Submitted by: Dan Rich
Br. Thomas F. Balaz CSC
South Bend Tribune 1/4/2005
Brother Thomas Balaz, CSC, 72, died at Saint Joseph's Regional Medical Center, South Bend, Ind., on Sunday, January 2, 2005, after a long and exemplary battle with cancer. Br. Thomas was born on December 11, 1932, in Edenborn, Pennsylvania, the son of the late John and Rose (Bena) Balaz. Between 1938 and 1950 he attended elementary schools in Edenborn and Leckrone, Pennsylvania, and secondary school in McClellandtown, PA. After graduating from high school in 1950, he worked for a time as a service station attendant in Uniontown, PA, and as a postal messenger and truck driver. Joining the U.S. Army during the Korean Conflict, he became a records clerk. He was mustered out of the service in 1955 and worked for Republic Steel Corp., Cleveland, Ohio, as a tabulating machine operator
In 1959 he applied for admission to the Brothers of Holy Cross and was accepted in their candidate program at Watertown, Wis., in December that year. He received the habit of the brothers at St. Joseph's Novitiate, Rolling Prairie, Ind., on January 25, 1960, and made his first profession of vows of religion a year later. He spent the next years studying at the University of Notre Dame, following which he was appointed to the staff of the U.S. Post Office at Notre Dame, where he would hold a variety of positions from 1962 to 1989. During these years he served as needed as postal clerk, acting postmaster, and officer-in-charge. While employed by the post office, Br. Thomas was, from 1970-1977, assistant superior at Columba Hall, the brothers' residence on the Notre Dame campus, and then superior from 1977-1980, and assistant community director from 1985-1988. After a sabbatical renewal program in New Mexico in 1989, he joined the support staff of the University Law School at Notre Dame and functioned in a similar role at the Indiana Province Archives at Notre Dame.
Br. Thomas was a highly capable and responsible government worker during his years at the post office at Notre Dame. His optimistic, prayerful, welcoming and gentle approach to his work, as to his life as a religious in Holy Cross, characterized his balanced performance in every position he filled. He led an invariably exemplary life as a brother and was rightly perceived as a model both for ministry, whether his work centered on the brothers' apostolates or on a wider public, and for his practical but quiet manner of living as a vowed religious. Because of his years behind the counter at the post office, he became acquainted with hundreds of the faculty and staff at the university as well as many of the coaches and players. He took a keen interest in sports as something of a substitution for personal participation in them because of his short yet robust stature and his lifelong battle to conquer and control his problematic eyesight.
Visitation will begin at 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, January 5, 2005, in St. Joseph's Chapel, the brothers' Holy Cross Village at Notre Dame, 54515 State Road 933. A Mass of Christian Burial will follow at 3:30 p.m., with interment immediately afterward in St. Joseph's Cemetery on the Village grounds. The Kaniewski Funeral Home is handling arrangements.