By Rebecca Goodman
The Cincinnati Enquirer

SPRINGFIELD TWP. - The Rev. Aloys Held was a global "Johnny Appleseed."

As director of the Franciscan Missionary Union for the Province of St. John the Baptist in Over-the-Rhine, he found ways to scatter tons of vegetable seeds in such places as Poland, Haiti, Vietnam, El Salvador, Burundi, China, Chile, Korea, Kenya and the Philippines.

"Any urchin can tell how many seeds are in an apple," Father Aloys told the Enquirer in 1982, "only God, how many apples there are in a seed."

Father Aloys was also responsible for raising money to support the work of Franciscan missionaries in the United States and around the world.

He died of heart failure Saturday at Mercy Franciscan Terrace in Springfield Township. He was 87.

Born in 1916 to German immigrants in Fowler, Ind., Father Aloys graduated from St. Francis Seminary in Mount Healthy and Duns Scotus College in Southfield, Mich. He took his theology training at Holy Family Theologate in Oldenburg, Ind., entered the Franciscan Order in 1934 and was ordained a priest in 1943.

He started out teaching civics and English at Roger Bacon High School from 1943 to 1957 while serving as associate pastor at St. George Parish in Clifton Heights and St. Clement Parish in St. Bernard.

But he found his niche when he became director of the Franciscan Missionary Union. His flair for writing letters to benefactors the world over was enhanced by a sense of humor manifest in his use of "Brother Juniper" - a lovable cartoon character with protruding ears, a bulbous nose and two hairs sticking straight up from the top of his head. Father Aloys used it on all his correspondence and many thank-you gifts to donors, including pillows and calendars.

He began dispensing the seeds when someone donated surplus tons of them to the Franciscan mission. With no money to pay freight, Father Aloys had to be creative. He asked trucking companies to let his seeds piggyback to train depots, where he had arranged for them to be put on boxcars. They made their way to ports in New York or Houston, where they were put on ocean liners. The cost of ocean transport was usually paid by donors in the country of destination.

Or he would pay to send 20 or 30 pounds of seeds by mail to anybody requesting them.

Father Aloys was responsible for sending tons of spinach, squash and cabbage seeds to needy people he never met in places he never saw.

He retired to St. Francis Center in Mount Healthy in 1990. When his health declined in 1996, he moved to Mercy Franciscan Terrace.

Survivors include three sisters, Mary Mills and Anna Plonski, both of Lafayette, Ind., and Hilaria Held of Mishawaka, Ind.

Services have been held. Burial was at Holy Family Cemetery in Oldenburg, Ind.