David D. Schwab

Brother William of Plum City, known to most of us as brother Dave, was born August 30, 1946, in Plum City, Wisconsin, to Leo Philip Schwab, a farmer, and Rose Ann (Traun) Schwab. He was baptized September 15, 1946, at St. John the Baptist Church in Plum City and confirmed there on May 20, 1959, by Bishop John P. Treacy.

David grew up with his older brother Daniel on the family farm in rural western Wisconsin, attending St. John the Baptist School in Plum City from 1952 to 1960. His path to religious life took shape quietly during those grade school years, and it was sharpened by a visit to his older brother at St. Francis Brothers School in Mount Calvary, where he enrolled himself for high school in 1960. What struck him was not anything grand. In a handwritten essay composed February 21, 1964, the 17 year-old David Schwab explained his reasons plainly: "Their ideals express a goal which they are striving to achieve and I would like to make myself a part of that striving." Looking back in 1992, he was characteristically honest about the mixture of motives at work in those early years, noting that availability and a desire to be of service were strong draws, but that the desire to be accepted may have played its part as well. "In those days, however," he added, "we weren't very conscious of psychology."

On February 17, 1964, David signed his formal application to enter the Capuchin Order as a brother candidate. He was invested as a Capuchin novice at Sacred Heart Friary in Baraga, Michigan on March 17, 1965, receiving the religious name Brother William of Plum City. He made his first profession of vows at Sacred Heart Friary on March 19, 1966. His formation journey would take him from the Capuchin Seminary of St. Mary in Crown Point, Indiana, to St. Anthony Friary in Marathon, Wisconsin, to the Capuchin student residence in La Crosse, Wisconsin, to St. Francis Friary in Milwaukee; and St. Lawrence Friary in Mount Calvary. He made his final solemn profession of vows on September 7, 1973, at St. Lawrence Seminary Chapel in Mount Calvary, in the hands of then-provincial, Lloyd Thiel.

In his vocation as a Capuchin brother, the breadth of service Dave offered through this form of life was remarkable.

His formation years combined religious discipline with practical work and serious study. The novitiate at Baraga he later described as "relatively peace-filled," though the guardian was strict and fear was a motivator. The geography of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula left a lasting impression. He walked in the woods, hiked along the Keweenaw Bay, and found it easy to encounter God amid the beauty of creation. From 1966 to 1970 he served at the Capuchin Seminary of St. Mary in Crown Point, where he worked as tailor, cook, laundry worker, sandal-maker, auto mechanic, landscaper, and sacristan, a period he called "jack of all trades" formation, while beginning college courses around 1968. He spent approximately four months during that period at St. Bonaventure Friary in Detroit as a porter. From 1970 to 1972 he studied at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in physical education, a direction he credited to Friar Crispin Weinberger, who encouraged him to pursue academic work at a moment when brother Dave might otherwise have remained content with the trades model. He supplemented his formal education with summer study at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska in 1972, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1982, and at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana in 1984.

From 1972 to 1987, brother Dave served at St. Lawrence Friary and Seminary in Mount Calvary, the longest continuous assignment of his ministry. He began by teaching 20 hours a week in his college minor, English, and only six in his major, physical education. Over time his roles shifted: he became athletic and student activities director, and he coached football, track, and cross country throughout the period, and even tried his hand at basketball, "rather unsuccessfully, I might add," he wrote later. Former students recalled in later years that their success in competitive running owed much to his work with them. He was appointed to the St. Lawrence Seminary Board in the early 1980s and, beginning in May 1983, served on the post-novitiate formation team. From October 1983 until his departure in 1987, he carried the additional responsibilities of provincial councilor alongside his teaching and coaching duties. By 1987, however, he was also, by his own account, exhausted.

In 1980, during a House of Prayer Experience retreat with the Sisters of St. Agnes, brother Dave had what he would later identify as the most significant faith experience of his life. The retreat deepened his sense that contemplation and action belonged together, a conviction that shaped his choices from that point forward.

From 1987 to 1990, he served as provincial assistant. The 1987 chapter, he wrote, "threw me a curve ball," assigning him to provincial administration rather than the formation work he had expected. He described his three years in the office with characteristic bluntness: "During the first year of my term, I was numb; during the second, I was as comfortable as I would get; and during the third year, I couldn't wait to finish." He felt honored to have been chosen and was happy not to continue.

In 1990 he moved to Milwaukee to take up formation work at the Solanus Community on Good Hope Road, helping to furnish the former convent through what he called "rummage sale-ing,” volunteering with Habitat for Humanity, and studying scripture at Cardinal Stritch College. The following year, after attending an ecology-and-justice conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that deepened his commitment to a life of action and contemplation within community, he moved to St. Benedict the Moor Friary, choosing to remain in Milwaukee rather than follow the vocation office back to Mt. Calvary. His reasons were ones he stated plainly: he wanted to continue being influenced by the poor of the central city, and he valued the community life at St. Ben's. "My desire to engage the poor," he wrote, "makes the other tensions worthwhile."

He served as director of initial formation and director of the Capuchin Vocation Office, and later as Provincial Secretary for Religious Affairs from 1996 until 2004. During those same years, Brother Dave also served as dedicated co-director of Cap Corps, the province's volunteer program for young adults, founded to extend Capuchin ministry to the poor by placing volunteers in service positions in healthcare, social services, and education while living simply in intentional community.

In the years that followed, Brother Dave became most publicly identified with the St. Benedict Community Meal Program, one of Milwaukee's responses to urban hunger and homelessness. He joined the program's staff in 2004 and served as its director from 2005, building it into a ministry that combined direct food service with barber services, transportation assistance, and conversation, an approach of accompaniment rather than mere charity. By 2008, he had become executive director of the program. In 2010, he helped launch the Capuchin Apartments, a 38-unit affordable housing complex built in partnership with Heartland Housing, as a natural extension of the meal program's logic. As he explained to his brother friars at the time, St. Ben's had been serving homeless guests for 40 years; providing permanent housing was not a new direction but the fulfillment of a promise already implicit in that service.

Brother Dave also founded the Capuchin Run-Walk for the Hungry in 2006, an annual fundraising 5k run and walk that sustained the meal program and raised public awareness of food insecurity in Milwaukee. That event continued under subsequent leadership and remained, years after his founding role, a visible emblem of his legacy in the city.

In August 2014, he returned to St. Lawrence Friary in Mount Calvary, where he served as Guardian of the Capuchin community and, concurrently, as Property Manager of the Pickerel Retreat. He stepped down as Guardian in October 2023. He was recognized as a golden jubilarian of religious profession in 2016, marking fifty years of vowed life.

Throughout his life, brother Dave found renewal in physical activity: running, biking, racquetball, golf, and volleyball were regular companions of his interior life. He was equally committed to ecology and environmental care, consistent with his Capuchin Franciscan vocation, and he never tired of making the case that a simple lifestyle was not a deprivation but a form of freedom.

In the fall of 2025, brother Dave underwent surgery to address a mass in his brain. He came through the procedure but experienced complications, and his recovery fluctuated over the months that followed. By April 2026, further decline had compounded the effects of his surgery. During a visit from his cousin Sister Deborah Schwab on April 17, he told her plainly that he had reached the limit of his tolerance and he entered hospice care at St. Francis Home in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, a few days later.

Brother Dave died April 29, 2026, at St. Francis Home in Fond du Lac. At the age of 79, he welcomed the embrace of Sister Death.

In a reflection written for the Year of Consecrated Life in 2015, he had offered his own valediction: "I am grateful to the Capuchin community for encouraging and supporting me in my journey through life. I have been stretched and grown in ways that I would never have dreamed of as a young friar. Thanks for investing in me."

Brother Dave was preceded in death by his parents, Leo Philip Schwab and Rose Ann (Traun) Schwab. He is survived by his brother, Daniel Schwab; and a brotherhood of Capuchins with whom he lived, prayed, and ministered for more than sixty years.

Funeral arrangements are foreseen as follows:

Dave chose a green burial. Rites of Commendation and Committal will be private at Mt. Calvary Friary Cemetery.

---

Memorial Mass

Saturday, May 9 at 10:30 a.m. (CT) St. Lawrence Seminary Chapel

301 Church Street

Mount Calvary, WI 53057

Luncheon to follow at St. Lawrence Friary.

---

Liturgy will be live-streamed via www.thecapuchins.org