Don Zirkel of Hicksville, Catholic activist, deacon, dies at 95

He was 80 years old and a Roman Catholic deacon when Don Zirkel showed up at a peace rally outside the Smith Haven Mall in 2008 to protest the Iraq War.

Splotched with red, his white T-shirt was emblazoned with a message about the war’s fatalities: "4,000 troops, 1 million Iraqis dead. Enough."

At one point, Zirkel and his wife, Marie, went inside for a cup of coffee. The mall’s management didn’t appreciate their T-shirts. Security officers told them to turn the shirts inside out, or leave.

Zirkel, who died Jan. 23 at age 95, refused. On both counts.

He got arrested and was carted out of the mall in a wheelchair by Suffolk County police. They charged him with criminal trespassing and resisting arrest.

"I'm being punished for six words that spoke the truth. That's insanity. War is insanity," he told Newsday a few days after his release from two hours in jail.

“I'm wearing the T-shirt again," he added.

Eventually, the charges were dropped.

The protest in Lake Grove was a quintessential Zirkel moment. Over decades, the one-time seminarian and Catholic newspaper editor advocated for a greater role for women in the church, defended Latino day laborers, and led a one-man desegregation effort on his street in Hicksville.

“He was a disrupter,” said one of his daughters, Annie Zirkel of Ann Arbor, Michigan. “He just wasn’t afraid to challenge. He wanted to make the world a better place.”

Zirkel and his wife, longtime residents of Hicksville, formed a “power couple” in Long Island progressive Catholic circles, devoted to what he called “social action” based on Gospel values.

Rented house to Puerto Rican family

In the early 1960s, he put that into play when he rented out a house he owned on an all-white street in Hicksville to a Puerto Rican family.

Most of his neighbors "were very, very upset at us, including some people who had been friends with us for years," Zirkel once told Newsday. Some even signed a petition opposing the new tenants, Zirkel’s daughter said, though others were supportive.

He spent 37 years at The Tablet, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Brooklyn, including 17 as editor, from 1968 to 1985. He used his perch to challenge people, right up to the pope.

When Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass at Yankee Stadium in 1979, Zirkel criticized him for not allowing women to serve as Eucharistic ministers, according to The Tablet. Zirkel, in print, called the ban “sexist.”

During his tenure, Zirkel covered major changes in the Catholic Church, including the 1960s Vatican II reforms, and transformed the conservative paper itself.

He advocated for women to become priests, opposed the Vietnam War, and allowed for dissent on the church’s teaching on birth control.

When once urged to play it safe, according to The Tablet, Zirkel said, “That has never been my style.” 

Became a deacon

In 1979, Zirkel became an official part of the church himself: he was ordained a deacon, allowing him to preach at Masses, baptize people and officiate at weddings.

He used that pulpit at parishes in Farmingdale, Hicksville and Wyandanch — where Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal was the poorest parish in the Diocese of Rockville Centre — to press the faithful on issues such as day laborers.

His message was not always warmly received, his daughter said. “The pastor had to take a lot of heat,” she said.

Sister Camille D'Arienzo, who worked with Zirkel at The Tablet, said, “He didn’t care much about riches at all. But he cared powerfully for people who were poor.”

Zirkel grew up in Queens, and entered a high school seminary in Bay Shore run by the Monfort Missionaries.

His dreams of becoming a priest ended, though, six years later when he decided to marry his childhood sweetheart from Queens, Marie Greene. They ended up having nine children.

He went on to study at St. John’s University. During the Korean War, he served stateside in the Army as a corporal and assistant chaplain.

He and his wife, who died in 2011, were deeply involved in the church’s Marriage Encounter and Cursillo spiritual renewal programs. They volunteered at soup kitchens and in missions to Mexico and the Dominican Republic.

In 1986, then-Gov. Mario Cuomo appointed Zirkel spokesman for the state Division of Human Rights, where he worked for seven years.

Survivors include two other daughters, Jeanne O'Connell of upstate Montgomery, and Mary Pacifico, of upstate Bloomingburg; four sons, Joseph of Bellmore; Paul of Blue Point; Tim, of Farmingdale; and John of Allentown, New Jersey; 26 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

A funeral Mass is scheduled for Feb. 11 at 11 a.m. at Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal in Wyandanch, followed by a celebration of his life.