Paul Gregory BootkoskiPaul Gregory Bootkoski had many reasons to join the priesthood, but in a celibate life he lost the opportunity to pass on his family name. There were no others to do it, either. He was born July 4, 1940, in Newark, New Jersey, the only son of Peter and Antoinette Bootkoski. His paternal grandparents were married in St. Stanislaus' Polish church in Newark. His sister, Annette, changed her name by marriage to Fred Wagner. Bootkoski is therefore on the way out.
Whatever the family name was originally, his father, Peter, who was born 21 January 1911, did not trace it back to Poland, where 47 Botkowskis and 279 Butkowskis remained up to 1990. As a result, after his son was ordained on May 28, 1966, Peter Bootkoski, who died in Englishtown, New Jersey, in February, 1985, had nobody to perpetuate the Bootkoski name.
Yet, coming out of the Newark Archdiocese with 1.3 million Catholics, 235 parishes and 176 Catholic schools, the priest of the same name enjoyed moments of glory. After growing up in Queen of Peace parish in North Arlington, New Jersey, he left home to begin years of study that led to his ordination. He passed through St. Benedict Prep High School in Newark, Seton Hall University in East Orange, and Immaculate Conception Seminary in Darlington. Archbishop Thomas Boland, who ordained him, assigned him to Sacred Heart parish in Bloomfield and, in the next six years, to Holy Spirit parish in Orange and St. Michael's in Cranford.
Off and on, he served Catholic students throughout the Newark archdiocese, an area of 541 square miles which covered Hudson, Bergen, Essex, and Union counties, and in 1996, 13 years after he became for the first time pastor of St. Mary of the Assumption parish in Elizabeth and six years after he was appointed pastor of St. Gabriel the Archangel parish in Saddle River, he assumed additional duties as spiritual director for the clergy of the archdiocese. In 1997, six years after Pope John Paul 11 made him a prelate of honor, Monsignor Bootkoski was named auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Newark. When Archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick was sent to Washington in 2001, Bootkoski was responsible for temporary management of the archdiocese. Pretty soon the talk around the tables in the archdiocese was that Bootkoski was worthy of a higher place in the Catholic hierarchy.
When the Vatican announced that he would become Bishop of Metuchen on March 19, 2002, half a million Catholics who make up the 20-year-old diocese were overjoyed. Cardinal McCarrick, who was the first bishop of the diocese, called Metuchen "one of the most beautiful dioceses in the world." The new bishop brought to it not only a breath of administrative experience, but also a love for people, leadership qualities, and a last name that no one else will ever have.
Sources: Ancestry.com: Domiano, Rayanne, "Bishop Bootkoski: The Right Man at the Right Time," The Catholic Spirit; Polish American World, May 31 and June 21, 2002; Hoffman, William F., Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings; Rymut, Kazimierz, Slownik nazwisk wspolczesnie w Polsce uzywanych (Directory of Surnames in Current Use in Poland).