Priest is just a whistle away

CRANDON — Fr. Callistus Elue doesn’t carry a flute. He doesn’t own a set of drums. And he doesn’t put a bird call in his pocket when he goes hunting.

He does it all with his voice — his whistle actually.

Fr. Callistus Elue, administrator of St. Joseph Parish in Crandon, has a gift for whistling, a talent he acquired while growing up in Nigeria. “It was just something we did,” he said. (Lisa Haefs | For The Compass)

“I can use it to sing any song, and at home I use it to interact with my family,” he says.

Fr. Callistus, 41, grew up in Akumazi-Umuocha in Ika North East Local Government Area of Delta State, located in southern Nigeria, and his native name, Isioma, literally means “lucky fellow.” He came to the Green Bay Diocese in 2010 through the efforts of Bishop David Ricken after completing seminary training and serving five years of his priestly ministry in Africa.

After a period of assimilation, Fr. Callistus was assigned to Nativity of Our Lord Parish in Green Bay and later to the Quad Parishes in Green Bay. Since July 3, 2012, he has served as administrator of the 130-family St. Joseph Parish, located in Crandon.

“This is a very nice parish,” he says. “The people are easy-going, no trouble.”

He learned whistling literally at the same time he developed his language skills. Whistling was common in his family, with his father, two of his brothers and a sister all using it as a very unique means of communication.

“When I was very small I observed that they talked by blowing the whistle,” he explains. “It was not something anyone stopped to teach me. It was just something we did.”

What started as imitation quickly became practical. Through whistling, he and his brothers and sister could communicate across long distances, touching base across a neighborhood as easily as their own living room. Different trills meant different things, including names, just like the enunciations in any language.

“It’s as flexible as talking. If I am in a tight corner, I can just whistle and they will know where I am,” he says. “What you cannot say in any language, you can whistle.”

And the effects on animals were almost magical. Fr. Callistus used the whistle to call in birds and to train his hunting dogs across a long distance. Varying the loudness, tone and pitch meant different things to the animals, he says, demonstrating the high, fast trill used to tell the canines to “go faster” to the lower, gentle tones that encouraged them to slow their speed and calm down.

In the United States, the practical uses of the whistle are not as pronounced, but the musical aspects are.

“I can use it to sing any song,” he says. “I don’t need to see the music, just to hear it.”

That can include everything from sounding astonishingly like a flutist performing “Faith of Our Fathers,” to re-creating a reggae beat playing on a stereo CD.

He continues to communicate through whistles with his family back in Nigeria, who he visits via Skype.

“My mom really loved it,” he says. ‘When I whistle when I talk to her, it made her very happy. It creates a real closeness with my family.”

Most of the whistling in northern Wisconsin likely happens at Lambeau Field on a Sunday afternoon, but Fr. Callistus has charmed parishioners. He doesn’t whistle in church often, he says, reserving it for special occasions such as Christmas, Easter and so on.

“One woman came to Mass and was celebrating her 90th birthday,” he says. “I blew ‘Happy Birthday’ for her. She was thrilled. After Mass they wanted photos with me.”

Another parishioner, nearing the end of her life, was cheered when Fr. Callistus would visit her in a local nursing home and whistle. When she died, her family asked him to whistle at her funeral.

“I whistled ‘I Am the Bread of Life,’” he says.

Fr. Callistus loves singing but whistles more rather than singing, almost subconsciously he says, and has no fear of losing his abilities so far away from his family. It is a skill given by God, he says, and even if he did not whistle for decades, the ability would remain.

He also says it would be almost impossible to teach.

“It’s almost like laughing. Everyone does it differently,” the jovial priest says.

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