Father Drinkwater, a Redemptorist priest who was known for his enjoyment of the years he spent traveling around the country as a missionary preacher, died Aug. 31 at St. Clement Redemptorist Mission Community in Liguori. He had just celebrated his 84th birthday and been placed in hospice care.

Born in New Orleans, Father Drinkwater made his first profession of Redemptorist vows in 1957. He professed perpetual vows in 1960 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1962. Father Drinkwater spent the first decade of his priesthood in parish ministry in the South, serving in Louisiana and Kentucky. A few years after he joined the faculty of Redemptorist High School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he was asked to help integrate the State Industrial School for Colored Youth (now the Louisiana Training Institute) in response to a federal mandate requiring Louisiana to integrate all levels of its penal system in the early 1980s.

Father Drinkwater was called a natural for the preaching ministry. After a three-year stint as an itinerant preacher in Chicago, he returned to the South. He devoted the remaining 34 years of his public ministry to preaching parish missions and promoting Liguorian Magazine at parishes throughout the country. Although he retired from active ministry in 2006, Father Drinkwater remained in Biloxi, Mississippi, until 2015, when health issues necessitated his relocation to St. Clement in Liguori.

Burial was in the Redemptorist Cemetery in Liguori.