When his son Joseph 20, fell into a septic tank at their family farm in 2008, 17 years ago this month, Tom Vander Woude jumped in and held him above the muck until rescuers arrived and pulled Joseph to safety. Tom died in the process.
Now, his family and friends have started making the case for his possible canonization, in what would likely be a first for the Arlington diocese.
“People ask how he could give his life to save Joseph — it is how he lived his life,” said his son Chris Vander Woude, speaking about the life and sacrifice of his father at a recent talk held in the St. Charles Borromeo Church parish center in Arlington Sept. 4.
Tom Vander Woude was a husband, father of seven boys, active member of Holy Trinity Church in Gainesville, former airline pilot, mentor, and a former coach and director of athletics at Christendom College in Front Royal and Seton School in Manassas. One of his sons, Father Thomas Vander Woude, grew up to serve as pastor of Holy Trinity and currently serves as pastor of St. Mary of Sorrows Church in Fairfax. Joseph, who made an amazingly quick recovery from his accident in the septic tank, still serves at Mass at Holy Trinity, where his father had trained altar servers for years, and he lives with his mother, Mary Ellen, in their farmhouse.
As the crowd of all ages filed into the gym, Chris chatted with Father Don Planty, pastor and previously chaplain of Christendom, where he got to know Chris and his wife, Katie, 15 years ago.
“I reached out, I knew the (Thomas Vander Woude) Guild was up and running and I said I’d love to host a talk when they are ready,” Father Planty said. “It’s the first (talk) in the diocese.”
Although he has shared his father’s story more informally and has spoken about it on a few podcasts, this was Chris’ first formal presentation of his father’s story. It is also the first time it’s been presented in the diocese, where the Vander Woude family has lived for more than four decades. Chris begins a speaking tour this month that will take him to California, New York, Texas, and several states in between to begin sharing about his father’s life of love and sacrifice.
That is the goal of the guild at this point — to share his incredible and also quiet and ordinary story in hopes that it will be an example to people of how they, too, can pursue exemplary virtue and holiness in their lives. Chris also wants to encourage families to improve their shared life of faith and care for each other.
“We found as a family we were able to love more because we were giving of ourselves more,” Chris said, speaking of his parents’ love and dedication to serving him and his brothers, and especially Joseph and his unique needs, particularly as a person with Down syndrome. That life of faith and service was a continuing theme of Tom’s life.
From choosing to move his family from Georgia to Virginia to ensure his sons received the best faith formation and education, to choosing to give up a career as a pilot so he could be home with his family each day, to driving an hour each way every Wednesday for years to make a holy hour before the Blessed Sacrament before it was available weekly at his parish, to giving up sweets in 2002 for the lives of the unborn, Chris said, he lived a simple life of sacrifice offered up daily for God, his family, and those around him.
“When I heard (Tom’s story), that is how I want to live,” said Kristine MacManus, who attended the talk with some of her friends.
As a result of a new path to sainthood — the offer of life — proposed by Pope Francis in his 2017 apostolic letter, the Tom Vander Woude Guild is prayerfully working to gather information that could lead to a possible cause for his canonization. The diocese has taken the preliminary steps of agreeing to be the petitioner for a potential cause, and a postulator in Rome as well as a vice-postulator in the diocese have been appointed.
Goss is a freelancer in Arlington.
Find out more
To learn about the Tom Vander Woude Guild and its work, go to tvwguild.org.
