 Fr. Albert Thomas Muller, OP
Fr. Muller lived a long and fruitful life as a servant of God and of the Western Dominican
Province. He was a beloved pastor of souls in
many of our parishes, but especially at St. Dominic’s in Benicia, California, where
he was assigned for most of the years between 1935 and 1954. During the Second World War, he was the civilian
chaplain for the Benicia Arsenal, a post quite natural for him as a member of a prominent
military family.
Fr. Muller was born in 1889 at Fort Niobrara, Nebraska, and grew up in
various places throughout the West owing to his father’s service in the Army. These were the wild and wooly days of Calamity
Jane and Buffalo Bill, close friends of both his mother and father. While living on
reservations and even going to school with Sioux Indians, he was imbued with the spirit of
the Old West. His father was eventually
stationed in Benicia. In the 1910's, Fr. Muller's mother died, and relatives, Henry M. and Mary
(Durkin), helped to raise young Albert for a short time in Oakland, CA. It was in Benicia that Fr. Muller got to know the Dominicans,
receiving his college education at St. Dominic’s Priory.
On his application for admission to the Novitiate, he responds to questions about his
reasons for wanting to enter by saying, “I know not how to express the answer, God
seemed to lead me…My soul sought liberty, happiness, and riches.” Fr. Muller completed his philosophical and
theological studies in Washington, D.C. and was ordained in 1921. He stayed on in Washington, D.C. for another year
and received the Licentiate in Canon Law from the Catholic University of America.
Surviving letters from his Prior Provincials and reminiscences of
parishioners and friends from newspaper clippings all testify to the devoted, cheerful,
and colorful character of Fr. Muller. Upon
his departure from Benicia in 1954, the Vicar Provincial Fr. Paul K. Meagher wrote to him
these words:
You have done a
fine work in your two terms, just completed, as superior and pastor at Benicia. You have served the people well, and it must bring
you great satisfaction to observe the many indications of the great affection in which
they hold you. Furthermore, you have served
the Order well. You have been conscious,
beyond the call of duty, of the needs of the Province, and I want you to be sure that the
generous way in which you have contributed toward the general welfare of the Province has
not escaped attention. It has been noted and
will always be remembered. I know that God
will bless you for what you have done.
He writes in one of his letters to then Prior Provincial Joseph
Fulton that one of his “great ambitions” was to contribute financially to the
education of the students at St. Albert’s Priory,
and this he did by drawing on his own income from various ministries.
Father Muller spent his last years as a hospital chaplain at St.
Mary’s Hospital in Reno, and one of his colleagues there, Sister M. Dominga, O.P.,
offered these fond recollections:
He very much
symbolized the founder of the Order of St. Dominic, who promised he could do more for
mankind after death than in life. Father
Muller was a true son of St. Dominic. In a
sense, he anticipated the Christmas season not only as a time of birth, but with a
fore-knowledge of after-life. He referred to
heaven as the ‘ranch in the sky’ where we would all have our last
‘roundup.’ In that sense, Father
Muller remained a true Westerner, and a child all his lifetime, with a childhood vision of
both life and death.
Fr. Muller died in Reno in 1966, just before Christmas.
Photo: Fr. Albert Muller and
two of his
blood brothers.
Five of his brothers had careers in the Army, and one in the Navy. One brother, Walter J. Muller, became a Major
General, and held several important posts during the Second World War. Most notably, he served as Chief of Logistics for
the invasion of French Morocco under the command of General Patton.
William, his sibling, went on to be a full colonel and retired from the Army in 1945. Frank, another
sibling, was on the USS Ticonderoga in WW1 and was torpedoed in the North Atlantic. Frank and another
officer were picked up by the U Boat and he was a POW for a short time. Frank died of TB in the
1930's. Frank and Walter are buried in the same grave in the National Cemetery in San Francisco.
Contributing sources: John J. Muller (nephew, Oct 4, 2006),
and Western Dominican Province Archives
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