Brother Peter Baxter, CM

1916-2009

Some Vincentians are remembered for the scope and complexity of their lives of service to the Church. Their obituaries contain a long list of different assignments and a variety of ministries. Others are remembered for their faithful service to one and only one ministry, in which they served their entire community life. Brother Peter Baxter, CM, was one of the latter.

Born in 1916 to Irving and Alice Baxter, young Mr. Baxter was the only son in a family with six daughters. After graduating from high school during the Depression, and with jobs being scarce, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps. After a year of working in the great outdoors, he found work as a meat-cutter until the outbreak of World War II. During the war he trained as a paratrooper and saw action in the South Pacific, including two air drops into enemy territory. During that time (as Br. Baxter related years later) he made a promise to God: If he was saved from harm during the war, he would offer his life in service to the Church.

After the war, he worked for three years as a mail carrier, but never forgot his promise. Eventually he found his way to the Congregation of the Mission, and entered as an “older” vocation (age 32). When asked on the application to state his motive for becoming a Vincentian brother, he wrote, “to save my soul and be of help to other people.” That simple sentiment became the goal of his next 61 years of life in the Congregation.

Except for two years as a cook at the Vincentian House of Studies in Washington, D.C., Br. Baxter worked in the kitchen at St. Mary’s of the Barrens, primarily as the one and only butcher. During its heyday, the seminary in Perryville had over 150 students, faculty and other assorted confreres. Keeping meat on the table for so many must have been quite a task. After the seminary closed, Br. Baxter found other tasks that needed to be done and went about those with the same dogged determi-nation and spirit of helpfulness that characterized his entire life.

In retirement and illness Br. Baxter devoted himself to his spiritual life and became one of the founding members of the Apostles of Prayer. Br. Baxter died on September 28, 2009, and was buried in the community cemetery in Perryville, Missouri.