enrolled all eight of his children in the Kapaun school system. On Friday, his second-oldest, Luke, was named Kapaun’s Homecoming King, which was read off by the nephew of Kapaun in a prerecorded message in what Porter said was a surreal experience.
“It made me a stronger Catholic and a stronger doctor,” Porter said. “It made me start looking into Father Kapaun from just a personal faith standpoint. I really didn’t know anything about him before that. And now he’s changed my life for the better.”
This past Wednesday, Kapaun’s chaplain, Curtis Hecker, delivered a homily that Porter said will stick with him for the rest of the life.
Hecker told the story of Kapaun’s mother, Bessie, and how she would light a candle every week in hopes her son would return from service after he enrolled as a U.S. Army chaplain. Even after he died in a prisoner of war camp in Korea in 1951, his mother continued to light a candle with the hope that her son would return home.
Those matchsticks she used to light the candles have since been made into a cross, which still resides in their hometown of Pilsen, Kansas.
After 70 years, the waiting is over: Father Kapaun is home.
This story was originally published September 25, 2021 at 2:39 PM.
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