Fr Tim was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on May 24, 1908. He made vows at St Meinrad Archabbey on August 6, 1928. As a young monk he was an exceptional athlete, but at the age of 23 he was stricken with tuberculosis. The cure offered to him was the radical collapse of his diseased lung, sleeping under a shelter out-of-doors, and a mission assignment to a Dakota Indian reservation, even before his ordination to the priesthood on May 22, 1934. Although he had only one lung, he chain smoke cigars until a year or so before his death.

Fr Tim brought to everything his competitive good zeal. In a few short months on the reservation he learned the Dakota language and became the editor of a newspaper in Dakota. In 1943 he was assigned as superior and fund raiser at Immaculate Conception Mission. Three years, however, proved that his talents did not fit behind a desk. He was allowed to return to his priestly and sacramental work.

This time he went to the Fort Totten Reservation where he built the Catholic Youth Center next to Seven Dolors Church. Although the center was a place where the reservation youth recreated, Fr Tim also provided them with catechetical instruction, inventing hundreds of games to be used as tools for religious education.

In 1968 Fr Tim became the chaplain at St Bernard's Hospital and St William's Nursing Home in Milbank. In 1970 he was also given the pastorship of Annunciation Parish in Revillo. He later had to relinquish the parish because failing eyesight prevented him from driving there.

Fr Tim had a sense of humor which at times seemed outlandish. He livened up community meetings by his humorous remarks, but we all knew to look for something profound beneath his apparent nonsense. So did the hospital patients and nursing home residents who read his daily letter called "Blab." At one point in the 1980s, he retired to Blue Cloud Abbey, but found that he was not ready for retirement. He attempted work at Ft Totten again but found that he was too old for it. He returned to Milbank and was gladly welcomed back by the Daughters of St Mary of Providence. He had been away from the hospital and nursing him for less than a year. Golfers in Milbank were also happy to see him back on the green and so were his confreres who golfed with him.

Fr Tim died in the hospital where he had been chaplain, two weeks before he would have celebrated the Diamond Jubilee of his monastic profession. At baptism he had been named Emmet, after the Irish patriot, Robert Emmet. Fr Tim's ancestry was solidly Irish and he inherited the wit and wisdom of his race as well as its conviviality. And its delightful eccentricity.