Goodbye To A Priest

Father Hanley was a priest who taught me in high school, and I hadn't seen him in a long time. In fact, I hadn't even thought of him in years, although when I got the email invitation to his memorial Mass, a flood of memories came back to me.

High school for me was awhile ago, and I'm reminded of that when I run into my classmates at reunions. They have gray hair and they talk about the 1950s and 60s with a great deal of familiarity. We all have vivid memories of JFK's assassination, the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show, miniskirts, Woodstock, the moon landing, etc.

I share all those memories with my classmates, but I also have something most of them don't have, even the ones on their second marriages -- a 13 year old daughter. I got married late and had children even later, so while some of my classmates have grandchildren, I still have teenagers.

At my last reunion a couple of guys mentioned they were already retired and had moved to South Carolina. I said, "I have a kid who's not even in high school yet. That retirement place on the beach is a long way off for me."

When Father Hanley died I realized that he was probably the last surviving teacher I had in high school. The little Catholic high school where I went has a cemetery in a field out back, and most of the priests who taught me are buried there. About ten years ago, on a visit to the school, I took a walk through the cemetery and read the headstones. When I saw the birth dates I realized that most of them were only in their 30s and 40s when they taught me, and now I’m older than that.

I wanted to go to Father Hanley's Mass, and I marked it on my calendar. I envisioned myself going back to the little chapel where I attended Mass in high school, seeing some of my classmates, perhaps walking through that cemetery again. I would revel in the memories, thinking back to the good and bad of high school.

The tough guy poses we struck, the machismo that was as thin as a haze of cigarette smoke. Talking about girls. Playing basketball in a gym that throbbed with teenage hormones. Thinking about girls. Wondering how my life was going to turn out. The cutting humor that teenage boys have, where everything was unprintable but so funny it made your sides hurt from laughing. Thinking about girls. Talking about life, morals, religion, sports, and a million other things with the priests during and after class, with blazing honesty. 

I went to a Catholic grade school and was taught by nuns. Eight years of stern-faced women in black habits made me feel like a prisoner by the time I was 13. When I got to the all-boys high school it was a relief to have male teachers. They didn't mince words, they didn't wheedle or scold you the way the nuns did. Some of them had served in World War II or the Korean War, and they had the grit of life on them. They told it to you straight, and we boys were grateful for that. They didn't take any nonsense, but at the same time they had a kindness you could sense under the gruff exterior. They cared about us, and we knew it.

Father Hanley taught a religion class. I don't remember the specifics of what he taught me, but I do remember a lot of passionate discussions in class. I remember talking about real world situations, challenges we faced every day, and how to handle them. It wasn't a pie-in-the-sky philosophy, or the rote memorization we had in grade school with the nuns, but a nuts and bolts discussion about real life morals.

There was a lot going on in the world. The Civil Rights movement. The Vietnam War. The hippie movement. Old values were being questioned, and people were anxious for change. Father Hanley and his peers didn’t shy away from those tough questions, and they taught us how to look at them honestly and try to find the moral path amid all that turmoil.

I realized the night before Father Hanley's Mass that I couldn't go. My wife was out of town visiting our son in college, and I had two teenagers to look after, with a full schedule of activities the next day. It was impossible to do it all and still drive 25 miles to get to my high school in time for the Mass.

So, I had to say a silent prayer for Father Hanley, and hope that he's in Heaven now. I wish I had gotten to see him at some point in the last 40 years and thanked him for what he did for me. I'm sure he didn't get nearly enough thanks from the thousands of students he taught in a long teaching career. He was one of many priests who taught me, men who gave up the comforts of family life to teach other people’s children, who lived in a community and had no salary, no house or car to call their own.

People like him, who don't have children of their own, have to live on in the lives of the people they taught. I know that he influenced me in profound ways, and he did that with thousands of other men. All those discussions about what's important in life sunk deep into us, and helped to mold our later lives. I would not be the person I am today without the Father Hanleys of the world.

Many thanks, Father. May you rest in peace.