August 9, 2008
Faith sustains DiPasquale despite ill healthThe years have not been easy on Alex DiPasquale, a key figure in government and politics here in the late '70s and early '80s.
DiPasquale, 58, a former assistant Monroe County executive, has been on dialysis since 1977, for 31 years this fall.
His wife, Barbara, notes that this is an unusually long time, and it has made her husband an inspiration for other people with kidney failure.
DiPasquale has had more than 50 surgeries during the course of his illness, including three kidney transplants, each of which failed.
He's legally blind, and he has neuropathy, a nerve disorder that has left him with no feeling in his feet and legs and has spread to his digestive system.
"And yet I'm the happiest man in the world," DiPasquale says as he sits on the porch of his Rochester home. "All because of faith."
Faith is essential to DiPasquale, though it wasn't always there in the way it is now.
It came to him during a particularly dark time in the 1990s when his body and mind were so wracked by illness that he had decided to end dialysis and consequently end his life.
Hospitalized by what turned out to be an infected appendix, DiPasquale had a chilling hallucination. He dreamed he had gone to the moon with other people. And then everyone else returned to Earth.
He looked at the Earth through a big window. "I was all alone," he says. "I had no way of getting back."
Home from the hospital, DiPasquale reached for the phone and called the Rev. Frank Falletta of St. Lawrence Church in Greece.
"I really need to talk to someone," he recalls saying.
Thus began the first of several conversations that rekindled his Roman Catholic faith.
He emerged with a new perspective on his illness, a belief that God will be with him during his struggles and that a better world awaits him after death.
"When I hurt, I hurt," DiPasquale says. "When I get frustrated, I'm ready to throw something through the window. But I always come back to asking God to help me."
"He never says, 'Why me?'" Barbara adds.
DiPasquale has dialysis Monday, Wednesday and Friday at Rochester General Hospital.
He works as the business manager at St. Lawrence Parish. He also teaches classes for people interested in becoming Roman Catholic.
A native of Rochester who lives in the Charlotte neighborhood, around the corner from his childhood home, DiPasquale studied political science at the State University College at Brockport and went on to get his master's degree from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University.
He came back to Rochester and soon went to work for Lucien Morin, who was then the Monroe County manager, appointed by the Monroe County Legislature.
In 1983, Morin, a Republican, became the first person elected as Monroe County executive. He chose DiPasquale to be assistant county executive.
"I worked seven days a week when I was at the county, and I loved it," DiPasquale says.
Now, though, he believes that he was too consumed by the job, that he was feeding his ego and his sense of self-importance.
DiPasquale left county government in 1987 after Morin lost his bid for re-election.
He did a stint as director of public works in Greece and spent time in the private sector before his health forced him to stop working full-time and to abandon a plan to get a doctoral degree and teach.
His life hasn't gone according to plan, he says, but in many ways he's glad it didn't. Through faith, he has become unafraid. He's discovered the importance of connecting with people one-on-one. He's found joy.
"I was driven all my life," he says. "I wanted to be in government. I wanted to teach. I wanted to write books. There was no one else but me in my life. I've become an entirely different person."
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080809/NEWS0202/808090312/-1/COLUMNS
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