By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
I did not realize it at the time, but almost a half century ago, I got an early glimpse of the future of the Catholic Church.
The year was 1977. I had just finished a tumultuous year, my sophomore year at St. Joseph Catholic High School in Ogden, Utah. At the time grapevine rumors grew—and then local news stories reported—that our small beloved school might close soon due to mounting financial problems.
The immediate trigger for all the worried speculation was the imminent departure from the school of the Sisters of the Congregation of the Holy Cross. The Holy Cross nuns had been the devoted backbone of St. Joe High since its debut in the early 1950s. With the exception of a five year term by Father Robert Servatius, a local Diocesan priest, every principal of the school had been a Holy Cross nun.
In 1977, however, with some women leaving and fewer women joining their order, the Holy Cross sisters announced that they could no longer staff the school and reassigned their nuns elsewhere. The school faculty included some fine Jesuit priests too, but they also manned a busy Ogden area parish. None of them could take on the role of principal.
Notwithstanding the achievements and fine tradition of Catholic school education, these circumstances unmasked its deadly Achilles heel—an outdated business model highly dependent on teachers and administrators who were paid nothing or next to nothing.
The same basic story played out all over the country in the 1970s. As a result, many Catholic schools closed their doors. To survive, St. Joseph had to break the mold, and look to a new leadership and business model. It did, and appointed the first lay principal of the school, Paul Willard, Jr.
Fast forward to 2021. Today, many believe that greater involvement of the laity—Catholics who are not nuns or priests—likely is the key to the future of church institutions. Indeed, a 2020 study found that successful parishes included strong lay leadership working beside clergy, often filling jobs that in the past were done by priests or nuns.
Such change is essential not just because of the recent distressing clergy sex abuse scandals, but also due to the harsh reality of ecclesiastical demographics. The sad fact is that every year there are fewer and fewer priests or nuns who can lead us. The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) indicates that the number of Catholic priests in the United States has decreased by almost 50% in the last 50 years, dropping from about 59,000 to about 36,000. During a similar timeframe, the number of American Catholic sisters plummeted from 180,000 to just over 30,000.
This trend was just starting back in 1977, and St. Joseph High School was one of the first Catholic institutions forced to face the vexing question of “what’s next?” Paul Willard, commonly called “Coach,” was an inspired answer to that question.
Coach grew up in Ogden, in a blue collar family that could afford to send its children to the local Catholic elementary, but not to the Catholic high school. Coach attended St. Joe High because his Jesuit parish priests arranged an informal work study program for him. He did numerous odd jobs on the church grounds and they covered some part of or forgave his high school tuition.
Paul did not squander the great opportunity. He served as student body president, starred in basketball and baseball, and graduated from St. Joe in 1960. He also earned a sports and academic scholarship and then graduated from the University of San Francisco in 1964.
He knew his vocation by then—he was called to be a teacher. He first coached and taught at another Utah Catholic high school in Provo, but eventually returned to his Ogden alma mater in 1969. Over time he coached almost every sport there, taught numerous academic subjects, and eventually served as vice principal.
Paul’s high school faculty friend and colleague was Jesuit Father Neale Herrlich. Father Herrlich, another St. Joe legend, performed the marriage ceremony for Paul and his wife Jill Oberley (a fellow SJCHS alum) in 1963. Following the Willard and Oberley family tradition, Paul and Jill enrolled their children in the affiliated grade school.
With his relevant background and experience, it is hard to imagine someone better qualified than Paul Willard to assume the leadership reins at St. Joseph High School during its moment of crisis. Coach says it happened “by default,” and that there was no one else who could do it at the time. Sometimes the best things happen by default—something my dear mother might also call the work of the Holy Spirit.
Facing the school’s crisis head on, Coach mobilized local Catholic families, students, parents of students, and financial boosters of the school. Two of them were Bob and Mary Evans, the parents of my friend and classmate Patty Evans Bradley, who year after year gave thousands and thousands of dollars to the school. Coach says, however, that the community support was wide and deep, including from blue collar families.
With a big fistful of three year pledges of financial help from such diverse supporters, and with the great potential of a brand new annual dinner/auction fundraiser called SPREE (Supportive People Retaining Education Excellence), Coach and the rest of the Ogden community convinced the diocese to leave the school open.
The school had to seriously trim its already tight budget, but keeping the doors open paid great dividends. Coach’s varsity basketball team almost won the state championship the very next year. Debate and drama trophies followed. The excellent Class of 1978 and my own magnificent Class of 1979 both graduated, and many other fine people followed after us. The school added new buildings, new programs and so on.
I am not sure any of these wonderful things would have happened without a passionate Catholic lay leader willing to step up, galvanize the community, and invest the time and energy to help facilitate it all. None of it was easy.
Paul had to work side jobs to support his family—he painted houses every summer. Like so many other Catholic school teachers, however, he had a sense of mission about his work. He had a notion that it was his turn to give back to the school that took him in when his family could not really afford to send him there. That laudable motivation helped keep him going.
Coach remained at the school for another five years or so after I graduated. Recognizing he was pushing 50 with no retirement funds of any note, he eventually took a teaching and coaching job at Park City High School and led their golf team to several state championships. He moved back home to Ogden after he retired.
Although it has survived one or two other close calls since 1977, St. Joseph Catholic High School has endured and arguably even thrived. Later this month in May 2021, it will send another group of intelligent service-minded young graduates out into the world…almost five decades after Coach and I were there together.
I knew some parts of this story, but not most of it until recently, after I spent a few hours chatting on the phone with Coach. For some inexplicable reason, after our last call, the school song I had sung so often as a boy popped into my head: “St. Joe High, we’re ever for you, we will guard you ’til we die. Come all gather ‘round and cheer her, tell her story St. Joe High. Shout the praises of her warriors, sing her glory St. Joe High, and on to victory urge the heroes, of the mighty St. Joe High.”
And then it hit me—that’s exactly what Paul Willard did.
Thanks Coach, you helped pave the way for new generations of lay leaders. The Church today can use all the Paul Willards it can get.
*Mike O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (found here), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, will be published by Paraclete Press (more information here) in August 2021.
