Charlie Urnick stands in a backstage hallway at Don’s Celebrity Theater, tucked inside the thrumming Riverside Resort Hotel and Casino. Smiling, shaking hands with well-wishers, he awaits the evening’s events with the knowing calm of a veteran headliner.
But inside this brightly lit corridor, where musicians and magicians have signed autographs and greeted fans, Urnick offers something truly remarkable.
He hears confessions.
He’s the administrator at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, which sits atop a treeless hill some five miles away. But the 71-year-old Urnick is better known to parishioners and just about everyone else around this casino river town simply as Father Charlie....