CONT E NT S 38 Way station
The first last lunch 40 You had to be there
C21 Notes
The lost humor of Jesus
Way station By Thomas Cooper The first last lunch
“H
i, i ’ m bill, and i ’ m a member of the Iowa-Nebraska Luncheon Club.” So began the introductions at a lunch held May 7 in the Francis Thompson Room of the Burns Library. “Bill,” sitting at one end of a long table, was William Neenan, SJ, vice president and special assistant to the President of Boston College. At the other end sat John T. Butler, SJ (“Fr. Jack”), vice president for University Mission and Ministry. Seated between them along either side of the table were five young women and seven young men who would be graduating in exactly two weeks. The Thompson Room is imposing, with a wall of towering stained glass windows, a vast Oriental rug, and ornate wooden bookcases housing leatherbound tomes, but the mood was informal, and the students were casually dressed, it being, in fact, a pre-exam study day. The noontime gathering was the idea of Karen Kiefer ’82, associate director of the University’s Church in the 21st
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Century Center, which cosponsored the lunch with the Office of Mission and Ministry. A chance reminiscence with Mary Caliendo Rather ’82, her college roommate, got Kiefer thinking about “the number of students who go through Boston College without getting to know either of these two men.” She e-mailed the senior class, inviting all to sign up for the chance to win “one last lunch before graduation with two of Boston College’s living legends.” Within a day, there were 140 applications. Kiefer wrote out the names on strips of paper and put them in a box, and Neenan drew 12. The winners hailed from throughout the University—five from the Carroll School of Management, one from the Lynch School of Education, and six from the College of Arts and Sciences—and from around the country (Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas). Neenan believes in the power of lunch-