Priest and his personal flock mark milestones

The day after he celebrated his last Mass, more than 100 members of the Rev. Ed Speitel's family gathered Sunday in Villanova to help him celebrate both his 90th birthday and 60 years as a priest.

They all know the formal side, the serious side, the side of religious devotion - but Sunday, in story after story, they shared the human side.

Like this one:

Father Ed, a great swimmer at La Salle College High School, has loved the ocean and Ocean City all his life. Diane Marselis Speitel, 57, who married one of his nephews, remembers meeting Father Ed for the first time when she was 17.

"I was told I was going to be meeting an uncle who was also a priest," she recalled. When she walked into the kitchen of an Ocean City rental, she found a man clad only in an orange Speedo, his head in the refrigerator, singing - belting - "If I were a carpenter, and you were a lady, would you marry me anyway, would you have my baby?"

Father Ed was just back from an ocean swim, happy and hungry.

"My jaw dropped," Diane Speitel said. "That's Father Ed."

So many shared their stories. Father Ed celebrating Mass in flip-flops; Father Ed picking up twin nephews by their ears and throwing them off the boardwalk. He taught generations to body surf, and continued surfing himself into his early 80s.

Everyone at the party - 109 of a possible 128 relatives - wore name tags with numbers. Father Ed, the oldest of Edmond and Lillian Speitel's six children, wore No. 1.

As kin are born into the family, or marry into it, they get a number in descending order.

If someone dies or divorces, others move up the list.

The two most recent additions are No. 127 Madison Rose Speitel, a great-great-niece born Dec. 10; and No. 128 Jozef Jozefowski, who in April married No. 44, great-niece Molly Motley. No. 129 is due Saturday and was at the party in utero.

"I knew I was marrying into a big family," Jozefowski said at the party Sunday, "but I didn't know they had a numbering system."

Among the party guests were 27 couples who were married by Father Ed. And when everyone he had baptized was asked to raise their hands, nearly 60 went up.

Father Ed celebrated his last Mass on Saturday in Ocean City, where he has lived for 15 years now. He said it was time to stop - his legs are going, and a nephew explained that Father Ed didn't want to fall at the altar.

St. Frances Cabrini Church in Ocean City was standing-room only, packed with hundreds of people. Among the crowd were four who attended his first Mass 60 years ago, including his sister, Claire Bonner, 89; and sister-in-law, Rosemarie Speitel.

In his final homily, Father Ed often referenced St. Peter, "my buddy Peter," the biblical figure with whom he identifies most.

"I think I have all of his vices and one or two of his virtues," Father Ed explained. "He makes mistakes. Blurts out what he thinks."

Father Ed's very last words of his very last homily were these from Luke 23:46, which Jesus uttered on the cross: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit."

It is his favorite line in all the Gospels.

"The point is," he explained, "we're not in control. We can't just push buttons. What happens to us, to our families, what happens to the church, it's all in His hands - but it's in good hands, so let's hang in there."

He certainly has.

Ed Speitel knew he wanted to be a priest since he was an altar boy.

First he enlisted in the Army in 1943, as soon as he finished La Salle College High School. "Good feet, good eyes - everyone went in," he said. "It's what you did."

He served two years in the South Pacific and won a Combat Infantry Badge. After the war, the GI Bill paid for his studies at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary.

As a new priest, Father Ed served two years at the old Philadelphia General Hospital. He loved it, and turned the word "priest" into a verb.

"All I did was priest," he said, meaning he had no administrative duties, no responsibilities other than to minister to the sick, to their families, and to the doctors and nurses.

Then he taught for seven years at Bishop Neumann and Cardinal Dougherty high schools.

But his heart was in the military, and he spent the next 29 as a U.S. Army chaplain. He went to Vietnam at the height of the war, and celebrated Mass on the hood of a Jeep, on ammunition boxes - anyplace he could set up an altar.

He survived a helicopter crash. "I really preached a sermon that day," he said.

In those 29 years, he traveled the world and loved serving his God and his country. He retired a full colonel at age 63, and returned to the Philadelphia Archdiocese as a parish priest.

He bought a house in Ocean City, where his family had vacationed for years. It was much bigger than he needed, and he gave a key to all four of his sisters.

He retired from the Philadelphia Archdiocese when he was 75, and for the last 15 years he has been enjoying life in Ocean City, helping out local priests by offering Mass three times during the week and twice on weekends.

He'll keep playing poker with friends on Mondays and bridge on Wednesdays, and he probably has 20 relatives in Ocean City all summer to look in on him. A sister and sister-in-law live down the street year-round.

The Rev. Matthew Guckin, director of Catholic Identity for the archdiocese, was among Sunday's party guests. He lived with Father Ed as a young seminarian and considered him a mentor and great role model. Guckin recalled a Funeral Mass that Father Ed performed 20 years ago.

The deceased had two daughters who hadn't spoken in decades. Father Ed embraced them both, one in each arm, and said: "Now's the time to put the swords away. It's time to reconcile."

The sisters hugged and wept, Father Guckin recalled.

All 109 family members at the party gathered for a group photo, with Father Ed and his three younger sisters front and center. Then there were speeches and cake.

Everyone sang "Happy Birthday," and Father Ed thanked them all for coming. "Family, faith, and friends," he said, are the three most important things in life.

Then all the children began chanting:

"He's Number One!"