Tidings (CA): Joining César: ‘I wanted to do it full-time,’ says Minnesota priest

César Chávez was still a school boy when one day he came home with bruises, complaining to his mother that another boy wanted to fight with him.

"It takes two to start a fight," his mother responded. It was a lesson about violence that the future farm workers’ leader never forgot.

"He became a non-violent man and that characterized the movement he led," said Father Ken Irrgang, the United Farm Workers’ chaplain who worked closely with Chávez from 1977 to 1989, the years when the farm workers’ movement escalated, leading to agreements designed to stop injustices in the fields.

Chávez shared many other anecdotes with Father Irrgang, who arrived in California from Nicollet, a small agricultural town in the Diocese of New Ulm, Minnesota. The priest — now retired and living in St. Cloud, Minn. — became a confidante not only of Chávez, but of many farm workers, men and women, in the fields of Northern and Central California.

"In the beginning César had a hard time to convince the workers that violence was not the way," said the priest. The farm workers, he said, were tired of being mistreated by growers who were not responding to their requests for better working conditions.

Workers had to work at least 12-hour days on the fields under 100-degree-plus temperatures. There was no water to drink at the fields and no toilets, and many grew sick or died from kidney or bladder malfunctions.

"They were treated badly," commented Father Irrgang, who ministered directly from the United Farm Workers’ headquarters in La Paz. "They wanted to respond violently, so César’s first fast was to convince them not to be violent."

The farm workers’ children (many of them Spanish speakers) attended mostly white schools in small towns, which created tension in the communities. Many times, Father Irrgang noted, non-white families felt the teachers gave preferential treatment to the white students, leaving the other students behind — not unlike what Chávez had suffered in his youth.

The Chávezes were a migrant family, moving from town to town wherever they were needed to pick the harvest. "César went to 28 elementary schools," commented Father Irrgang. "Although he never attended high school, he was very intelligent, an avid reader, very informed — one of those gifted people."

While Chávez was growing up in the West, Ken Irrgang — a Navy veteran of the Korean War — was teaching at a Minnesota high school, having earned a degree in English. But he recalled meeting Mexican-American families as a young boy, and feeling drawn to their culture.

"I got together with the children and their families, and I had more than fun," he recalled. "I grew up liking and enjoying them very much."

Answering a call to the priesthood, he was ordained in 1968, ministered at a couple of parishes, and then became a campus pastor of the College of St. Benedict. By then, as an avid reader, Father Irrgang had followed every step of the farm workers’ movement. In the summer of 1973, he saw on the news that two UFW members had been killed in California; one was Mexican American, the other an Arab.

His desire to support the workers grew, and in 1977 he contacted Chávez. After receiving approval from his home diocese and the Fresno Diocese, he joined the National Farm Workers Ministry and became a union member. He clearly remembers when he arrived in La Paz in July.

"I wanted to do it full-time," Father Irrgang told The Tidings. He was there at every march, rally, Mass, wedding or funeral.

Chávez had also shared with him how, in the beginning, union organizers in the country had told him he would never be able to organize the migrant farm workers. But that did not deter him.

"He had read and learned a lot about St. Francis, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King," said Father Irrgang. "He inspired a lot of people, was a good manager, understood the needs, wanted to organize them and most importantly, he was a good listener. And his parents were very influential."

The priest recalled how Chávez never missed Sunday Mass even if it was after days of traveling nationwide. "César was an outstanding Catholic," he declared.

In 1989 Father Irrgang was asked to return to his diocese. Four years later, he got the "shocking" phone call telling him the leader had died.

"Everyone thought he would outlive his parents. His father died at 101 years old and his mother at 99. But he did three major fasts that might have had a long-range effect on him."

Father Irrgang retired in 1994. Today, at age 82, he spends his time reading for the blind at St. Cloud churches and over the radio. He also tutors adults learning English and every semester he teaches a course for the College of St. Benedict’s juniors and seniors about César Chávez and the union he co-founded, part of a class called "Heroes in Social Justice."