August 8, 2009
‘An outpouring of love and faith’
After sudden death of their son, family touched by school, parish support
By Denise MacLachlan
Herald staff
The Ford family of St. Teresa of Avila Parish in Auburn gather at their home on Christmas 2008. From left are Deacon David Ford, Theresa, John, Clare, Michael, Katherine and Lorie Ford. Photo courtesy of Lorie Ford
Nearly two months after the sudden death of their son, Michael, David and Lorie Ford are still surprised and touched by the breadth and depth of the community support for their family.
“It s been an amazing outpouring of love and faith,” Lori Ford told The Herald.
“These are the worst days of our lives,” David Ford said, “and God’s love shows in these wonderful people. Michael’s love shows, too.”
Michael Joseph Ford, a 19-year-old sophomore at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, died suddenly June 6 while visiting two of his sisters at their apartment in Walnut Creek. He was to have started his summer job the following Monday as a counselor at St. Mary’s College sports camp. The intramural college athlete swam the length of the apartment complex pool two times, climbed out of the water, and lay down along the pool’s edge.
Onlookers became alarmed when Michael Ford took a couple of unusually deep breaths, according to his father David, a permanent deacon who serves at St. Teresa of Avila Parish in Auburn, who heard the story from witnesses hours later. Someone called 911. Under cardiopulmonary resuscitation, Michael Ford was transported to Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Walnut Creek, where all efforts to revive him failed.
Autopsy results confirm that Michael, who had been a varsity basketball player during his years at Jesuit High School in Carmichael and a competitive athlete throughout his life, died of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a leading cause of sudden cardiac arrest in young athletes. There were no drugs in his body. There had been no previous indication of cardiovascular disease of any kind, his father said.
On the day that Michael died, his stunned family spent the night together in Walnut Creek: Michael’s parents; his older brother John, an accountant; his sisters who shared the apartment, Theresa, a Catholic school teacher, and Clare, a student studying nursing; and his younger sister Katherine, who had just graduated from Loretto High School in Sacramento and would be a freshman at St. Mary’s College in the fall.
The following day, Michael’s devastated parents had returned to their home in Auburn when a phone call brought them their first glimpse of the community support gathering around their family.
Colleen and Dan Riley, whose son Danny was one of Michael’s best friends and whose house near the Jesuit High School campus in Carmichael had become a second home for many Jesuit students, including Michael, called the Fords to tell them that “people keep showing up to talk about Michael,” Deacon Ford said.
“When Dan called, he couldn’t stop crying,” Deacon Ford recalled. Everyone had thought that the Fords were still in Walnut Creek, Riley explained. He estimated that about 60 people were gathered at his house.
To forestall the crowd traveling 35 miles to Auburn, the Fords drove to the Rileys’ house themselves. When the Fords and their daughter Katherine arrived at the Rileys’ home, the crowd had swelled to more than 80.
Deacon Ford described getting out of the car as people emerged from the house onto the lawn. It was completely silent at first, he said, and awkward. Then people began to hold one another and cry, he said, and talk about Michael.
Five days later, more than 1,800 people packed into St. Teresa of Avila Church in Auburn for Michael’s June 12 funeral mass, which was celebrated by Bishop Jaime Soto and Bishop Emeritus William K. Weigand.
Deacon Ford, who was ordained to the permanent deaconate in 2008 and assigned to his home parish, presided at his first rite of committal when Michael’s body was interred. The day after the funeral, another 150 people gathered at the Auburn library amphitheatre to remember Michael.
Seven weeks after Michael’s death, the Fords’ house is fully supplied with meals that people have brought by. Hundreds of condolence cards and letters have arrived by mail and hundreds of e-mails and text messages arrive digitally.
Friends already registered on Michael’s Facebook page have posted hundreds of messages on his wall, but with Michael gone, others who wanted to post couldn’t get access. Michael’s sister Katherine then created a separate Facebook page, “Rest In Peace Michael Ford,” as a memorial guestbook for Michael’s friends. It has more than 1,100 registered members.
Deeply moved by the community response to their son’s death, Lori and David Ford ascribe the outpouring of support in part to the family’s rootedness in Catholic education, which invites family participation and values community, they said.
And because Michael was involved in basketball, with seemingly continual games and practices, he spent a lot of time with team members, Deacon Ford added, so that over time, the boys became close friends. Parents sitting alongside one another, cheering the boys on, got to know one another, too, he said.
But Michael also had a gift for joyfully welcoming and including people, his father said. Greg Harcos, Michael’s high school varsity basketball coach, agrees.
“There are certain guys on your team that people turn to, and Michael was one of them,” Harcos said. “He valued relationships. He made people laugh, but he also made people learn.”
“Michael had a lot of energy, too, and it just rubbed off on other people and made them livelier,” he added. “People were drawn to him.”
Joe Poggi, Michael Ford’s neighbor and his second grade teacher at St. Joseph School in Auburn, is a close family friend. Currently principal of Cristo Rey High School in Sacramento, Poggi said that Michael had an exceptional energy, including “a goofy sense of humor, even in second grade.”
But Poggi observed that while Michael was an extraordinary person, he always had before him the example of his parents, who taught their children to include others and to create and sustain community.
At the funeral Mass, Poggi noted, supporters arrived to support the family from a range of interconnected communities — from St. Joseph School in Auburn, where each of the five Ford children were students; from Jesuit High School in Carmichael, where Michael and his brother John graduated; from Loretto High School in Sacramento, from which Michael’s sisters Theresa, Clare and Katherine graduated; and from St. Mary’s College in Moraga, the alma mater of all of the Ford children.
“Each community the family was involved with was represented,” Poggi said. “Dave and Lorie did a wonderful job of preparing their children for their future, modeling the values of community and kindness.”
The family stands out in the memory of Danny Koss, residence advisor at De La Salle Hall, the freshman dormitory at St. Mary’s College. In an e-mail, Koss recalls that when the Fords brought Michael to college at the beginning of his freshman year, they arrived at Michael’s assigned double occupancy dorm room only to find two students already in residence. To Koss’ surprise, the family burst out laughing.
A couple of hours later, the double occupancy room was converted into a triple with the addition of another bed, dresser and desk, Koss said, and Michael moved into his dorm “unfazed.” The Fords were the only family Koss saw that entire moving-in day who responded to difficulties so positively, he noted.
Christian Brother Ronald Gallagher, president of St. Mary’s College, who has taught various Ford siblings over the years, recalls the cheerful energy of Michael in particular. He recalled Michael as an energetic, positive student who was very much a part of the Gael Force, the student spirit club for athletics, he said.
Michael’s residence director, Leo Guardado, described him showing up for the freshman Olympics during his first days at St. Mary’s, with cut-off sleeves and paint on his face, ready to compete, have fun and meet other people. Guardado noted by e-mail that he’d be amazed if there were a single person in De La Salle Hall who didn’t know Michael.
Brother Gallagher said that Michael will be very much missed at St. Mary’s. There will be a memorial service for Michael in September, once the students are back on campus, he said. It’s important for the St. Mary’s community to grieve their loss together, he added.
“We pray for the family,” Brother Gallagher said. “It’s a difficult loss for them. They’re very brave. They’re looking at it in the perspective of faith, though, and we pray that will sustain them.”
