Priest's Perseverance Inspires; Be Positive: Father Joseph Damien brought hope to those who needed it most.(LEADERS & SUCCESS)

Byline: MICHAEL MINK

Father Joseph Damien saw a need. Yet no one wanted to fill it.

So Damien volunteered to go live among the victims of leprosy -- the victims nobody seemed to care about.

Damien (1840-89) arrived in 1873 at the leprosy colony at Kalaupapa peninsula, on the island of Moloka'i in Hawaii.

"To begin is nothing. The hard thing is to persevere," Damien wrote to a fellow priest.

Leprosy today is called Hansen's disease, and since the mid-1940s it's been curable. But in Damien's day and before, it was the most dreaded disease. In ancient Egypt it was fittingly called "the death before death." Leprosy began with discolored patches on the skin that turned into open, hideous sores. It led to physical disfigurement through a rotting of the skin.

Because leprosy was highly contagious, those afflicted were segregated from society. The leprosy colony at Kalaupapa was more natural prison than tropical paradise. Forbidding 2,000-foot cliffs isolated the colony from the rest of the island. The only way in or out was through the rough seas.