Rev. William A. Leising, missionary

Leising

A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. on Sunday, June 10 in St. Mary's Church, 6919 Transit Road, Swormville for Rev. William A. Leising.

Father Leising, 94, a native of Swormville and missionary in the Northwest Territories of Canada, died Thursday, May 10, 2007 in Medford, Ore.

Born in East Amherst, he was the oldest of nine children and grew up on a family farm. He was a graduate of St. Jerome's High School in Kitchener, Ont. and attended St. Bonaventure University for a year before entering the priesthood. He was ordained on May 27, 1940 in Washington, D.C.

Father Leising served as a missionary near Fort Smith in the Northwest Territories from 1940 to 1965. During that time, he worked as a dog-sled missionary at Fort Smith, helped build a church in Stony Rapids, Sask., and was chaplain for the gold and uranium mine companies at Yellowknife, capital of the Northwest Territories and at Port Radium on the eastern shore of Great Bear Lake.

He also flew airplanes into the Arctic Circle to retrieve people who needed medical attention. A book about Father Leising's flying adventures, "Arctic Wings" was published by Doubleday in 1959 and sold a million copies from 1960 to 1970, said his brother, Rev. Edmund, a missionary in Brazil since 1946.

Father Leising also dabbled in motion picture photography. Around the same time "Arctic Wings" was published, an hourlong motion picture of Indian and Eskimo missions called "Arctic Missions of the Mackenzie" was released. The movie was backed by Cardinal Francis Joseph Spellman of the Archdiocese of New York who arranged for the National Director for the Propagation of the Faith and Sound Masters Studios to help Father Leising with the film.

Father Leising also set up a small radio broadcasting station while at Immaculate Conception Mission at Aklavik, another Northwest Territory, in 1949. After broadcasting the Mass and sermon in Eskimo and English, he chose several children to speak over the radio to their parents.

After recovering from several bouts of hepatitis, Father Leising directed the building of a 50,000 watt FM radio station and put it on air in Belleville, Ill. at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows in 1965.

In 1969, he was invited by Archbishop Robert Dwyer of Portland, Ore. to establish a parish for lumberjacks in the mountains of the Rogue River Valley of southern Oregon. In four years, 340 families had joined Our Lady of Fatima parish.

Father Leising retired as pastor of Our Lady of Fatima parish in Shady Cove, Ore. on July 1, 1990 but continued to serve as a chaplain at nursing homes in Oregon until his death.

He is survived by three sisters who are nuns, Dorothy, Blanche, and Florence, all of the School Sisters of Notre Dame; and three brothers, the Rev. Edmund, Alphonse, and Gerard.