Early Years
Fr. Michael Fay grew up in Aurora, Colorado, and graduated from the United
States Military Academy at West Point in 1968. He was commissioned a second
lieutenant and was sent to Vietnam. He was wounded there in 1969 and several
months in the hospital at home in Denver led him to an interest in orthopaedic surgery.!
Marriage and Military Life
He and Samar married in 1970 and they began their life in the Army. In a
couple of years he was awarded a scholarship from the Army and attended
Georgetown University Medical School, from which he graduated in 1977, and
did a residency in orthopaedic surgery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
From there they and their two boys traveled the world, courtesy of the Army,
with assignments in Heidelberg, Kansas, California and Hawaii.He retired from
the Army in 1990 and settled in Glasgow, the first orthopaedic surgeon in
northeast Montana.
The Calling
Feeling something he initially described as “the need to pay something back,”
he followed a call, read for orders and was ordained priest on April 1, 2000,
truly a “fool for Christ,” as St. Paul says. He earned a graduate diploma in
theology from Trinity College, Melbourne, Australia, in 2003 and was awarded his Doctor of Ministry degree from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, May 2010.
...Staff Photo Album
Life Today
He retired from his orthopaedic practice in September 2007 and is now the
chaplain at the local hospital, as well as the priest of St. Matthew’s. The Fays
live a few miles south east of Glasgow on a farm with horses, golden retrievers (Topaz and Apollo)
and Frank, the cat.
