Almost immediately after my graduation, I was drafted into the
Navy.
The same thing happened to [Bro.] Frank Cluff [S.J.]. I don't
think he was even allowed to finish high school. At eighteen,
he was two years older than I. And in those days, it was almost
automatic that as soon as you turned eighteen, they drafted you
and any other warm body. I had no choice. I was assigned to the
Seabees [from "Construction Battalion," now the "US
Naval Construction Force"]. It was all routine. In the long
run, I didn't see any action as such. I went abroad to the Pacific.
I was in a Seabees maintenance unit at an Air Force base called
Kaneoha. It's really what they call the "Paradise of the
Pacific."
As I mentioned, while in the Navy I also had a Jesuit chaplain.
I went up to Holy Cross for interviews. My first real contacts
were Bill Healey, Frank Toolin, and Joe Fitzgerald. But I had
gone through a lot of the literature and was advised by the chaplain
in the service. That was my first knowledge of Jesuits per se.
I had always been leaning towards the brotherhood, whether Jesuit
or some other order. The fact was, however, that the Jesuits at
Holy Cross were my neighbors.
What happened was that Bro. Kilmartin, who had been the provincial's
secretary practically since the New England Province began in
the '20s, had been diagnosed with cancer. So they were looking
for a successor. And since as a veteran I could go to school for
at least a year under the GI Bill, I went to secretarial school.
I just stayed on where I was-and all that happened just a few
weeks after I took my vows. So that's how I got to stay there
for twenty two years.
At the Paulist Center in Boston for twenty years, I scrubbed the
pots in the soup kitchen, where they provided a free meal every
Wednesday night. That was being funded in part by the Walk for
Hunger. I also took part in that twenty mile hike every year for
twenty years. But my legs have gone, and I can't do it anymore.
I couldn't do two miles, let alone twenty. The last time I did
it, Kate Morency, the Province Health Care Coordinator, walked
along with me. I don't know whether she was afraid I would collapse
on the route!
When you ask me about God's providence working in my own life,
in these days when so many things seem to be falling apart, with
so many churches closing, few vocations, I see faith as absolutely
central. Faith is the big, big factor for me now. Faith is central
to our survival: "Where shall we go, Lord? We go to you.
You have it all, Lord. You've got it all."
Due to death or sickness some of these
selected readings have been read by someone other than the author.
This page contains one such replacement.
