Jack Kerouac's Pastor

Father Armand Morissette, O.M.I

When Jack Kerouac, the famed “Beat Generation” writer and author of On the Road, died in 1969 at age 47, his long-time friend Father Armand Morissette, O.M.I. (1910-1991) was the celebrant of his Requiem Mass. (For more on Kerouac’s early death of alcoholism please see my essay at DappledThings.org )

While Father Morissette’s connection to Kerouac has been somewhat ballyhooed over the years, his World War II service should not be overlooked.

Known as “Father Spike” to many, Morissette was a priest of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. According to the order’s website, Father Morissette was assigned in 1943 to serve as chaplain to the Catholic sailors aboard the French destroyer La Triumphante, docked for eight months in Boston’s harbor. In November 1944 he was named “Chaplain of the French Navy in the United States” with the rank of captain - the only American citizen to serve in the French navy. In 1945, the French government honored him with the Médaille Militaire, and in 1949, made him a Chevalier de la Légion.

All of this was years after he first met Kerouac. The two met when Jack was in high school in the 1930s in Lowell, Massachusetts and they maintained a friendship for decades, until Jack’s death.

In a speech he delivered in 1986 to the American Citizens Club of Lowell, he claimed that at their first meeting Kerouac seemed discouraged. When he asked him why, his response was, "Everybody laughs at me because I write poetry. That’s why. And I want to be a writer. I want to write books!” Morissette encouraged the youngster, then and in later years, and we know of his ultimate literary successes - and thanks to his semi-autobiographical novels we also know of his many demons, including alcohol.

Father Morissette once asked him, “You drink too much - aren’t you afraid of hell?” “No, no,” replied Kerouac, “I am interested in heaven, not in hell, I want to go to heaven and see Gerard who is in heaven with the angels.” Gerard (1916-1926) was Jack’s older brother who died before age ten when Jack was four and was the inspiration for Kerouac’s book Visions of Gerard published in 1958.

At Kerouac’s funeral Mass at St. Jean Baptiste Church in Lowell, Father Morissette said a short eulogy, concluding with “Our hope and prayer is that Jack has found complete liberation … Jack is now sharing the visions of Gerard.”

Father Armand “Spike” Morissette died on October 28, 1991, at age eighty-one. His funeral Mass was also celebrated at St. Jean Baptiste and his mortal remains are interred at St. Joseph Cemetery, Lowell.