My Alma Mater is closing….

I hadn’t realized how hard this post would be to write until I sat down and couldn’t find the words, couldn’t express my feeling and couldn’t understand the depth of loss. But…a few months down the road from hearing the my Alma Mater was closing at the end of the school year, I hope to find the words with God’s grace.

I was accepted to Holy Names College (later University)in Oakland in the spring of 1986. It was all happenstance and something of God’s providence that led me to this small Catholic liberal arts college in the hills of Oakland. After my discharge from the Marine Corps, I was living in Seattle and going to Community College and had decided that I wanted to go to a small Catholic liberal arts college/university. So I applied to several (I think 10 or more) institutions throughout the United States.
As luck, happenstance, or God’s divine providence would have it, the first acceptance letter I received was from Holy Names…I took that as a definite sign and wrote back my “yes” and all the other acceptance letters that followed were declined as I prepared to move from the northwest and down to the Bay Area I still call home.

And although I was 25 years of age when I began my studies at Holy Names, I like many people, made life long and deep friendships that sadly I do not always cherish in the way I should. I studied under dedicated and great professors who were true teachers and mentors in every sense of the word. The small and intimate size of the college and of my major, philosophy, led to deep and life changing encounters of seeing the other as a child of God. I remember being asked to meet with Dr. Richard Yee, one of my philosophy professors, where he gently scolded me for my callous and unkind words towards a fellow student and how he expected more of me. How leaving his office humbled and ashamed I continue to hear his voice in many of my interactions even to this day…seeking a more gentle and kinder way of knowing the other.

Or Dr. Tricia McMahon and her invitation into the joy and playfulness of children’s theater and how I can even today remember some of the songs which we sang and how this helped me to be a better teacher by incorporating the experiences I had in shaping the children I was honored to teach.

Then there was the day in class when a friend and I were discussing the merits of a certain “Calvin and Hobbes” cartoon and how Dr. Shelia Gibson, walking into our Ethics Class and hearing us began to discuss the historical figures Calvin and Hobbes with us. And when discovering we were discussing comic strip characters graciously asked for the book and read it. Teaching me and all in the class to look a little deeper into the culture around us and begin to see the depths of God’s fingerprints to be found even in a comic strip.

The last memory, I will share, is of Sr. Irene Woodward and her time in my last undergraduate year at Holy Names College…her teaching and leading me through two philosophy courses. Her torturing me into using fewer words that I wish to use and then to answer questions that seemed impossible but became clearer through discussion and correction. How learning to listen carefully to the hints and proddings shared in weekly discussions opened my mind and life to greater and more profound encounters with God.
And I could go on.

In the years that followed Holy Names went from College to University…added sports programs that were non existent in my undergraduate years but more importantly continued to outreach to the local community and in a special way looking for and helping those first generation college students.

I graduated from Holy Names College in the spring of 1989 after spending a year studying in Germany. I later returned to work towards my teaching credential which ultimately led me to my call to the priesthood.

Shortly after I heard the news, I was up at dinner with my sister and her family and my godson’s wife, who works at a local community college in helping students transition to 4 year institutions lamented the loss of Holy Names and shared how hard the Holy Names Sisters worked in these final years in seeking to help students graduate debt free in understanding the burden student debt can be to many graduates.

The local community of Oakland and the greater community of the Catholic Church will surely miss the gift of mission that is/was Holy Names University. Begun with the joy, the grit and the passion of sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the courage of the Holy Names Sisters, whether in the mid 19th century founding or their continued service into the beginning of this 21st century…their mission continues in the lives of those they touched and formed as we pass on the gift of education, friendship and joy we received, not in a diploma or degree but in our hearts formed in the image and charism of the Sisters of the Holy Names call to serve in the image of Jesus.
God Bless
Fr. Mark