On the Road Again : Newport Beach Biker Priest Ends Another Chapter of Diverse Life

He ran with what can charitably be called a rough crowd of motorcyclists, performed dangerous covert missions during the Korean War and worked for an airline and a lingerie firm.

Then he became an Episcopal priest.

“The Lord got a big enough two-by-four and got my attention,” said Father Darrell Ford, 65, explaining his calling to the priesthood.

Now, that chapter of his diverse job history has ended.

Hundreds of parishioners crowded St. James Episcopal Church hall Sunday to bid an affectionate farewell to the crusty cleric who continued to live a colorful life behind the collar.

Ford has ministered to the needy in Panama, Mexico and the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota.

Lured to St. James nearly 10 years ago, he has rescued more than 200 runaway teens from prostitution and the streets and worked in gang intervention.

He also has performed marriages for some 175 couples in the parish, visited the elderly and infirm and presided over most of the funerals.

And through it all, his passion for Harley-Davidson motorcycles has remained, which parishioners at his party both teased and cautioned him about.

“I’ve been down twice. I’ve left some skin on the pavement,” he said, laughing. “I know what happens. You don’t have to tell me.”

An elderly woman who admonished him about motorcycles broke down in giggles when he replied, “When I get one, the first thing I’m going to do is take you for a ride.”

Ford was born in Oklahoma and raised Presbyterian, but he never embraced any form of religion in his youth, which he calls “misspent.”

He entered the Navy during the Korean War and was assigned to a covert mission overseas. Fourteen men went in, he said, and two came out. Ford declined to tell specifics of the mission, but the rector of St. James calls the priest “an American hero.”

After his stint in the military, he earned a degree in business management and became the traffic and distribution manager for a national lingerie firm. When the business folded, he went to work for Braniff Airlines, handling customer relations.

Along the way he began a family, which now includes one son, one daughter, four grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

He had never entered an Episcopal church until he attended the funeral of a man he worked for. Most of the funerals he had attended in other churches “went on ad nauseam” with too many eulogies, he said. But the Episcopal service was done in a tidy 25 minutes.

“I said to myself, ‘These people know what they’re doing. I need to find out more.’ ”

A few years later, as he happened to drive by the diocese in Fort Worth, Texas, “I suddenly made a U-turn, went in and heard someone ask how to become a priest. I realized it was me.”

He was ordained at the age of 45 and assigned to a parish in Fort Worth. Soon after, he applied to a missionary program and was sent to western Mexico, then to Panama and then to Pine Ridge, S.D., where he met Father David Anderson.

When Anderson became rector of St. James, he asked Ford to follow him. Here, Ford counseled engaged couples and performed weddings and funerals.

But a large part of his work also has involved reuniting young runaways in the Los Angeles area with parents throughout the nation. That project began through happenstance, when his former roommate from the seminary asked Ford to help find the runaway daughter of a Texas couple.

Through his biker friends, Ford found the girl and arranged for her to be whisked away, despite her fear that her pimp would find her and retaliate, he said. From that experience, his reputation grew in the hangouts of the runaways, and he was sought to assist with other reunions.

Before the reunions, he meets with the runaways’ parents and counsels them on how to proceed with their children and come to terms with what they have done.

“My role is talking,” he said. “Only on rare occasions have I gone there to get them [the runaways] out. My friends bring them out.”

As for his retirement, Ford will live in Palm Springs, doing as little as possible for the first six months.

He is thinking about writing a book, not about his life but about weddings and how to properly plan them. It will not be the typical wedding etiquette advice, he said.

He is tentatively calling the book, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” High on his list for the last two categories are mothers of the brides, “prima donna musicians,” arrogant florists and others who would have subverted the true significance of the ceremonies he has performed, if he had let them, he said.

He also would like to get a motorcycle. Currently without one, he has been borrowing friends’ bikes.

Some future Sunday during services, “when the preaching has gone on a little too long, I expect that someone with a really loud motorcycle will come around the corner [just outside the church doors],” Anderson said. “I’ll want someone to check outside to see if it’s Darrell on a Harley.”