Peter G. Broeckel, 79, died on Saturday, July 9 at the Country View of Sunbury Nursing Center. His funeral Mass was on Thursday, July 14 at Columbus Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal Church.
His death ended decades of phone conversations between Peter and members of The Catholic Times editorial staff. He called me about a story I’d written soon after the Times hired me in late 2006, and I talked to him hundreds of times in the next 16 years.
Peter, himself a former reporter, was perhaps the newspaper’s most devoted reader. A few days after nearly every edition of the Times arrived, he would call me to comment about several aspects of that issue’s content – usually with praise, occasionally with criticism. He also would often ask if I could find out whether a certain person was related to someone on the paper’s obituary list so he could send that person a note of encouragement and sympathy.
This was something I was always glad to do, for Peter was an engaging conversationalist, especially on matters relating to the Catholic Church and sports – Notre Dame football in particular. He lived in Columbus for most of his life after growing up in New Jersey. He never lost his East Coast accent, and I knew as soon as I heard his gravelly tones and his greeting of “Hey, Scoop!” that I would be in for a delightful discussion.
Peter was born with cerebral palsy and had to use a wheelchair throughout his life, but it never affected his spirit. As his obituary in The Columbus Dispatch put it, “He would always provide you with a positive perspective or approach, and at the end of ever interaction you knew how much he cared about people.”
He was born on Sept. 16, 1942 in Jersey City, New Jersey, the first of two children of Henry and Marie (Drummond) Broeckel. His sister, Jane Campbell of Pawleys Island, South Carolina, said “Peter’s love of sports came from his parents, who were very athletic. They always encouraged him to do what he could with what he had, and that helped him adapt to his situation.”
Growing up in New Jersey, he became a fan of that area’s “home teams” – the Brooklyn (later Los Angeles) Dodgers, the New York football Giants and the New York Rangers of the National Hockey League. One of the pictures displayed at his wake service showed Peter in a wheelchair meeting Hall of Fame catcher Roy Campanella of the Dodgers in 1952. Campanella himself would end up spending most of his life in a wheelchair, as a result of injuries from an auto accident in 1958.
Peter rooted for Notre Dame because of its Catholic heritage and because his childhood coincided with one of the university’s most successful football eras, during which the Fighting Irish went 63-8-6 under coach Frank Leahy from 1946-53 and won three national championships. Peter’s love for Notre Dame as an honorary alumnus and a self-proclaimed football scout was probably second only to his love for his wife, Mary, and their three sons and one daughter.
Over the years, he got to see several Notre Dame home games, and he was a regular at events sponsored by the Notre Dame Club of Columbus, including a Christmas Mass, New Year’s events and an annual banquet, said club member Warren Wright.
He also traveled extensively. “He and Mary had friends all over the place, and they’d go anywhere on a dime,” his sister said. Places he visited included Michigan, Virginia and Connecticut to see family members, and Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, where he went on pilgrimages to a Marian shrine. “He had many friends there, and they’d come here often to see him,” she said.
Peter also was a member of Knights of Columbus Council 11188 and attended the Columbus Catholic Men’s Conference on several occasions.
After graduating from Snyder High School in Jersey City, Peter went to work as an administrator for the American Chicle Co., which made chewing gum and was a division of the Warner-Lambert pharmaceutical company. His sister was employed in the company laboratory.
He also wrote feature stories for the Morristown, New Jersey, Daily Record. One of his earliest stories, displayed at his wake, was about ice skater Peggy Fleming, with whom he maintained a correspondence for several years.
Peter was a prolific letter writer, who in this high-tech era preferred the “old school” communications methods of letters and phone calls. His oldest son, Mark, said he sent about 10 letters per day to friends, celebrities and people he read about who were facing some sort of difficulty, always with a self-addressed stamped envelope included for return correspondence.
“He was always optimistic, with the type of can-do spirit where he felt nothing was beyond him even in his situation. He’d write people because he wanted to pass on that feeling and hoped his experiences could help others,” his sister said.
His letters also led him to the love of his life, Mary (Ritchey), who was a bookkeeper at St. Joseph Cemetery in Columbus when the two began corresponding through a pen-pal list in a Catholic publication. Their youngest son, Joseph, said the friendship turned into a year or two of courtship, Peter flew to Columbus once or twice, and he and Mary were wed in 1975. The marriage lasted for 28 years, until Mary’s death in 2003.
They were the parents of four children – Mark (Brook) of Portage, Michigan; Maria of Columbus; Daniel (Jenny) of Westerville; and Joseph (Kelly) of Lancaster – and had eight grandchildren.
“What I think attracted them was the potential of what they saw, the realization of what they could be together as opposed to individually,” Mark Broeckel said. “He was a very engaged father, always looking for opportunities in which he could help us develop athletically and academically.”
He lived in southeast Columbus and was a member of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal Church from the time of his marriage until his health required him to move to Country View for care in 2017. He often told me that what he missed most about not living at home was the opportunity to receive the Eucharist weekly during visits by Deacon Steve Venturini of his parish.
At his wake service, Deacon Venturini said, “Peter was open with what he believed and not afraid to talk about it and ask questions. I once told him, ‘You ought to be the pope.’ Most communion calls take about 10 minutes, but with Peter, I could count on spending a half-hour, and that was good for both of us because it would help us connect. We saw each other as representing the Church in our own ways.”
Appropriately, along with a display of pictures of Peter, his wife and family at the funeral home, there was a stack of self-addressed stamped envelopes and this note:
“Before you go, do me a huge favor and grab a stamped envelope.
“There is someone that needs to hear from you and I want to help you make that happen.
“Put pen to paper in the next week and drop it in the mail. You will not regret it.
“Thanks,
“Peter”