A Community That Formed Us

Perhaps we were just blessed to grow up in a simpler time when there was “more black and white than shades of grey,” when the shared stresses we experienced brought us closer together, rather than how they tend to drive folks apart today. It’s all quite beyond me, but I’m sure that the development of my core beliefs—those things I accept as truth—grew out of those early life experiences. 

From my earliest memories of grandparents and parents, through all of my “Catholic alphabet education” by the CSB, CDP, OP, SJ, CSC, RC…, they were all making a valiant effort to influence me, my character, and my core beliefs. And they all did, albeit in many different ways.

But going to Strake Jesuit was different from my other schooling. My elementary school had existed for decades before I arrived, and my later university experiences were at schools founded before my father was born. Strake Jesuit was new, very new. Back when I was at Strake Jesuit in the 1960s:

• There was no “Strake” — that came later in the 1970s  after the Sharpstown State Bank scandal. The official  school patch on my heavy grey wool blazer read “JCP,” meaning “Jesuit College Preparatory.” 
• There was no Men for Others motto — that came later in a 1970s speech from Father Pedro Arrupe, S.J., Superior General of the Society of Jesus. 

What we did have was a group of people, including about 400 students (all four classes), 8 Jesuit Priests, 3 Jesuit Scholastics, 1 Jesuit Brother,  and 22 lay teachers who all truly cared about the school’s mission, about their responsibilities to that mission, and, most of all, about each other.

What Strake Jesuit gave me was the glue and curing time to lock in all that had come before, and taught me to view the world from the inside out rather than just the outside in… or, as I like to describe what some now refer to as discernment: “The Jesuits taught me to never believe anything anyone told me, just because they told me, not even them.”

So if you ask me if I am surprised that:

• My classmate spent decades supporting the Incarnate Word and Dominican Sisters while still caring for and supporting his family; I would have to say “No.”
• My classmate spent his life creating homes and sanctuaries of hope for the differently abled and underserved; I would have to say “No.”
• My classmate dedicated his life to providing medical care for the elderly and now can’t retire because his younger colleagues need to learn (and because we need him because we’re the elderly!); I would have to say “No.”
• Two classmates spent their HIV-shortened lives and physician careers caring for tiny babies and struggling immigrant families; I would have to say “No.”
•  My classmate left his promising career as a CPA at an international firm to study medicine and become a pediatrician with some of the most challenging patients in Houston; I would have to say “No.”
•  My classmate dedicated his life to identifying needs throughout the world and working to meet them; I would have to say, “No.”
• Seeing and hearing the stories of the wonderful ways these and our other classmates cared, built, and served would provide the motivation that led my wife and me to help bring the Dolly Parton Imagination Library to thousands of Houston-area infants and toddlers; I would have to say “No.” 

In fact, my time at Strake Jesuit, the community of teachers and classmates I found, and the example they all set made it inevitable. So that, when presented with the challenge of whether we should help work towards the day when no child in Houston “starts kindergarten two years behind,” I would have to say, “How could we not? We are Men and Women for Others.”