JUNE 24
On this day in 1998, Father Daniel Madlon, a founding member of our community, died unexpectedly. At the age of 91, he was the oldest member of our community. He had been recalled to the abbey from the Ft. Totten Reservation when he was 88. This was after his car had slid into Devils Lake and he had to be rescued by a Navy SEAL, who happened to be in the car behind Father Dan’s. Surviving this ordeal, he died of a heart attack while relaxing in our Jacuzzi during the early hours of the morning. No one immediately retrieved him from the water this time. His body was not discovered until noon.
      Father Daniel was born in Louisville, Kentucky on April 8, 1907. He attended the minor seminary at St. Meinrad and entered the novitiate there in 1927. He professed solemn vows in 1931 and was ordained a priest in 1933. Father Dan taught elocution and Latin for one year following ordination. Then he was assigned to St. Paul’s Mission at Marty, South Dakota. The greater part of his priesthood was spent on reservations in Dakota and in Nebraska, where for a few years, he assisted Monsignor Frank Hulsman at Winnebago. He was always a “field man” attending to the pastoral needs of the people on the reservation.
      Father Dan had lived at Blue Cloud for three years following the silver jubilee of his ordination. This was the period of his life he called “my incarceration.” Whenever he was assigned to weekend duties in diocesan parishes, he asked the people to pray for his deliverance from Blue Cloud Abbey.
     “Don’t let other people’s frustrations frustrate you,” was one of Father Dan’s favorite sayings. Yet, he was sometimes frustrated himself. Although he was usually good-natured, monks could easily send him into a dither by asking the wrong question.
A week before his death, he attended the Catholic Sioux Indian Congress on the Pine Ridge Reservation. He was known as “Dan, Dan the Congress Man” because of his faithful attendance at this annual event. He was known by Indian people everywhere for the concern and care he showed them.