USD Magazine, Fall 1992

LMANAC

God'J Litt - Alumni and friends of the late Father Ben Carrier, student chaplain at USD from 1967 to 1973, are invited to gather at Founders Chapel at 5 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 8, to remember and Father Ben Carrier was found dead in a Yuma, Ariz., motel room on Nov. 10, 1982. As was his habit-one that dismayed and alarmed his many friends-Father Carrier had driven to Yuma from his parish in Descanso, taking two hitchhikers. His truck, which an alumnus had purchased for him, was later found abandoned outside Las Vegas. His assailants have never been apprehended. News of his death struck hard at the USD community, the other parishes he had served, and the high school where he had taught biology for several years. People recoiled in to celebrate his life. A reception will follow.

shock and dismay that anyone would want to harm such a gentle and generous soul. Mourners at his funeral at Our Lady of Light parish, located east of San Diego in the small mountain hamlet of Descanso, overflowed the confines of the small church and encircled the round building, straining to hear the words of the liturgy. His three-legged dog, Halfway There, sat forlornly at the rear of the church, a symbol of Father Ben's own physical limita– tions. Father Carrier was a diminutive man, five feet tall and all of 90 pounds. An alumnus and former roommate remembers buying clothes for him in the boys' department of J.C. Penney because "we couldn't find a man's size small enough to fit him." He had less than one lung when he died, a handicap he often cursed because it limited his energy and often resulted in long bouts of hospitalization and recuperation. Ben Carrier was born in Presque Isle, Maine, on Sept. 9, 1928, one of 13 children in the French Canadian Carrier family. He attended La Salette seminary in

Hartford, Conn., from 1944-1950 and a La Salette seminary in Inswich, Mass., from 1951-1955. He had always wanted to be a mis– sionary, but his frail health preclud– ed the rigors of missionary life. His own bish!)p declined to ordain him, citing Carrier's health, and Father Carrier wrote to bishops around the country asking to be accepted in other diocesan seminaries. Bishop Charles F. Buddy accepted the young seminarian at Immaculate Heart Seminary in San Diego, and Father Carrier was ordained to the priesthood in 1959. He served as assistant pastor at parishes in Pomona, Calexico, Santee and Holtville, and worked for several years as a biology teacher at Marion High School, a coed Catholic high school in the South Bay area of San Diego. In 1967, he was appointed stu– dent chaplain at USD. "I remember when Father Bill Phillips, then the dean of men, told me of Ben's appointment," recalls Father Barry Vinyard, currently serving as stu-

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