Deceased: 2003-04-22
Diocese: COVINGTON
Seminary Graduation Year: 1960
Rev. William Mertes died on April 22, 2003.
The word “visionary” came up often in conversations about the Rev. William Henry Mertes.
“Where others saw a city in decline, he saw a city with a lot of assets,” said a former student, Mike Hammons of Park Hills.
Covington residents knew Mertes, who died Tuesday at age 82, as the pastor who saved Mother of God Catholic Church from the wrecking ball. But they also knew him as one who helped save the Mutter Gottes and Montgomery neighborhoods.
“He put the jet propulsion to that issue, to the effort of rehabbing houses in the city,” said former mayor and current City Commissioner Bernie Moorman.
And they knew him as the untiring advocate of the poor, the disadvantaged and outcast, the man who founded agencies that have made the lives of thousands of such people in Covington better over the past 30 years.
Mertes became associate pastor at Mother of God in 1969 and pastor in 1973. The church was in bad shape in a run-down neighborhood, and Mertes turned it around, Moorman said, because he did such wonderful things there.
“He was a wonderful speaker who could get to the essence of an issue so cleanly and so precisely,” Moorman said.
In 1974, Mertes helped jump-start urban renewal in Covington by persuading 11 others to pool their resources with him and buy nine houses on Covington Avenue that the city planned to tear down. Mertes would live in the house he bought there until his death.
That same year, Mertes also bought a building on Pike Street and created the Parish Kitchen, which has provided meals for the homeless and hungry ever since.
Molly Navin, who now directs the kitchen, called Mertes her role model and inspiration. She said he was a very spiritual man, but one with many interests in the real world.
“He was a package that was tied with lots and lots of strings and ribbons, and they kind of flew off in all directions like he did,” she said.
In 1981, Mertes left Mother of God and became the director of Catholic Social Services of Northern Kentucky.
Two years later, he started the Welcome House, a shelter for women and the homeless. Michelle Budzek served as the first director.
Mertes understood the differences in people and respected them, she said. He believed the outcasts of society — poor, gay, widowed, disabled, and elderly — deserved as much compassion as anyone else.
“Bill was stubborn,” Budzek said. “When he wanted something done, he was going to work very hard to make it done, and make it done right.”
Born in Chicago in 1921 and blessed with a fine baritone voice, Mertes studied music at Northwestern University. He retained a lifelong love of classical music, especially opera, and always had season tickets to the Cincinnati Symphony.
“I envy the person who gets his tickets. They’re very well positioned,” Moorman said.
Mertes captivated his friends with stories of the missions he flew over Germany as an Army Air Corps pilot during World War II. It was a difficult assignment for him, Moorman said, because he was proud of his own German heritage, and always worried that he might be dropping bombs on a distant relative.
Mertes came to the priesthood a bit later in life than most. He studied philosophy at St. Mary College at St. Mary, Ky., and theology at the Gregorian University in Rome before his ordination at 38.
For a 1986 article about Mertes, his mother told The Kentucky Post her son was about 7 when he would gather neighborhood children in the basement of his Chicago home so they could hear him say “Mass.”
“He was very creative,” she said. “He was always an organizer, a leader. He made an altar. He had the book and the chalice.
“What tickled me is that it didn’t matter whether the kids were Catholic or not, he just wanted his crowd there.”
After becoming a priest, Mertes was assigned to the Covington diocese when the diocese still included Lexington. He taught at Lexington Catholic High School, and then became an assistant at Holy Cross Church in Latonia. In 1968, he joined the faculty of Holy Cross High School there.
Hammons remembered him as a firm teacher who let students know that he respected their opinions. Even then, he had a love for Covington. He once assigned the class to come up with ways to improve the city.
“He instilled in me at an early age a concern for the people in the inner city and the challenges of maintaining vitality in the inner city,” said Hammons, now director of Forward Quest, a Northern Kentucky economic development and planning group.
Mertes had strong convictions and didn’t hesitate to share them with others, said Sister Joan Boberg, who met him when the two were teaching at Lexington Catholic. But he was also fun to be around.
“He was very entertaining, and conversant on many different topics,” she said.
“He had a real sharp wit,” said former neighbor Chuck Scheper. “I always enjoyed just talking with him.”
But Mertes apparently made enemies. Possibly because of his activity in the downtown rehab movement, his car was firebombed in 1980, as was the home of his niece.
“The more we pushed, the more the city began to inspect buildings,” Mertes said in 1986. “Some didn’t like it because they had to get their buildings up to standards.”
Mertes retired as a priest in 1986, but stayed active in Catholic Social Services and other groups. He and Boberg served as honorary co-chairs for Catholic Social Services’ capital campaign in 2001.
The Friends of Covington honored Mertes with its 2001 Covington Award.
One of his last concerns was who would look after the people who counted on him after he was gone, Hammons said.
“For one individual, he made an awful lot of contributions to this community,” Hammons said.
