Walter Bonam’s faith, perseverance amazing gifts

     When the fire came in 2001, Walter Bonam stood outside his home and wrapped his arms around his wife Jennifer and daughter Amanda. As flames engulfed everything in their house in New Orleans East, Walter was the embodiment of one of his favorite writers, Trappist monk Thomas Merton, whose books he had devoured and assimilated over a lifetime of prayer and discernment – the books that now were going up in smoke.

    The contemplative in Walter Bonam made an assessment. Two months earlier, a neighborhood couple had lost their 17-year-old child in a car accident.

    “Honey,” Walter whispered to Jennifer, “they would give anything to swap places with us right now.”

    When the flood came in 2005, the Bonams’ house on Seven Oaks Road was destroyed again. First fire, then water.

    “When the house flooded with Katrina, Walter told Amanda, ‘We have to remember that everyone in the neighborhood is hurting,’” Jennifer said. “I come from a long line of over-reactors. Walter always seems to be a person capable of putting the fires out. He’s got a very calming spirit about himself. He brings almost a saintly kind of spirit. It’s eerie. Sometimes I have to step back, look at him and say, ‘Gee, how do you get to this place?’ He was always saying, ‘While it looks bad for us, consider what other people are going through.’”

    When the gunshot to the upper chest came on July 6 from an intruder who barged into the family home wielding a chrome pistol and wearing a bandana over his face, Walter slumped to the floor. The bullet lodged near his lung and spinal cord, and a towering figure of strength, intellect and faith, who has spent most of his adult life teaching and evangelizing throughout the Archdiocese of New Orleans, is paralyzed below his clavicle.

    “It’s still very surreal,” Walter said in the intensive care unit at University Hospital before being moved late last week to Touro Infirmary to begin months of work at a spinal cord rehab unit. “One minute you’re in the den watching TV, and the next minute a guy bursts into the front door brandishing a gun. We were just doing what you do when you’re at home – and the next thing you know, the world is very different.”

    Like Merton, Walter has preached nonviolence throughout his life. Jennifer says she has seen her husband occasionally get “a little irritated” while driving in traffic, but then the Merton in him will kick in: “Ooh, that’s a little too much testosterone.”

    “He won’t ever fall victim to road rage,” Jennifer said. “He just has a gentle spirit. No one ever would have had to approach him in such a violent way. With this child who invaded our home, Walter would have been the first one to offer him assistance or counseling or bring him someplace for help. That’s the kind of man he is. He said if he had the opportunity to meet face to face, he would ask him, ‘Why did you choose this path?’ Most people would say, ‘I’d want to shoot him.’ That’s not who Walter is. Walter is a peaceful man, a forgiving man.”

    He’s also a beloved man. Just hours after word spread that Corpus Christi-Epiphany Church would hold a prayer service for Walter and his family, more than 200 people showed up to plead for healing – and a miracle. Josephite Father John Harfmann, Corpus Christi’s pastor, said the turnout was a testament to Bonam, who heads the parish’s RCIA program, sings in the choir and is the associate director of the archdiocesan Religious Education Office.

    “This really shook a lot of people because they realized it was a totally innocent situation,” Father Harfmann said. “There is a book called ‘Violence Unveiled,’ which talks about the death of Jesus unveiling the true meaning of violence. My first thought was, ‘My God, this violent act, which was senseless, has galvanized so many people to realize this was a totally innocent person.”

    Jennifer has tucked away – inside her blouse – a relic of Blessed Basil Moreau and a prayer card for the beatification of Mother Henriette Delille, which she received from the Marianite Sisters and the Sisters of the Holy Family.

    “I’m sure that’s not where they wanted it, OK?” Jennifer said, smiling. “We are now in the political battle of our lives, finding out who’s going to get credit for the miracle that’s going to happen. Walter says, ‘I don’t care who gets credit for it. It could be the posse.’ Amanda is pulling for Padre Pio.”

    But faced with an unrelenting medical reality and the inscrutability of the unknown, Walter is doing what he always does – pray, contemplate, reflect. Life, he realizes, has changed.

    “There is a fear for the future and the unknown, but he’s really not personalizing it,” Jennifer said. “He told me, ‘Jennifer, I’ve come this far in life and I can’t wipe my nose, but whatever God wants for me, may he be glorified. I don’t know if I can work again. I’ll pray for a miracle, if God so chooses. But in everything, may God be glorified.’”

    Richard Cheri, the music director at Our Lady Star of the Sea Parish, is Walter’s longtime friend. In addition to his loving spirit and his great bass voice, Cheri said he always has been uplifted by Walter’s sense of humor.

    The man who now is lying in a hospital bed because of a violent act was once on the other end of the bed, when Jennifer was struggling to give birth to Amanda.

    “Walter was at the foot of the bed, rubbing her feet and saying, ‘Honey, I’m going to get the man who did this to you,’” Cheri said.

    That’s Walter. That’s Thomas Merton, who once wrote in “Love and Living”: “Mercy heals in every way. It heals bodies, spirits, society and history. It is the only force that can only heal and save.”

    Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at [email protected].