While people across Long Island and the U.S. came to know and love Msgr. Thomas Hartman in his life, his journey began and ended in the Willistons.
A crowd of hundreds mourned Hartman’s death at a Feb. 20 funeral Mass for Hartman, a beloved priest who formed half of ”The God Squad,” at the Church of St. Aidan in Williston Park.
The parish is attached to the school he attended as a boy, and across the Long Island Rail Road tracks from East Williston, where he grew up.
“It was nice to have it in his home parish,” Village of Williston Park Mayor Paul Ehrbar said. “We were honored to have him here, have the service here.”
Hartman reportedly died at age 69 Feb. 16 of complications from Parkinson’s disease, which he revealed he had in 2003.
He was lauded by clergy and laypeople alike as a compassionate, dedicated priest, and his television show “The God Squad,” which he co-hosted with Rabbi Marc Gellman for two decades, brought a message of interfaith understanding to millions of homes at its height.
“Knowing Tommy was like watching a diamond turn in the light,” Gellman wrote in a euolgy for Hartman published in Newsday. “Each of us was privileged to see one or another facet of his holy life reflected into the world to bedazzle us with its love and kindness, its compassion and generosity, its sacrifice and its secrets.”
Hartman, the oldest of six children, moved with his family to East Williston from Richmond Hill, Queens, when he was 9, according to his Newsday obituary.
He attended the St. Aidan School, a Williston Park institution, before moving on to St. Pius X preparatory seminary in Uniondale, the obituary said. He graduated from Our Lady of Angels Seminary in 1970 before his ordination in 1971.
The first congregation Hartman served as a priest was the St. James Parish in Seaford, where Ehrbar and his wife Doreen, a former Williston Park mayor, were parishoners at the time.
“He was a young kid, like I was at the time, but you knew he had something special when you listened to him, and when he listened to you,” Paul Ehrbar said.
Hartman’s nephews later attended St. Aidan School with the Ehrbars’ children, Doreen Ehrbar said. They also had him and Gellman speak at an event for the Herricks Community Fund in the 1990s, where he was well received.
Hartman was “a very effective individual” and responsive to everyone, Paul Ehrbar said.
He and Gellman started “The God Squad” in 1987 on Cablevision before it moved to Telecare, the Catholic TV network Hartman eventually led to national prominence for religious programming, according to his Newsday obituary.
The pair were known as “the Siskel and Ebert of religion” and spent their shows discussing faith and life while tossing in jokes, often at each other. Hartman was considered the “straight man” to Gellman’s comedic personality.
They aired the final “God Squad” episode in 2007, after Parkinson’s disease caused his health to deteriorate, the Newsday obituary said.
Hartman raised millions of dollars for Parkinson’s research and gave some to the The Thomas Hartman Center for Parkinson’s Research at Stony Brook University, according to the obituary.
He later started Christa House, the first AIDS hospice ever built on church property in the U.S., after his brother Jerry died of the disease; and helped build up Island Harvest, the food bank headquartered in Mineola, Gellman’s eulogy said.
Hartman also served as the chaplain for the Nassau County Police Department for more than 18 years.
Police officers turned out in droves for his funeral mass, Paul Ehrbar said, and some carried his casket out of the church.
The Church of St. Aidan was packed for both Saturday’s funeral mass led by Diocese of Rockville Centre Bishop William Murphy and a Mass of Transferral the night before, he said.
“I think people that were at the church and people, even, who were not at the church felt that they knew him even if they didn’t know him,” Doreen Ehrbar said.
Hartman was buried Feb. 20 at Holy Rood Cemetery in Westbury.
