Monks still inhabited the closed Utah monastery in 2019…and may always!

By Michael Patrick O’Brien–

A mere two years ago, I thought all the Trappist monks forever had left the now-closed Abbey of Our Lady of the Holy Trinity in Huntsville, Utah. The year 2019 revealed they still are there, however, in both expected and unexpected ways.

Late in 2019, former Abbey librarian David McManus joined 29 of his brothers resting in the quaint monastery cemetery. A life-sized statue of Mary, tall trees, and simple white crosses watch over them. Five Huntsville monks—average age over 90—remain in Utah and reside in an assisted living center in Salt Lake City. They too are ready for the trip to Heaven, and in fact my friend Father Patrick always says, “My bags are packed!” The enduring spirit of the Utah Trappist monks, however, is not limited to their graveyard or their steady upward gaze.

As a kid almost fifty years ago, I heard all about the monastery’s lovely Hermitage in Ogden Valley’s foothills. Not until 2019, however, did my own soul finally hear the sounds of its solitude (Invisible wapiti at the old monk Hermitage). A sculpture of an old monk by priest-artist Father Steve Frost graces the site and punctuates the distinct Trappist presence still there (The old monk in the foothills). Perhaps sculptor Leonard Baskin was right when he told us, “Art is man’s distinctly human way of fighting death.”

The year now ending also brought us more Trappist monk legacy art. Bill White, the monastery property owner, is a devoted friend of the monks and has lovingly restored one of the Abbey’s unique old barns. On one side, he commissioned a 30-foot tall mural based on his favorite archives photo of a Huntsville monk at work with the monastery’s piglets, circa the 1950s.

We took the remaining Utah monks there to see the beautiful new mural before winter set in. They immediately recognized the muralized monk as Brother Michael Flaherty (1906-1986). He was born in Pennsylvania, served in the Merchant Marines, and was kin to famous Pittsburgh Mayor Pete Flaherty. Brother Michael took his final vows in Huntsville in 1951 (originally as “Brother Norbert”), one of the first Catholic monks to do so in the Beehive State.

My Trappist friend Father David Altman told me that Brother Michael was a quiet cook and laborer, and preferred to be a “behind the scenes kind of guy.” From his newly-painted vantage point on the barn, Brother Michael now has a direct line of vision to his own simple gravesite in the monks’ cemetery. I felt a wave of sweet emotion standing there, watching him watch me from the nearby barn wall.

The new monastery barn art stands in good company in Huntsville, which features several such murals by local artist Jake Songer (see: The Barn Art of Jake Songer in Huntsville and Barn as art: Patriotic paintings go up in Huntsville). Songer, who never expected a growing reputation as America’s foremost barn walls artist, now has painted dairy cows, a waving flag, the Statue of Liberty, and a monk on them.

Andy Warhol, a Catholic and famous artist, once summed up his life’s work this way: “The idea is not to live forever; it is to create something that will.” That may be what started to happen in 2019 on the old but evolving Huntsville monastery property. As a devoted pilgrim of the sacred place for the last fifty years, I am intrigued…what will the old Abbey bring us in 2020?

*Mike O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is writing a book about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah.