The Rev. Dr. James Fidelis Tuohy, a priest, husband, family man, musician, entertainer, golfer, bon vivant and tireless advocate for the marginalized, died Friday morning in the assisted-living apartment he shared with Elma Hannon Tuohy, his wife of 51 and a half years.
Jim was born April 17, 1937, in Thurles, County Tipperary, Ireland, the third of Denis and Bridget Tuohy’s four sons. At the age of 6, Jim contracted a nearly fatal bout of tuberculosis that kept him bedbound for months, during which time he read voraciously and developed a love for literature that would indelibly endear him to his future wife.
Believing his fervent prayers to the Holy Family saved his life, at age 17, Jim entered All Hallow’s College, a Roman Catholic seminary in Dublin established to train priests to serve abroad. While working summers in London, he earned enough money to buy the glossy silver piano accordion he would play for more than half a century, bringing immense joy to countless thousands.
Following his ordination in 1961, Jim served briefly in Pensacola, Fla., before becoming associate pastor at St. James Parish in Gadsden, Ala. There, a small group of Irish Sisters of Mercy staffed the parish school, and on Sunday mornings, Jim drove them to the mission church in Fort Payne, Ala., for mass and Sunday school. During the long car rides, they’d entertain themselves by reciting poetry, telling stories and singing Irish music.
That first Christmas Eve in Gadsden, one of the nuns, Sister Marion Margherita Hannon, of Dublin, sat in a pew as Jim sang O Holy Night in the most gorgeous Irish tenor she’d ever heard. It was that night she frightfully realized she’d fallen in love with the priest. Nothing could have been more taboo. Fearing she might ruin the vocation of this priest she admired so deeply, she later took a leave of absence and eventually resigned from her order.
This all happened at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, just as the reforms of the Second Vatican Council permitted Catholic priests and nuns to engage with the world and participate in social movements. Jim was galvanized by the possibility of continuing Jesus’ ministry of advocating for the oppressed, but his archbishop forbade the clergy to join the marches. Jim was incensed and grew increasingly frustrated with the Church hierarchy over its silence on the Vietnam War and its inflexibility on contraception.
By 1970, Jim had had enough and approached the former Sister Margherita and asked her to marry him. He could have avoided excommunication by renouncing his priesthood, but he firmly believed God had called him to be a priest. He and Elma tried to start a life together in Ireland, but the culture at that time wouldn’t permit it. No one there wanted to hire a married priest, so he and Elma and their infant daughter, Niamh, returned to Alabama.
There, Jim continued his passion for advocacy by serving Huntsville’s poor as executive director of Interfaith Mission Service, where he met Episcopal Bishop Furman Stough who convinced Jim to join that denomination as a priest. As an associate priest at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Birmingham, Jim helped to establish a soup kitchen to feed the city’s growing poor and homeless population and frequently brought his children, Niamh and Fergus, to help while he entertained the guests with his accordion and singing.
At the same time, Jim served as chaplain to UAB’s Campus Ministries, where he helped establish a campus anti-war organization. He brought his family to the innumerable anti-nuclear proliferation vigils and rallies he helped organize, a ministry that earned him a file at the FBI, which he regarded as a badge of honor.
And while some local pastors were preaching the AIDS epidemic was God’s punishment for homosexuals, Jim rebutted them in letters to the paper while counseling dying AIDS patients and their families. Later, as rector at St. Michael and All Angel’s Church in Anniston, Alabama, he helped establish a local chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. In 2009, after serving as rector of St. Andrew’s Montevallo for ten years, Jim retired.
Throughout all these years of service and friendship to the community, Jim was famous for his music and good humor. He loved writing his sermons over a pint at Joe Bar in Five Points South, and local bar owners used to fight over who’d get him to play their St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. He and Elma threw legendary dinner parties which invariably culminated in Jim playing the accordion and singing, often while Elma danced a jig. On his day off, he could usually be found on the golf course laughing and cutting up with at least one or two of the Catholic priests who stood by him and Elma when they married.
Eventually, a shoulder surgery put an end to his golf and accordion careers, but he never stopped singing. Even after the Alzheimer’s sent him to the memory care unit, Jim delighted in belting out Danny Boy for his fellow residents on St. Patrick’s Day. And though the progressing illness robbed him of his ability to read and keep up with conversations, Jim frequently chimed in with a relevant line of poetry or quote from Shakespeare. The music and literature never left him.
A proud son of the land of saints and scholars, Jim Tuohy will be remembered as both. But above all, he will be remembered for the boundless and unbreakable bond of love he and Elma Hannon shared. Theirs was a love for the ages.
Jim Tuohy is preceded in death by his parents, Denis and Bridget; brothers, Liam (Lois), Denis (Carla) and Joe and longtime friend Anna T. O’Donnell (formerly Mother Malachy). He is survived by his wife, Elma Hannon Tuohy; daughter, Niamh Tuohy; son, Fergus Tuohy (Michael Barnett) and grandsons, Aidan and Dylan Clarke.
A funeral service will be held Tuesday, April 12 at 2 p.m., at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Birmingham. In lieu of flowers, please make donations to Community Kitchens, which Jim Tuohy helped found (https://thecommunitykitchens.org/) and/or The Alabama Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association (https://www.alz.org/al).
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