A Legacy of Their Own

If you ask my dad, Jay DeBroeck ’73, about his time at Jesuit, he’ll probably start with football stories of long bus rides in sweltering heat or freezing rain, of drinking boiling hot water from the hose during summer practices, or throwing up in his helmet after a bad hit in a game (“it was the 70’s,” he’ll say, “you can’t do that now”). Next, you would probably hear about some friends he had (many of whom he still sees), how he lived briefly down the road on Ranchester, and how Jesuit was mostly surrounded by fields back then. After this would come stories about classes and ‘school life’ proper: what it felt like to pass through the long fence that separated St. Agnes and Jesuit so he could take German at the girls school (only to discover no girls enrolled in the class); of the last day of Calculus in his senior year when he and a few classmates, all of whom were exempt from the final exam, were ushered into an empty classroom by the stalwart Fr. J.B. Leininger, S.J., who made them take an exam anyway, because, as the priest deadpanned, “I didn’t want you and your parents to feel cheated.” 

For Bradley Moon ’76, he’d start with the story of when he met the girl who would become his wife. She was a St. Agnes student, and he first felt drawn to her at one of the student masses in the foyer of Moody Library. He would subsequently join the choir at St. Agnes just to spend more time with her. Only slightly less significant for Brad was being on the inaugural Jesuit soccer team. He and many others were part of a Jesuit club team, mostly formed out of former St. Francis de Sales students, and, against the odds, the unofficial club team won the state championship against Jesuit Dallas. The next year, they became the official team for Strake Jesuit, and his feeling of pride on first receiving those official uniforms still lingers. 

I know my dad’s story and Brad’s aren’t unique, though perhaps it’s all the more wonderful because of their ordinariness. And indeed, my dad, like hundreds of other graduates, sent his own son back to Jesuit. The halls and sidewalks of the school are full of these legacies. And their daughters, too, sent to St. Agnes, who came to the Strake Jesuit campus with the band or for Mandarin, are perhaps in the hundreds. 

Together with these legacies, there is an even smaller subset, a faint minority – those legacy daughters who come to Jesuit as teachers. For the last five years, I have taught theology here; forty years after my dad left, I walk in his footsteps, teaching in Cameron Hall, one of the few buildings left where my dad took classes. And, one year after I joined Jesuit, Rachel Rodes (née Moon) joined me in the theology department. We quickly realized our common link as legacy daughters, both uniquely connected and, in a certain way, even formed by Strake Jesuit. 

Rachel and I laugh over the similar cadence to the stories our dads share, some of which we’ve heard a million times and some of which were first shared only when we spoke to them for this project. Now that we are Jesuit faculty, however, we can hear in these stories something we didn’t notice before: the mission that Jesuit articulates so clearly now, of education rooted in the formation of the whole person (St. Ignatius’s cura personalis), the Grad at Grad, and making Men for Others. There’s a beauty in that this core mission was already being lived out before it was codified in Community Life and memorialized in our mottos.

My dad observed, “We didn’t have the Man for Others [motto] yet. But they always wanted us to think about who we were and what we wanted, to have a goal.” And in theology class, too, “they always worked hard to make it speak to your life. They wanted [your faith] to animate your present life.” I know these existential questions gave shape to my dad’s personal life as a Catholic man, husband, and father, as well as his professional life as a family doctor serving Houston for over 40 years. Being a physician, for him, is to meet people where they are, to recognize people as persons; it is, he reflects, simply “a great profession to make people’s pain better.” I recall my dad’s acceptance of Jesuit’s Ignatian Award in 2004 as a reflection of his life of meaningful service. 

Brad doesn’t downplay the formation he received, either. Reflecting on his past, Brad can see this line of development and formation: “I'm driven by several tenets–duty, service, order. Jesuit allowed me to develop those internally. These seeds were planted and fertilized through the school's activities.” Being surrounded by the Jesuits made a huge impact on him, especially Fr. David Lawrence, S.J., who hosted the student masses on campus (and who later married Brad and his wife). An experience at a silent retreat in Louisiana was a particularly profound moment for him; while some of his immediate family were leaving the Church, Jesuit brought him closer to it. “I attribute to Jesuit the fact that my dad stayed, and still is, Catholic,” Rachel reflects. “My whole first year, I felt so emotional being here, I feel like I wouldn't be Catholic if it wasn’t for this place. I genuinely feel that.” Brad has lived his own life in service to others as a devoted father of nine, a retired Major in the Army Reserves, a geologist at BP, a committed member of his church’s music ministry, and a volunteer at a shelter for veterans every week. 

Rachel and I stand in particular awareness of the far-reaching impact that we can have on our students as teachers joined in mission with Strake Jesuit. Our appreciation and hope are coupled with a deep gratitude for what Jesuit has already given us in forming our own fathers to be good, virtuous men. Perhaps with a deeper feeling of personal indebtedness than others, we don’t forget that the formation of our students can have a lasting contribution as people in communities and the world, influencing relationships far beyond the ones they establish here.

When Fr. Pedro Arrupe, S.J., coined the phrase Men for Others in 1973, he contrasted this ideal with the man who is “being-for-himself,” who is gifted with intelligence and endowed with power but who desires control. The Man for Others, instead, gives himself away to others in love. Ultimately, for Arrupe, only he who loves fully, “fully realizes himself as a man.” Jesuit’s intention of making Men for Others is no easy task; no single course, PH, athletic season, or retreat experience can achieve it on its own. So, how do we go about forming these incoming boys to not only give themselves away in love, but to desire it as good? This is a profound and humbling goal that binds the faculty together across generations, but we know the value of this pursuit in seeing the type of men it can produce. If we can send men out for others, Rachel and I know keenly that it can lead to more men and women for others—and daughters-for-others, too.