The Bishop's Brownie Beanie

This morning I was feeling under the weather, so I stayed home from church. Instead of taking the opportunity for private devotions, I vegged out on the couch, just me and my remote and a 7-Up. ("You Like It. It Likes You." 7-Up always seems to pick me up when I'm feeling bad. I wonder if it's still lithiated?)

I flipped through the channels and happened upon an Antiques Roadshow repeat. I didn't catch the location or the name of the lady seeking an appraisal, but she told a funny and heartwarming story about the artifact she held in her hands. (Note: Later research reveals that this was probably the first of three episodes from Milwaukee.)

When this lady was a little girl, her family, like millions of others, were regular viewers of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen's Emmy-award winning TV show, "Life is Worth Living."

The little girl was in the Brownies and, as children often do, she lost part of her uniform: the hat. The hat was a chocolate-colored beanie with a Brownie emblem on the front and a little loop on top. (Here is a page about vintage Brownie uniforms with pictures of the beanie.)

So she was thinking about her lost beanie while watching Bishop Sheen. Suddenly she realized where her beanie was! She ran to her mother and said, "I know where my beanie is! Bishop Sheen stole it!"

The beanie was, of course, Bishop Sheen's violet pileolus, also known as a zucchetto. On a black-and-white TV, the cap would have appeared as some shade of gray, and it wouldn't have been possible to know whether the cap was brown or violet or some other color of similar intensity.

Her mother told the story in a letter to Bishop Sheen. ("Bishop Sheen stole it" was toned down to "Bishop Sheen has it.") The Bishop sent a letter in reply and included with it his pileolus, autographed inside with the inscription, "God love you." Sheen later told the story on his TV show, but advised the audience that that was the last cap he would be sending out.

So here was this former Brownie, on Antiques Roadshow some 50 years later, displaying Bishop Fulton Sheen's autographed beanie and letter, which she had framed along with a photo of him. Oh, and she did eventually find her Brownie beanie, and she had it with her on the program.

(Update: Neglected to say that she also had a framed photo of herself as a little girl, holding the autographed pileolus, which helped to satisfy the appraiser as to the item's provenance.)

I understand that Fulton Sheen is a candidate for sainthood. Perhaps, in addition to becoming a patron saint of television or apologetics, he could also be a patron saint of lost uniform pieces. (That website is interesting, if you've ever wondered how someone is canonized as a saint.)

(Update: Coincidentally, one of my regular blog reads also posted an item about Bishop Sheen on Sunday. Dawn Eden has an extended quote from Sheen's 1950 book Lift Up Your Heart on the deeper, enduring thrills of the spirit compared to the superficial and ephemeral "thrills" of the flesh. Thanks to Dawn, despite missing church, I received some spiritual nourishment nevertheless.)