Even as a young boy growing up in a small Texas town, Father Jim Sichko knew exactly what he wanted to do later in life.
“I would come home and play priest. My dog was the parishioner. I always say I was so delighted. I think it was in third grade that Pringles came out because they looked like the host that the priest breaks. And that always stayed with me, even in third grade,” he said.
The 59-year-old Catholic priest says he and his four brothers and sisters learned at an early age what it meant to welcome and help new immigrants to America. It was 1975,, and the Vietnam War was ending. Vietnamese refugees were moving to the United States.
“They came to this country in boats to a land where they knew no one, spoke no English, had no clothes and no job. My parents sponsored five families to live with us for a year. And what did my mom and dad do? They made us five sleep on the floor and give the beds to the refugees,” Sichko said. “My father took the men to his work. My mother helped the ladies with understanding of the cooking and all that. And I inherited, and my sisters and brothers inherited 5,6,7, other brothers and sisters, and they went to school with us.”…