Gardener of Nature and the Spirit by Alois Sandner MOSAIC, Summer 2007    He tends his garden, this gentle and modest man, as he has done for most of the past half-century—with care, prudence, planning, hard work and a warm smile. And his garden thrives, with thirty varieties of trees and bushes, lilacs, azaleas, roses (the ever-blooming floribunda mostly) daffodils, irises, raspberries, plums, peppers, along with 1,700 children and youth (also "ever-blooming") in the northwest corner of Dearborn, Michigan.   The Church of the Divine Child—its name spelled out in a carefully clipped hedgerow of boxwood—is the "garden" tended by Msgr. Herman Kucyk. Everything about the parish has grown since he arrived as an assistant pastor in 1961.   Established in 1950, the new parish was blessed by the generosity of the Ford Motor Company, which matched contributions two-to-one to build the high school. Most of the basic plant was begun in that first decade, including the convent for the first eight Bernardine nuns (where ten still reside today). "There have been thirty additions to the entire complex since that time," Monsignor says of the Divine Child elementary school, junior and senior highs, convent, double-size gymnasium, 500-seat auditorium, athletic field and natural gardens.   His was a late-blooming vocation. After graduating from high school in 1944, serving in the U.S. Navy, then working at Ford, he entered Sacred Heart Seminary, spent a year at SS. Cyril and Methodius Seminary, finished at St. John Major Seminary and was ordained in 1957, "six years older than my classmates." Monsignor acquired his love of hands-on work, and of gardening, growing up in a house within Detroit's St. Stanislaus Parish purchased by his father with World War I army bonus money. Each of the six children was given a choice of responsibilities. "My job was the yard. I could buy tulip bulbs for a penny each," he recalls.   "The gardening is my vocation. My real job is being a priest and being with the kids."   His garden has 790 elementary students, 910 high school students, a ninety-seven percent college entrance rate—thanks in part to a $4 million college scholarship program for two hundred grads each year— and computer stations at all levels. His garden has blossomed in other ways. Eight landscaped grottos and shrines have taken root throughout the parish and school grounds under Monsignor's personal direction. The oldest is a 1962 life-sized fiberglass grouping showing Christ interacting with students in the school uniforms of the day. The newest is a bronze-toned statue of St. Francis of Assisi presiding over a fieldstone-rimmed pond with a cascading stream enlivened by multicolored koi. Other devotional sites include Our Lady of the Way grotto at the entrance to the high school, where the football team gathers before each game for prayer; Sacred Heart and Immaculate Heart shrines facing each other in the convent courtyard; and a Virgin and Child landscaped alcove near the church entrance.   Monsignor Kucyk retires this year from his administrative duties, "but I'll still be here for Masses and confessions. I'll be able to visit the kids in school, and maybe I'll be able to get more involved in my gardening."   But how did he manage to stay in his beloved garden for so many years, except for brief assignments at other parishes between 1967 and 1972?   "I was always careful to stay in the background," he says. "I had such a good deal, I was afraid they'd take me out. That's why I was surprised when Cardinal Szoka (found me and) made me a monsignor."     Alois Sandner (High School '52, College '56) is a retired journalist and was press secretary and speechwriter for former Michigan Gov. William Milliken.