By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
The Kentucky Derby—both the annual “Run for the Roses” and its home track Churchill Downs— played a vital role in the establishment of the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah seventy five years ago this year.
The notion of a monastery in Latter-day Saint Utah was conceived and born when, after World War II, young men rushed to join Trappist abbeys in the United States. As a result, Utah’s monastic motherhouse—the Abbey of Gethsemani near Louisville—was packed to the rafters. Its leader, Abbot Frederic Dunne, decided it was time to start new monastic foundations and ease the overcrowding.
Working with the local bishop Duane G. Hunt and two Ogden parish priests, Father Dunne traveled to Utah several times to search for suitable land for a new monastery. He finally settled on an 1800 acre ranch southeast of Huntsville in the lovely rural Ogden Valley. There was only one problem—the landowner was demanding a high price ($100,000), allegedly in an effort to keep the monks out.
Father Dunne turned to a longtime friend of the Kentucky monastery—Captain James William Kinnarney—for help. Captain Kinnarney was born in Louisville in 1866, just as the American Civil War ended and about 18 years after the Kentucky Trappist monastery started. As a boy, Kinnarney rode mule-pulled streetcars and sold newspapers to United States President Ulysses S. Grant when the former general visited Louisville.
As a young man, Kinnarney joined the Louisville Police Department and served for almost 20 years before opening the Kinnarney Detective Bureau. His private security clients included the famous racetracks named Hialeah, Keeneland, Latonia, as well as other tracks in Chicago and East St. Louis. Kinnarney’s best known business endeavor, however, was as a shareholder in, and security manager for, Louisville’s renowned Churchill Downs.
Given his many Louisville connections and activities, and as a devout Catholic, Kinnarney also developed friendships with the nearby Gethsemani monks. On his 60th wedding anniversary in 1945, he and wife Mamie renewed their wedding vows at the Abbey, said to be the first marriage ceremony performed there. He helped plan Gethsemani’s centennial celebrations in 1949, also attended by well-known Catholic radio host Monsignor Fulton Sheen.
Kinnarney also famously attended a dinner marking Father Dunne’s golden jubilee as a monk in 1944. Thomas Merton was a reader at the celebration, announcing aloud congratulatory notes to the abbot. At least one other monk has reported that the retired detective helped in the kitchen. At one point, he emptied a bottle of Kentucky’s best bourbon into the pot of clam chowder, saying, “Now you’ll hear some speeches!”
Another Trappist monk/writer from Gethsemani, Father Raymond Flanagan, published a biography of Dunne in 1953. Father Raymond reports that upon hearing from Dunne about the steep price demand for the land in Huntsville, the 80-year old Kinnarney told the abbot that he would take care of it. (The Less Traveled Road, p. 241).
When Dunne started to protest, Kinnarney replied, “Shh! This is not a donation I am making; it’s an investment. You have to pray for your benefactors, don’t you? Well, all the money in the world won’t be enough to give you if you win for me and Mame and all the rest of mine what you won for the two boys. Reverend Father, there is only one thing I want in life, and that is a happy, holy death. You can get it for me.” (Two Kinnarney sons had died prior to this time.)
Kinnarney contributed and/or raised the money to buy the western ranch land (and some land in Georgia for another abbey) and thus Dunne was able to send three dozen monks to Huntsville in July 1947 to establish the new monastery. Kinnarney joined the crowd at the train station in Kentucky to send off the pioneer Utah Trappists.
An anonymous monk journal of the trip reported that “Capt. Kinnarney was all tears.” The rest of the tale, however, is happy Northern Utah history as told in my blog and my new book Monastery Mornings (Paraclete Press 2021).
Pope Pius XII awarded the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice medal to Kinnarney for his fund-raising efforts and support of American monasteries. The letter announcing the award was signed by a Vatican secretary named Giovanni Battista Montini, who within 15 years would be elected Pope Paul VI. And in 1963 at age 97, Kinnarney apparently got that happy holy death he wanted.
Given all the direct connections between the Utah Abbey and the Kentucky Derby, I now understand why the old Huntsville monastery’s rose bushes flourished and bloomed so well…they felt right at home.
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) 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, was published by Paraclete Press (more information here) in August 2021.
