By Gary Topping–
It happens to anyone who spends an appreciable amount of time in front of a classroom. My wife, Marianna Hopkins, experienced it once during her distinguished career as a writing professor at Salt Lake Community College: a class that was so dead and devoid of enthusiasm that nothing she could devise would bring it to life. Finally, realizing that the class met at noon, she wondered if its deadness might be a blood-sugar problem. So she suggested that any students who had eaten before class should refrain in the future, while any who had not eaten should do so. I asked her this morning how that had worked, and she couldn’t remember. I thought that it redounded, at least, to her creativity as a teacher; I had had similarly dead classes and that ploy never occurred to me.
That same issue had come up many years before in a funny incident in the history of the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City. Bishop James E. Kearney, who served here from 1932 to 1937, was a wonderful respite from the whip-lashed administration of his predecessor, John J. Mitty. A jovial Irishman from New York, he charmed the people at the Cathedral by interjecting Irish songs into his homilies and hosting parties where he showed lantern slides of his travels around the world. Even though this was during the heart of the Great Depression, Kearney showed he could get the proverbial blood out of a turnip and succeeded in raising funds to retire the debts that had driven the diocese to near-bankruptcy.
His sense of humor comes out vividly in a letter of January 8, 1936 to his Vicar General requesting certain revisions in his work schedule. “On the occasion of confirmation, preaching, etc.,” he wrote, “my ‘prandium’ [should] be held after the function, not before. After some experience in the attempt, I find that I cannot bring from the dinner table the recollection necessary to administer confirmation, or deliver a sermon. As against post-prandial functions, I prefer post-functional prandia.”
*Gary Topping is a writer and historian living in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is the retired archivist for the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City and has written many books and articles.
