Fr. Dale Grubba
Episode 98
14 DEC 2020
He has run 63 marathons and hand cycled an additional twenty. He had coached Cross Country at Holy Name Seminary in Madison, Wisconsin, for ten years, including winning a state championship. He was also head coach of the Holy Name Seminary track team for eight years, also winning a state championship. In 2000 he was inducted into the Wisconsin Cross Country Association’s Hall of Fame. He has also been an auto racing photographer and journalist, and has written seven books. He has been a parish priest since 1966, including St. John’s in Princeton, Wisconsin, where he has been for 35 years, and St. James in Neshkoro, Wisconsin, where he has been for 20 years.
Notable guest quotes:
“I can’t tell you how blessed I’ve been. I could never have picked a better vocation just simply because the Holy Spirit has always been with me to push me to new boundaries and to new adventures.”
“My choice was really to go and to be with people. And I’ve loved doing that in my parish life and I’ve loved it also in my racing life. I consider the auto racing part of my life a third parish that I have.”
“I always thought of those sports – like whether it was running marathons or whether it was coaching, but especially in the field of auto racing – I always thought that those were my way of connecting with people, and especially with people that might not be going to church.”
“So he was lying there in his coma and I said, ‘Bobby’ – ’cause I flew with him in his private plane quite often – I said, ‘Bobby, let’s do what you do when you take off in your airplane,’ ’cause he would always invite everybody, Catholic or non-Catholic, to make the Sign of the Cross. And so I said, ‘Bobby, let’s make the Sign of the Cross.’ And he made the Sign of the Cross! And that was his first coordinated movement after being in that coma for a long, long time.”
“What Kurt (Busch) wanted me to do was to say Mass for him in the morning, but then stand right by his car and give him a blessing before the start of the race. And I was to be the last person that left his car.”
“For the millennium, I was in New Zealand running the first marathon of the new era. But not only that, I got up at midnight – and I don’t think there are many Catholics in New Zealand – so I got up at midnight and said Mass. And I thought to myself, ‘I’m the first priest to say Mass in the new millennium’.”
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