Father Ted Oswald died on Sunday, July 4, 2010, at Sutter Lakeside Hospital in Lakeport, Calif. He was 65 years old.

He was born on March 21, 1945, in Minneapolis, Minn.

He was raised in San Jose, Calif., and attended St. Joseph’s Elementary School in San Jose from 1952 to 1959. For his first two years of high school he attended St. Francis High School in Mountain View California and for the next two years he attended the Marist High School Seminary, Peter Chanel in Berkeley, Calif., graduating in 1963.

He joined the U.S. Army and served until January 1970, spending a one-year tour of duty in Vietnam. He served in the Military Police as a patrol supervisor and later as an instructor at the Military Police School in Fort Gordon, Georgia. From 1971 to 1975 he served as a police officer in Rock Hill, South Carolina.

During his years in the U.S. Army and as a police officer he contemplated entering the priesthood. In 1976 he joined a group of Religious Brothers in Arizona and it was from that experience that he contacted the Diocese of Santa Rosa expressing his desire to be a priest.

He was accepted as a seminary candidate for the Diocese of Santa Rosa and entered St. Joseph College Seminary, Mountain View, Calif., to being his studies for the priesthood. By 1980 he was ready to enter the Major Seminary and was accepted by the Beda College in Rome, Italy.

In 1984 he competed his theology studies and on June 6, 1984 was ordained to the priesthood by His Eminence, William Cardinal Baum, at the Basilica of Saints Cosmos and Damian in Rome.

In the summer of 1983 Father Ted served as a transitional deacon at St. Joseph parish in Cotati. After his ordination to the priesthood his first priestly assignment was at St. Mary of the Angels in Ukiah from July 1984 to January 1988 as associate pastor.

For 10 months of 1988 he served as associate pastor at St. Rose parish in Santa Rosa. Then in October 1988 he was appointed as the administrator of St. Mary Immaculate parish in Lakeport. He was named pastor on August 15, 1989 and remained in that capacity until June of 2008.

A funeral mass will be celebrated on Friday, July 16, 2010, at 1 p.m. at St. Mary Immaculate Church, Lakeport, followed by the burial at St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetery, Lakeport.