Father Norman Whalen said the first Mass in the nearly finished St. Andrew the Apostle church in March 1958. At the time, he had been a priest not quite 4 years. He was assigned as associate pastor to Fr. Cullinan for Our Lady of Lourdes parish in Benson, but was living in Tombstone, since Sacred Heart church there then came under the Benson parish. He had been assigned in 1956 to assist Fr. Cullinan in order to establish St. Andrew the Apostle Church in Sierra Vista.
Although a fairly new priest, Fr. Whalen was already 37 years old at the time, having served with distinction in the Army Air Force during World War II.
In 1939, he joined the National Guard. While digging a foxhole during maneuvers in 1940, Norm looked up to see B-17 bombers flying overhead, and thought that looked more appealing. In October 1941, he enlisted in the Army Air Force and in January 1942 headed for flight school in Alabama. In time, it appeared he was not cut out to be a pilot, and he transferred to navigator training, which made use of his talent for math. Commissioned a Second Lieutenant Arial Navigator in November 1942, he was assigned to the 98th Bomb Group and sent to North Africa. From there he flew 36 bombing raids over Europe on B-24 Liberators without harm, but not without some exciting adventures, like losing an engine and fighting off German fighters. On one occasion the mission was to bomb Rome. He admits to having had some trepidation about that one, but says the planners were careful to exclude the Vatican, famous churches, and antiquities, such as the Coliseum. One of his last missions was the low level raid on the Ploesti oil refineries in Romania in August 1943. Only slightly more than half of the bombers on that raid made it back. Whalen’s was one of them. From the Ploesti mission, Whalen was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Having completed his required mission hours, now First Lieutenant Whalen rotated back to the States. But missing the camaraderie, in September 1944 he volunteered to return, and flew 39 more raids, in all totaling 75.
After the war, Whalen felt his first call to a religious vocation. He at first tried to deny it, much preferring to stay in the service. The vocation prevailed however, and Whalen entered St. Mary’s seminary in Baltimore in 1946. During his seminary years, he joined the Diocese of Tucson, Arizona and was ordained in May of 1954.
During his 6-year tenure in Tombstone, he assisted Fr. Cullinan in founding St. Andrew’s in Sierra Vista. In 1962, he enrolled at the University of Arizona and received a doctorate in anthropology (majoring in archeology) in 1972.
In 1972, Fr. Whalen was granted a leave of absence to accept an assistant professorship at Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University). His career as a professor there extended to 2003, when he chose at the age of 83 to retire. His specialty was trying to trace the route of early man, from his origins in Africa on his migrations across the Arabian Peninsula into western Asia. As part of his work, Fr. Whalen organized 15 expeditions, each lasting 4 months, into the Arabian peninsula looking for evidence of ancient man in that region 2 1/2 to 1 1/2 million year ago. His searches found thousands of artifacts and sites, and he published 20 articles on his work in professional journals.
After retirement, Fr. Whalen returned to Tucson in 2003 and had a home built in Oro Valley, surrounded by his books and memories, and with the artifacts he was authorized to bring back with him from Arabia.
Father Norman Whalen entered into eternal rest on Feb. 27, 2008 at age 87.