God and Country
Two Janesville boys devoted their lives to service—one with a gun, the other with a chalice.
By Shawn Fury
Photo by Saverio Truglia
(page 2 of 3)
The parents didn’t push their kids toward the military or the church. Yet the seeds of Matt and Mike’s future were planted early. Ray served in the Army during the Vietnam War. Grandpa had been in the Navy. One aunt was a nun, and two uncles did missionary work. Marny’s parents had built a Christian retreat center near the family’s home in the 1970s, right by Lake Elysian.
Every Sunday, the family went to church, always occupying one of the front pews. The songs and readings seemed meaningless to Matt. The white-haired priest’s sermons dragged on. What did he know about life? What did he know about that one thing that really matters to a male teenager: sex?
No, no one pictured Matt as a priest. He didn’t know what he wanted to be in life, but he definitely knew what he didn’t want to be.
Before Mike was a soldier and Matt a seminarian, both were wrestlers. All five Fasnacht boys wrestled for JWP. Wrestling was just a continuation of the battles that took place at home. The boys upended furniture, dented doors, knocked holes in walls. They didn’t have much use for sports involving catching or throwing. But wrestling—one-on-one combat for six grueling minutes—that was a real sport.
Coach Mike Niemczyk’s practices were legendary. Basic training, Mike later said, was easy compared to those two-hour after-school sessions. The grapplers fought and clawed at each other. They took breaks only to run the school’s halls and stairs. They’d sweat under layers of sweatpants, sweatshirts, and do whatever else they needed to make weight. Niemczyk’s practices nearly broke them, taught them how to break others.
Mike lived for those practices. “Let’s run another 10 miles!” he’d yell after a session. He and his friend Bob Beelow sometimes showed up at 5:30 a.m. to work out before classes. Mike never missed a practice his senior year, which ended with JWP finishing second at state. He earned a coveted spot on the team’s Guts Club.
Mike wasn’t the best wrestler in his family; his final season, he finished 19-16. But he had another gift: the power to lead. The team respected him. Mike brought people together.
Imagine the shock of a few of Matt’s old high-school classmates at their 10-year reunion in 2003: Matt Fasnacht joined a seminary? Go figure. Some refused to believe it. Bob Beelow once told him, “It’ll be easy to see you for confession. You’ve already done everything.”
Matt wasn’t the only Fasnacht with a reputation for partying. Mike had followed in his older brothers’ footsteps, tearing around Waseca County with his buddies in a tiny hatchback dubbed the General Lee, after the souped-up vehicle that starred in The Dukes of Hazzard.
By the time they reached their twenties, though, both Mike and Matt had tired of the drinking and partying. They were searching for something different.
Mike signed up with the military in 2000. He had been attending Minnesota State University and living with Dean Farley, another Janesville native. Farley was in the Army Reserves, and it seemed like every time he came home from a weekend of drills, Mike wanted to know all about it. Farley finally said, “I’m going to call the recruiter and give him your name.”
Mike didn’t object, so Farley called the local office and explained the situation. The recruiter was skeptical, incredulous: the description of the candidate seemed too good to be true. “If this is bullshit,” the man said, “I’m going to get ahold of your commander.”
“It’s no lie,” Farley replied.
Mike seemed suited for Army life. The military made the most of his physical prowess, his work ethic, his natural toughness. Everything seemed to come together during his nine weeks at Ranger School, when he was pushed mentally and physically beyond anything he’d done before. At the end of one mission, as the exhausted soldiers were cleaning their equipment, one of them, Hasan Fersner, accidentally fired his weapon. To show how one individual’s mistake can affect a unit, an instructor ordered Mike to carry his fellow soldier back to the helicopters that would fly them off the training island. Mike scooped up the 170-pounder, along with his own weapon and their gear, and slogged back across the sandy terrain.
Mike’s growth as a soldier coincided with the start of his most important personal relationship. In 2001, while back in Mankato after basic training, Mike met Tresa Rongitsch, the younger sister of a buddy, Josh Rongitsch. For a while, that’s how Mike saw Tresa, a Lindstrom native three years his junior: as Josh’s little sister. It didn’t take long for those feelings to change; the two married in December 2002. Recalls Farley, “Mike always said, ‘When I find the right girl, I’m not going to hesitate.’”
Marny called Matt with the news at two in the morning on June 9, 2005. Matt was serving an internship at Queen of Angels church in Austin, about 70 miles from Janesville. He drove home immediately.
He couldn’t believe it was true. He felt robbed, blind-sided. Mike was fighting in a war, but even when you know that you still never expect to get the call.
“You wake up and you’re in hell,” he says. “It’s just complete hell.”
Yet Matt insists he was not angry. Not at the government for sending Mike to Iraq. Not at the men who planted the bomb and set it off. And not even at the God he’d dedicated his life to.
