Daily prayer, meditation and the rosary were lifelong comforts

RAYMOND

Andy Holzberger, the 104-year-old whose journey of faith was featured in April’s issue of Northwest Catholic, died April 10.

Holzberger’s favorite devotion was the rosary, which he said three times every afternoon and once in the evening. When he died, three friends and his nephew’s wife, Maida Pojtinger, were praying the rosary at his bedside, Pojtinger wrote in an email.

“We lost a great individual,” said Father Paul Kaech, pastor at St. Lawrence Parish in Raymond. “But let us be great individuals in his stead.”

Holzberger was born Dec. 1, 1909, in the village of Deutsch-Mokra, now part of western Ukraine. He emigrated from Germany after World War II, eventually making his way to Washington state, where he worked as a carpenter, including a stint for the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair.

Many of Holzberger’s relatives immigrated with him and his wife, Regina, and settled along Monohon Landing Road near Raymond. There, the families established a tidy Austrian-like village, where they tended the land and continued their devotion to the church and love for their faith. For years, Holzberger supplied the wine for St. Lawrence Parish.

“We never had to buy wine, ever,” Jan McDonald, pastoral assistant for administration, said in a 2009 story in The Catholic Northwest Progress newspaper. She said Holzberger would bring in the cases, smile and say, “Here’s the wine, and one [bottle] for the priest.”

Holzberger’s wife, Regina, died in 1971. He is survived by many nieces and nephews.

A funeral Mass will be celebrated at 11 a.m. April 21 at St. Lawrence Church.

April 16, 2014

Read the April 2014 NORTHWEST CATHOLIC magazine story about Holzberger.