Moments: Finally! Some Names of Classmates

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Fr. Owen had been a bit remiss in citing the names of students in his journalism. Not so here. He describes in detail seminarian participants in the Catholic Interscholastic Speech League of St. Louis. We didn't win that contest outright but he indicates that we did finish 7th overall and four students placed in the top ten rankings. Sadly, one of them, John Prunty, has died.

There must have not been much happening in February of that year as Fr Owen moves on to describe an "historic 'first'" with a retreat conducted without the aid of the eloquence of a Passionist monk.

He then describes another first: A co-ed retreat conducted at the retreat house with women from Barnes Hospital of Nursing and men from the St. Louis College of Pharmacy, a retreat conducted by Fathers Joe Mary Connelly and Mel Joseph Spehn, Passionists. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall!

I fondly remember both men. Fr Mel worked Prep Week in 1962 when I was a sophomore at Columbus High School in Waterloo, Iowa. Fr Joe Mary Connelly later visited our home to recruit me. My father brought out a box of World War II photos he had collected and together the two of them reminisced. Both stopped cold when Joe Mary picked up one photo of a Polynesian woman, bare-breasted. I had never seen my father blush so hard. Joe Mary's laugh put both of them at ease. I was on my way to MGC.