Maryhurst Prep 07

Early one Saturday morning while dew-gems glistened on the grass and the wind was sweet with promise, I decided to drive to Maryhurst instead of writing another chapter for my dissertation. The year was 1972. We were in St. Louis during our summer semester break from my teaching responsibilities at Eastern Michigan University. I had never been back in the eleven years since high school graduation, probably in no small measure because I felt residual guilt about leaving. Actually, the guilt was not over abandoning a religious vocation but leaving a life I had loved that had allowed the wounds inflicted by my father to heal. Consequently, the idea of walking once again over the grounds where I had been so happy appealed to me. My wife, Sandy, and the children had left at 8:00 to help her cousin, Carol, prepare for an afternoon birthday party. Leaving me free to do as I pleased.

I drove south on Kirkwood Road to Big Bend. The area had developed so much since I left that I hardly recognized it. Then, without warning I saw it. A huge, vulgar Venture store and a strip center squatting toad-like in the middle of an enormous parking lot where Maryhurst Prep had been. I was completely stunned. My stomach knotted into a hard ball. The car seemed to stop of its own volition, almost as if it were as horrified as I. The lovely blue spruce were gone, as were the mighty oaks and maples. The gently curving entry drive and the athletic fields were acres of asphalt. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Maryhurst was no more. In its place stood a modern temple of Ba’al, vomiting people laden with gifts for self-adoration in the strange reverse homage that characterizes contemporary American society. Gone was everything but the most important — my memories of and love for the people and the place that profoundly affected my life.

Tears moistened my eyes and curved down my cheeks when I first wrote this material. I was unable to hold them back, though I could not tell if they were for the person I had been or for my wonderful memories of the past. Certainly they were for a place, a time I loved that could never be again.

But all memories are bitter-sweet flashes that make you laugh and cry in random disorder. So much has changed since I was a postulant. I am no longer that apprehensive boy in search of foundations. Bro. Vincent Gray is dead as is Bro. Al Stein, Fr. Michael Dorsey, Bro. Fred Weisbruch, and so many others, including my old friend and accomplice in so many mis-adventures, Herb B. (who died as a result of a brain injury he received while serving as a young man in the military). Bro. Xavier Shultz is alive [Author’s Note: he was when this section was originally written but died in 2001] but not particularly healthy in his life of retirement in Hawaii — he later moved to California for better medical care. My former classmates live separate existences that I hope are filled with satisfaction and contentment, though I know life is seldom that kind. I have lost track of each and every one, though once every two or three years I see Gerry M. at the supermarket or the Mall.

Despite all that, I visit Maryhurst several times a year. I slowly walk its wide corridors and smell the familiar mustiness mixed with chalk dust. I open my locker in the Rec Room; pull on the sweatshirt rank from the exertion of half a dozen yesterdays. Watch my mother patiently sew the miniature name labels on each piece of clothing. Lose once again in ping-pong to Ed M. with his powerhouse backhand. Wear pajamas for the very first time in my life on that initial night in the dorm. Hear my friends’ excited chatter as Billy W. and I, arms around each other’s shoulders, prepare to sally forth with barely containable excitement to defeat our erstwhile foes on the playing fields. Smell those gloriously sweet mornings in Spring when the buds explode their greenery across the landscape. Learn how to make rosaries. Play a viciously competitive, winner-take-all game of hearts with Charpy, Habs, and Eddy M. Rub my hand across the glass cabinet in the Chem Lab that Herb and I blew to smithereens. Taste once more Bro. Leo’s fabulous caramel rolls, his mouth-watering pizza, or that unbelievably delicious maple syrup drenched cornbread. Shock my face into shuddering awareness every morning in the dorm’s freezing water. Serve daily Mass with the familiar-forgotten Latin phrases rolling with ease from my tongue. Lose myself in the beauty and rolling majesty of Night Prayers. Polish the brass spigots in the toilets until they shine brilliantly. Run the base paths with abandon. Make another desperate but successful dive for a football that seemed to everyone just out of the reach of my outstretched fingertips. Attend Bro. Xav’s Geography class that made me aware of the world around me. Go reluctantly to work periods. Talk eagerly with my friends who, like me, haven’t aged a day. And with my fellow postulants, watch our much loved Bro. Xav do a fancy dive at the pool to our amazement and heartfelt pride.

Of course Maryhurst Prep will die one day. But only when my last breath whistles in the wind. For I am Maryhurst and we shall never part.