Former Haverhill Mayor James A. Rurak recently published “The Rosary: A Tract for Catholic Misfits.”
Appearing recently on WHAV’s morning program, the former mayor talked about driving his father—the late state Sen. James. P. “Jake” Rurak—to medical appointments in Boston. During the ride, his father, who was being treated for a brain tumor, would recite the Rosary to himself. As his condition worsened, the two of them would recite the Rosary together until his father could no longer speak because of the tumor.
“But, what happened in the process was as we prayed the Rosary, we’d sometimes stop and talk about our lives together—things we did wrong toward each other. We confessed some of the things we wished we’d done differently and, in that whole process, I saw my father face his own death triumphantly and wanting to talk about things both good and bad. I, actually for the first I felt like, you say you love your parents but it’s always a mixture I think of some kind of respect and fear and anger because of things they did or didn’t do, but for the first time I felt that I truly loved my father. And, the same thing happened with my mother, after my father died, we prayed the Rosary. This created a space in our life where my life turned around, with regards to them,” he said.
Rurak served as Haverhill’s mayor from 1994-2001. His book, “The Rosary: A Tract for Catholic Misfits,” is available at the Haverhill Public Library and may be purchased at Amazon.com.
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