MAGAZINE
WINTER 2020-21
INS IDE T H IS ISSU E :
CREATIVITY Exploring innovation and imagination as inspiration
F E AT UR ES: Jeff Schaefer Philip Hiblovic '21 (pictured)
Doc Crotzer '02 Jerry Shen '58
DID YOU KNOW? Newsweek recognized SLUH in its 2020 list of Top 500 STEM Schools in the nation. This is a wonderful acknowledgement to SLUH faculty and students and their work with the Clavius Project, in the James Guth Costigan '62 Innovation Lab and with projectcentered curriculum units.
Robotics season is in full swing at St. Louis U. High. As the RoboBills prepare for competition, they are enhancing their robot’s swerve drive with new encoders and ensuring their robot cart is highly functional. At the same time, they are CADing different modules for a basic robotic frame so they can use it as a learning tool for future team members.
#SLUHInnovates
Dear SLUH Community, When the students, faculty or staff at St. Louis University High engage in acts of creativity, it is a form of prayer. St. Ignatius valued deeply the role of imagination and creativity in prayer and discernment, and as such, it plays a tremendous role in the Spiritual Exercises. Ignatius was determined to highlight the importance of the visual, musical and rhetorical arts in education when he outlined the standardized pedagogical elements of Jesuit education and formation in his seminal work the Ratio Studiorum in 1599. In a year full of creative problem solving, innovation, change and multiple pivots, our creativity at SLUH has continued to serve us well. It is not surprising that a “new” outside graduation ceremony format was seen by some as even better than the traditional, or that elements of our rapid-pivot virtual Cashbah should be incorporated long term. It is also not surprising that regardless of the department, our faculty and staff is full of talented artists. Theology teachers who are brilliant at painting in water color (which is very technically difficult) or English teachers or IT staff were/are part of successful bands. These are only a couple examples of the extraordinary talents that quietly masquerade and walk through our halls as average folks when in fact they are far from average. I was taught by the Jesuits that young men need to balance the intellectual, spiritual and the physical with the artistic. In my experience, it was a very normal thing to be a football player who was heavily involved in drama and choir.
As such, I am proud to say my football and rugby playing Class of 2024 son is a good student who also performs a mean classical violin and paints in his spare time. Appreciation of the aesthetic and the beauty of creativity is a moment of joining with Jesus, as powerful as that moment when you are silenced by the beauty of the Grand Canyon or the breathtaking sight of the Yosemite Valley in the fall. It is a value choice. An Ignatian value choice. The concreteness and beauty of creation and what humanity is capable of is part of the evidence for the presence of God. Whether it be the new creative worlds brought together in STEM pursuits or the traditional visual and performing arts, SLUH is rich with capacity and opportunity to explore God-given talents and to celebrate creation through creating. Your support of the Go Forth campaign could and has expanded our ability to continue to pursue excellence in all things. Our alumni, staff and community members continue to be central participants and contributors to the local, national and international cultural realms of creative exploration in film, STEM, visual and performing arts. I pray that you too find time to pray through your creative talents and use this edition of the SLUH Magazine to be inspired.
“Creativity is a process much bigger than I. This means that when I do creative work, I am participating in a cosmic endeavor… Creativity is a superb example of a person joining with Jesus to do great work in this world.” – VINITA HAMPTON WRIGHT IGNATIANSPIRITUALITY.COM
God bless,
Alan Carruthers President
Winter 2020-21 | 1
IN THIS ISSUE SLUH TODAY
FEATURES
U. HIGHLIGHTS 30 Final Cut
AROUND THE HALLS 4 Semester Spotlight
Doc Crotzer '02 brings
ATHLETICS 6 Sports Highlights 9 A Season Unlike Any Other CURRICULUM 8 SLUH Remastered CAMPUS MINISTRY 12 Retreat Week Pivots, Prevails 13 A Kairos Reflection 14 Space to Retreat STUDENT SUPPORT SERVICES 15 Discovering the Right Fit GLOBAL EDUCATION 16 Virtual Silver Lining
Right Now
Jerry Shen '58
36 Fantastical Creations
24
Doug Auer '95
38 Master Storyteller
Mark Gunn '89
40 Creative Solutions to COVID 24 Innovator for Others
Jeff Schaefer maximizes the potential of the Innovation Lab
28 21Artistry
Philip Hiblovic '21 inspires
regional creative collective
Jerry Anselmo '63, Dave '08 and Will '10 Linhares
42 High-Stakes Friendships 43 Sunrise Socials
Class of '71
43 A Thanksgiving Tradition
Class of '10
44 Answering the Call
Fr. Mathew Stewart, SJ '98
45 "A Home, A Haven,
A Retreat"
Alumni reflections on SLUH's sacred space
46 Noteworthy 47 Requiescat in Pace 48 New Alumni Relations
Coordinator 48 Alumni Census Highlights
20 ALL ARTWORK SHOWN: SISYPHUS 2021 WWW.SLUH.ORG/SISYPHUS
ARTWORK BY NATHAN RICH '22
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motion pictures to life with passion for editing
32 Eternal Life Right Here,
WOMEN OF SLUH 18 Image of God's Goodness STUDENT MEDIA 20 Sisyphus Reignites 22 Persistence Marks Prep News 85 23 New Media Club Fuels Student Creativity
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MAGAZINE
ABOUT SLUH Magazine is a publication for alumni, students, parents, faculty, staff, benefactors and friends of St. Louis University High School. If you do not receive correspondence from SLUH but wish to, please send a note to alumni@sluh.org with your name, email and mailing address.
ADVANCING OUR MISSION 49 Go Forth 50 We are St. Louis
New Presidential Scholarship punctuates commitment to students from entire metro area
52 St. Louis U. High Day 53 Cashbah 2021 54 Enduring Tradition
of Excellence
FROM THE ARCHIVE 55 Approaching 100 at Backer Memorial IGNATIAN REFLECTION 56 Embrace Your Creative Spirit
ON THE COVER: Philip Hiblovic '21, founder of 21Artistry, surrounded by posts on the regional creative collective's Instagram page (instagram.com/21artistry). Photo by 21Artistry contributor Ava Mandoli '21 (MICDS). See page 28 for the feature story by Carter Fortman '21, Prep News Editor-in-Chief and member of 21Artistry.
ARTWORK BY BRENDAN MCLAUGHLIN '21
CONTACT SLUH Magazine St. Louis University High School 4970 Oakland Avenue St. Louis, MO 63110 magazine@sluh.org EDITOR Ben DuMont '92 Director of Communications SUBMISSIONS Story ideas and submissions are welcome. Please send a note to magazine@sluh.org. IN GRATITUDE Photography Club for their dedication and commitment in digitally capturing life at SLUH and contributing to this publication...and to students in Prep News, Sisyphus, Gadfly and SLUH Student Media, for enriching the SLUH experience through their coverage, perspectives and creativity.
www.sluh.org sluhigh sluh @sluhjrbills COPYRIGHT © 2021 St. Louis University High School
Winter 2020-21 | 3
SLUH TODAY
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SLUH TODAY
AROUND THE HALLS
SEMESTER SPOTLIGHT RESILIENT SPIRIT
STUCO hosted a successful retrothemed Spirit Week, which featured a tailgate with hot dogs and burgers, outdoor games, a home run derby, an open mic night and a drive-in screening of Ferris Bueller's Day Off in the shared SLUH/ Saint Louis Science Center parking lot. Pictured on left: Various Spirit Week activities. Sound of Success Three talented Jr. Bill musicians were selected to District Honors Orchestra via virtual auditions: Justin Glass ‘22 (violin), Thomas Nguyen ’22 (violin) and Alex Unseth ’21 (cello-1st place).
Food, Formation, Fellowship Campus Ministry hosted monthly Food, Formation, Fellowship events to strengthen the spiritual community and brotherhood among the student body. The on-campus events included faith-centered conversation, dinner and fun activities like pool and cornhole.
Weather Balloon In September—for the ninth year in a row—the SLUH Environmental STEM class built and launched a weather balloon.
Check out the remarkable project video by Kent Cody '21 Youth and Government The SLUH delegation performed exceptionally well at the Missouri YMCA Youth and Government Convention. Several Jr. Bills were elected to office, passed bills and won selective awards. Golf Classic The SLUH community rallied to support the school’s strong financial aid program at the ninth annual Scholarship Golf Classic. The virtual September event raised more than $165,000 to help ensure all qualified students can attend SLUH, regardless of their families’ economic circumstances. Faculty Recognition Chinese teacher Yude Huang was honored by the University of Chicago with its Outstanding Educator Award for “going beyond everyday teaching and leaving an impression that is carried over a lifetime.” English teacher Terry Quinn was recognized as best secondary school educator by the Dante Society of America, which stated Quinn’s “more than 25-year commitment to teaching, to Dante’s text and to the culture of medieval Italy shine through his own statements, syllabi and assignments, as well as his students’ exceptionally high-quality work.”
excellence in the teaching of math and science, is presented annually by the Saint Louis Science Center. Final Vows After 25 years as a Jesuit, SLUH Principal Fr. Ian Gibbons, SJ professed final vows in the Society of Jesus at the Mass of the Holy Spirit on August 18, 2020. The liturgy was celebrated by the new Provincial of the U.S. Central and Southern Province, Fr. Tom Greene, SJ.
Future Jr. Bills Admissions welcomed 8th graders on campus for the first-ever Jr. Billiken Immersion Day to learn more about SLUH. Other opportunities for prospective students included Virtual Shadow@ SLUH (8th graders), Admissions & Accessibility Webinar, and Virtual Inside SLUH Visit (middle schoolers).
Dan See, chair of the Computer Science Department, was named the winner of the 2020 Carol B. and Jerome T. Loeb Prize. The award, which recognizes
Winter 2020-21 | 5
ATHLETICS
SPORTS HIGHLIGHTS BY CHRIS MUSKOPF ‘91 ATHLETIC DIRECTOR
The ability to conduct seasons in our four fall sports hinged upon our ability to practice and compete within parameters that placed the safety of our student-athletes, coaches and general community as our top priority. This priority manifested in daily screening protocols for studentathletes, practices in small groups (rather than as a full team), COVID testing on campus every 14 days and limited attendance at home and away contests. To offset the limited attendance at contests, the SLUH Communications Department spearheaded a plan to increase the frequency of livestreamed contests using the SLUH Sports Network (SSN) and Facebook Live. The additional contest broadcasts provided an opportunity to connect with professional broadcaster Joey Zanaboni ‘09, who has been a dedicated member of the SSN broadcast crew, doing play-by-play for soccer and basketball contests and serving as mentor to current students involved in SSN productions. To view archived broadcasts from the fall and winter seasons, visit team1sports.com/SLUHAthletics.
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Check @SLUHAthletics on Twitter and sluh.org/athletics for news, scores and updates as the winter season concludes and the spring season begins.
CROSS COUNTRY For the third consecutive year, SLUH finished as runner-up at the MSHSAA Championships in the large schools classification. Since 1999, this is the sixth second place finish for the program, along with five team championships. The depth of the Jr. Bill team and ability to run as a pack was highlighted in the State race in Columbia as the five runners earning points – Grant Brawley ‘22, Ryan Kramer ‘21, Baker Pashea ‘22, Hayden Zenor '21 and Sean Kellogg ‘22 – finished with a 19-second spread across their times. This spread marks the smallest gap between the scoring five runners at the State meet in the history of the program and repeated the spread recorded by the five Jr. Bills who earned points at the District Championships. The week prior, the varsity squad conquered a tough course in Sullivan to earn its 25th District Championship since 1983. The five runners earning points for the Jr. Bills were: Daniel Hogan (4th), Grant Brawley (9th), Baker Pashea (10th), Ryan Kramer (11th), and Hayden Zenor (12th). By virtue of capturing the District Championship in 2020, the cross country
program’s streak has been extended to 28 consecutive years of entering a full team at the state meet. All three levels of the program captured the top spot in team scoring at the MCC Championships, marking the 17th consecutive title for the varsity. Senior Daniel Hogan captured the individual championship with a cadre of teammates placing in spots 4-7. FOOTBALL In the fourth season under Head Coach Mike Jones, the Jr. Bills fought through the adversity of the pandemic to compete in three regular season games and advance to the District semifinal round of the postseason. The varsity squad recorded an MCC victory over St. John Vianney and moved to the district semifinal with a forfeit victory over Kirkwood. In the district semifinal at Lindbergh, the Jr. Bills battled through the final seconds with chances to tie the contest on their last possession. With over 90 participants in the program in 2020 and a 4-0 record compiled by the freshman/ sophomore team, excitement and optimism abound within the program.
SLUH TODAY
The sense of excitement is further buoyed by the representation of Jr. Bills on the various lists of postseason accolades. Twenty members of the 2020 varsity team were recognized as All-MCC with Chris Brooks ‘22 (WR), Luke Ratterman ‘21 (TE), Tyler Ridgway ‘21 (P), and Zak Stevenson ‘21 (OL) landing on the 1st team. Six Jr. Bills were on the Missouri Football Coaches (MFCA) All-District Team: Phillip Bone ‘22 (DB), Brooks, Kyle Dulick ‘21 (DB), Ratterman, Ridgway and Stevenson. Ten Jr. Bills were honored on the Academic All-State team: Bone, Brooks, Blake Collins '21, Dulick, Luke Johnston ‘22, Jack McClelland '21, Danny O’Keefe '21, Ratterman, Ridgway and Tim Torrez '21. Lastly, Ridgway was recognized as the 2nd Team All-State punter by the MFCA. SOCCER The truncated season for the Jr. Bill varsity soccer team began on October 3 with a victory over Mehlville. The team rattled off three more victories, including a thriller in PK’s over St. John Vianney, to start the season. One of the toughest schedules in the
area landed the team with an overall record of nearly .500, with the season ending with a 1-0 loss in District play to Chaminade on a late corner kick. Six Jr. Bills garnered All-MCC postseason recognition: Jacob Hammond ‘21 (1st Team Back), Caiden Harris ‘23 (Hon Mention Back), Grant Locker ‘24 (Hon Mention Midfield), Tilahun Murphy ‘21 (2nd Team Back), Stephen Saladin ‘22 (1st Team Forward) and Jaylen Sinclair ‘21 (2nd Team Back). Hammond was named to the Missouri Boys Soccer Academic Team and earned recognition on the Missouri Soccer Coaches All-Region team and Honorable Mention on the All-State team. SWIMMING & DIVING The 2020 version of the SLUH Swimming & Diving team overcame its share of COVID-induced adversity, including a lack of access to its home pool at Forest Park Community College, the absence of large meets and invitationals on its schedule, and minimal events at which spectators could attend. The AquaBills valiantly overcame that
adversity as it registered an undefeated regular season, captured the MCC Championship and turned in amazing performances at the MSHSAA Class 2 Swimming and Diving Championships. The State meet at the Rec-Plex began with Sebastian Lawrence ‘22 capturing 1st place in the diving competition with a Class 2 record and SLUH record score of 515.65 points. When the swimmers took to the pool, the 200 Medley Relay team of Cooper Scharff ‘22, Ned Mehmeti ‘22, Jonas Hostetler ‘22 and Eli Butters '21 grabbed 2nd place and set a new SLUH record with a time of 1:34.91. Scharff and Mehmeti were joined by Gavin Baldes ‘23 for the 200 IM, an event in which Baldes landed in 17th, Mehmeti finished 11th and Scharff set the 3rd SLUH record of the event with a 2nd place finish and a time of 1:49.87. Butters and Hostetler were accompanied by Jason Cabra ‘23 in the 50 Free and kept the momentum going as Cabra placed 21st, Hostetler finished 18th, and Butters registered a torrid time of 20.48 for 1st place, a Class 2 record and another SLUH record. Scharff returned to the pool and became a
Winter 2020-21 | 7
ATHLETICS
WINTER SPORTS HIGHLIGHTS
(reported through January 25, 2020) 2-time champion in the 100 Backstroke with a time of 49.81. The meet ended with the 400 Freestyle Relay team of Butters, Cabra, Hostetler and Scharff racing to a time of 3:07.12, netting the fourth 1st place finish of the event for the Jr. Bills, garnering the third Class 2 record for the Jr. Bills on the day and establishing the fifth SLUH record during the meet. Other events that featured Jr. Bills include: 100 Butterfly (Hostetler-11th, Baldes-18th), 100 Freestyle (Cabra-12th, ButtersDQ), 500 Freestyle (Mehmeti-13th, sophomore Brendan Schroeder-24th), 200 Freestyle Relay (Cabra/Baldes/ freshman Henry Unger/Mehmeti-T-9th), and 100 Breaststroke (freshman Aidan Brawer -21st, junior Brody Nester-DQ). Overall, the Jr. Bills scored 188 points and secured a 5th place finish. These and other stellar performances over the season earned three members of the program recognition on the 2020 STLToday High School Sports All-Metro Swimming and Diving team: Eli Butters (1st team), Cooper Scharff (1st team) and Sebastian Lawrence (2nd team).
BASKETBALL The basketball program moves towards the end of January with victories over Bishop DuBourg, University City, St. John Vianney, Normandy and Eureka and at least nine games remaining on the schedule. The district tournament begins February 27. ICE HOCKEY The HockeyBills skated through a shortened regular season, earning 14 points in a schedule that was limited to contests against other teams in the Municipal Conference. The opening round of playoffs begins January 28. RACQUETBALL SLUH racquetball heads into February with undefeated teams at the V1, JV1-1 and JV2-1 levels. The regular season concludes prior to the State Tournament on the weekend of February 20. RIFLERY The schedule for the RifleBills has been significantly impacted by COVID but picks up at the end of January with the Missouri CMP Championship and events in February that include the Jr. Sectionals, the Jr. Olympics and the Missouri Championships. WRESTLING The SLUH wrestling program has been active this winter with a schedule modified by COVID and influenced by a reconfiguration of MSHSAA postseason events. Highlights of the season, so far, include 1st place for the team in a quad at St. Mary’s versus St. Mary’s, Bishop DuBourg and Lift for Life, and the ascent of Bobby Conroy '21 past the century mark in career wins with his performance at the Francis Howell Duals. Remaining events prior to the district tournament include a quad at Westminster Christian, a quad at SLUH and the MCC Championships.
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FOUR-STAR STANDOUT COMMITS TO MIZZOU Isaac Thompson ‘22, a standout wide receiver and defensive back, has committed to play football at Mizzou. A four-star recruit who began his high school career as a freshman on varsity, Thompson is the fourth-rated prospect in Missouri from his class and the seventh-rated safety in the nation. Thompson received offers from more than 30 colleges, including Florida, Michigan, Mizzou, Texas, USC and Arkansas. “(Mizzou) was the spot for me and I always wanted to play back home and have all these great people around me come to my games,” says Thompson. “The SEC is the best conference in the country, and I felt like it was the spot for me.” While planning for his future, Thompson still has his heart and mind at SLUH. “We are going to have a really good team coming back next year,” he says. “We have guys like Ryan Wingo, Marco Sansone, Luke Johnston and Chris Brooks that will all come in, and we can win the state championship if we set our minds to it.”
This article was adapted from the Prep News story by Jack Rybak ‘22 (December 5, 2020).
SLUH TODAY
A SEASON UNLIKE ANY OTHER Teamwork Earns Cross Country Second Place at State BY JOE PORTER CROSS COUNTRY AND TRACK/FIELD COACH, SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHER
In the words of Coach Brian Gilmore, our season can be summed up as “relentless.” For us, the season started back in March when track was cancelled. The distance runners kept training, but on their own using Google Sheets to connect with one another with their training logs. They commented on each other’s training logs to create a sense of community. We were also able to bring in alumni like John Clohisy ‘09, Caleb Ford ‘10 and Ben Rosario ‘98 to keep them motivated to train, especially when we were unsure whether or not we would be able to compete. Ben Rosario’s challenge to the team was “let’s see how good we can be.” Regardless of circumstances that were beyond our control, this became the goal of the season. Throughout the season, we found our strength to be pack running. While we may not always have the individual champion in a given race, the gap between our top runners went from 1:05 to a scant 20 seconds by the district meet. At the state meet, our pack was running together the whole race, but we were back in 7th place at the 1K. The group moved up throughout the race to finish second overall as a team with a 15-second gap between our first and fifth runners. Not one of our runners finished in an All-State position (top 25 individuals). In my 16 years of coaching, I have never seen a team leave the state meet with a trophy without having at least one All-State runner. Our pack persevered and it was because we did it together with the focus of seeing how good we could be.
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CURRICULUM
SLUH Remastered When artists remaster their music, they take what was already good and improve it – making it more vivid, closer to the music’s fullest potential. In the face of a global pandemic, SLUH did its own remastering. Under the careful guidance of many dedicated faculty and staff, life at Backer Memorial underwent a significant re-engineering, being crafted into a more refined and relevant version of what it has always been. Assistant Principal for Mission Jim Linhares helps tell the story of how it happened in the latest episode of the INSIGNIS podcast: SLUH Remastered. Following are brief excerpts of three interviews from this episode.
Listen to Sisyphus
MARÍA-PAZ CAMPOS María-Paz Campos teaches Spanish and is Assistant Director of Global Education at SLUH. Last summer, she helped design some of the professional development for the faculty in preparation for this school year. She spoke about adjusting to the realities of teaching in a pandemic. “It was definitely a challenge. I went through that process with a lot of sadness because I had such a great group of students and great classes, and we had this really good environment and dynamic and I just missed having them with me. So that was definitely something I missed. And now trying to figure how to teach a language – Spanish in my case – most of the time in an immersion setting and provide that through an asynchronous type of learning, that was a challenge, too. So we had to work together as a team, all the teachers, and be creative on how to give that input to students that they need in a language. “I think one of the most important things that I've come to realize and that virtual learning has emphasized is the importance of helping the students become self-regulated and become students who can learn by themselves, autonomously and efficiently. I've been trying to work on that because I don't see them as often as I used to, so I need to make sure they are working on their areas of growth or weaknesses – to improve and be better.”
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ANN MURPHY Ann Murphy is Director of Admissions. Her son Andrew is a graduate of the Class of 2016. She spoke about the creative solutions her office has implemented to accommodate families despite the current circumstances. “We were supposed to begin welcoming 7th grade families to campus for Inside SLUH visits. They can come to campus on a school day, and that group of five that we've traditionally hosted – we couldn't have them here. So we pivoted to a virtual Inside SLUH visit with a narrated view of campus. I put a slide deck together of about sixty or so slides of what the tour sort of looked like, and then narrated over that to help them imagine what they were seeing and how they would be a student in that particular photo. I sat in my dining room at home and made it up. It wasn't Hollywood, but it worked. After that, Jennifer Thomas was really good about getting us to a place where we started to hone in on kids' interests and do feature Zoom presentations about STEM, fine arts, athletics, student life. We're continuing to provide virtual experiences, and as many on-campus experiences as we can. “I think the theme for us this year is flexibility. And what I'm trying to impress upon parents is we are going to be flexible. I tell them: 'If you even think you're interested in St. Louis U. High, apply. Just do it. Because we can always worry about the visit or the
SLUH TODAY
information you might need later. And if you change your mind, I'm not going to be upset. I don't take it personally. I want what's best for your son.' “What we do here, the way we form them as whole kids – beyond the academics, their faith formation, their looking beyond themselves for the greater glory – it's just so vital. I can't talk about it enough, and I can't talk enough about all of the purposeful meaning that is behind everything we do here at SLUH that your son will benefit from. And we have fun here, too.”
JEFF POTTINGER Mr. Jeff Pottinger teaches band. In the spring semester of 2020, his classes recorded several songs, despite working entirely remotely. He spoke about what it was like to teach music in a virtual environment and to produce the recordings. “A lot of what we do is we listen and respond. We listen and adjust. In the middle of class, I can listen to 65 students play in Symphonic Band and in a matter of five minutes, I can make them all sound pretty darn good together. But if I listen to those eight measures of 65 students playing individually, it takes hours. There's just so much feedback that comes from playing live within a group. Teaching-wise, I learned, obviously, very quickly that I had to adapt and adjust a little bit, and some of that came from modeling in the Zoom classroom. So it might be calling on five people to play for the group and hoping, honestly, that someone would play it wrong so you could say, “OK, now that's what you don't want to do.”
Band teacher Jeff Pottinger conducts class in the spacious Danis Lobby. On January 11, SLUH welcomed the entire student body back to campus. Several classes, such as Band, have made creative use of space in the building to ensure a safe environment with proper distancing.
“I think somebody mentioned it here: You're building the plane as you're flying. You're in the air thinking, oh, we really need something to keep the right side up. And I think I was really most proud of the boys, because they just did it. I asked them to do it, and they did it. This is really bizarre, but there are lots of blessings from this pandemic, strangely enough, and one of them is that a lot of them gained this really incredible awareness of their playing. Recordings don't lie, so as they start to listen to it and they do sound checks, they're starting to realize, I don't sound as good as I want to. So there was actually a lot of growth.” The INSIGNIS podcast features lively interviews with members of the SLUH community engaged in a variety of roles and fascinating projects "down the hall, across the metro area and around the world" in support of the school’s mission. INSIGNIS is available on iTunes and Spotify, as well as the SLUH website where you can find additional material for each episode. www.sluh.org/insignis
COMING SOON: NEW CENTER FOR ACADEMIC SUCCESS The Go Forth campaign aims to make SLUH a model of academic achievement and faith formation for the nation and for the world. In 2020, the school began preparatory construction to renovate the “old cafeteria” into The J. Anthony ‘57 and Donna M. Dill Center for Academic Success, in recognition of the generous $3 million gift the Dills have committed to SLUH through their estate plan. SLUH is seeking $1.8M to continue construction and establish an academic hub that will drive excellence at the school for decades. Learn more at www.sluh.org/dillcenter
GO FORTH Winter 2020-21 | 11
CAMPUS MINISTRY
Retreat Week Pivots, Prevails Jesus' Parable of the Sower contains profound truth felt implicitly by any Jesuit educator. As it relates to Campus Ministry, we ask: Are the faith formation programs we strive to offer students going to be met by the right type of circumstances to take root in their hearts? In a year when students have endured upheaval to their academic and social lives, SLUH Campus Ministry knew that safe opportunities for faith formation and spiritual growth were perhaps more important than ever. Even during a global pandemic, retreats are one of the ways we have tried to keep alive the flame of faith formation at SLUH. During the week leading up to Thanksgiving, 75 upperclassmen attended one of three overnight retreats, and all the freshmen and their 90 or so Senior Advisors went about the work of a classwide Freshman Retreat. None of these retreats were carried out in ways we had done before; each demanded high
BY BRIAN GILMORE ‘02 CAMPUS MINISTER, THEOLOGY TEACHER, CROSS COUNTRY ASSISTANT COACH
levels of creativity and significant schedule modifications. What safety protocols needed to be put in place? What activities would have to be adapted? How could the overnight retreats be shortened by a day and still accomplish their goals? How would Kairos resume after two cancelled springtime retreats left the pool of student leaders dry? Campus Ministry programs always benefit from high degrees of creative collaboration between retreat leaders, but the challenging circumstances of 2020 raised the stakes on what that would look like. We are very pleased that students experienced significant graces and stayed safe during those retreats. Each retreat was a special time to re-encounter the eternal peace and love offered to us by our God. In this time of great trial, the ancient words of invitation by the prophet Isaiah rang out in students' hearts: "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine."
AMDG: IGNATIAN SPIRITUALITY FOR SLUH PARENTS
Pictured: Brian Gilmore ‘02 (left) and Ryan Klostermann '20 at Kairos Retreat in November 2020.
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Discover the spirituality of St. Ignatius and grow closer to God and one another in faith and friendship. The next session is April 22 ("Seeking the Grace of Compassion" by English teacher Chuck Hussung). Learn more at: www.sluh.org/amdg
SLUH TODAY
Pictured: Joe Feder ‘19 (third from right) at Kairos Retreat at Kings House in May 2019.
A Kairos Reflection BY JOE FEDER ‘19 SOPHOMORE AT SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY
During my Senior year at SLUH, I was lucky enough to lead a Kairos retreat. In fact, leading Kairos 90 was one of the most important and influential parts of my high school experience – aside from going on the retreat earlier in the year. For a month leading up to the retreat, eight student leaders would spend hours writing talks alongside faculty mentors, being formed as leaders, and practicing giving their talks to close friends. It was this formational leadership and intentionally cultivated brotherhood that became the driving force behind our Kairos retreat, and made it such a beautiful four days.
The preparation for the Kairos that took place just a few months ago (Kairos 94) looked very different. But the culmination was no less beautiful. My most visible contribution to this past Kairos took the form of a self-recorded video made in my dorm room on a Wednesday night, as my roommate laughed at my mistakes in between takes. What I will remember most from this Kairos, however, has nothing to do with myself. The day before this year’s retreatants would begin their Kairos journeys, three incredible alumni gathered together in an empty classroom in Xavier Hall on SLU’s campus to
practice giving their talks, and I was lucky enough to be present and provide feedback. For three hours, there was spirited debate over the connotation of ‘notorious,’ the dire effects of ‘Mass skippen,’’ and the Holy Spirit revealed itself in the words and works of three young men, who were giving up their time and their hearts, even in the face of impending exams and papers. They were giving Love. They were Love in Action. That cold Sunday morning exemplifies all that Kairos is supposed to be. As I said during my talk in May of 2019, the spirit of Kairos is present in simple, small
acts of Love that we give to each other. Much has changed over the course of this past year. But it is powerful to remember those things that have remained the same. Love remains the same. God remains the same. He remains present in the sacrifice of this year’s leaders. He remains present on Kairos. And he remains present in all of those students who continue to choose to Live the Fourth.
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SPACE TO RETREAT SLUH is blessed with a second campus dedicated to the formation of faith-filled, spiritually grounded Men for Others. The Madonna Della Strada Retreat Center, located north of Troy in beautiful Silex, Mo., rests on 88 sprawling acres. It features a main facility, a freestanding chapel, multiple break out areas for small group meetings, a Spirit Walk nature trail and Stations of the Cross. The retreat center will become an integral part of the SLUH Campus Ministry program after it underwent renovations to turn it from a family home to a facility able to accommodate large groups for extended periods. It will be ideal for retreats and team-building opportunities. Madonna Della Strada, patroness of the Society of Jesus, means “Our Lady of the Way” in Italian and is the name of an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary enshrined at the Church of the Gesu in Rome (the Mother Church of the Society of Jesus). St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, was protected by the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary during battle in his service as a soldier. SLUH gratefully acknowledges the generosity of Mary Anne and Anthony Sansone, Sr., who donated the land and property at the Madonna Della Strada Retreat Center in 2018. With the addition of the Madonna Della Strada Retreat Center, SLUH is just the third multi-campus Jesuit high school in the U.S.
GO FORTH Faith Formation is a primary component of the Go Forth campaign, which has expanded retreat program and community service offerings. Go Forth will relocate Campus Ministry next to a renovated Chapel at Backer Memorial, allowing for much needed facility renewal while also realizing new spaces for the spiritual and service programs that form students in the Ignatian tradition. Learn more at www.sluh.org/goforth.
14 | SLUH Magazine
Take a video tour of the Madonna Della Strada Retreat Center
ABOVE: The retreat center chapel, named for Saint Therese the Little Flower and dedicated in honor of Fr. Michael “Marco” Marchlewski, SJ '54, provides a reverent space for Mass and prayer services. (Photo by Giuseppe Vitellaro ‘15, ASC)
DISCOVERING THE
CAMPUS MINISTRY
SLUH TODAY
STUDENT SUPPORT SERVICES
RIGHT FIT THE FOLLOWING IS THE THIRD OF A THREE-PART SLUH MAGAZINE SERIES BY KEVIN CRIMMINS, DIRECTOR OF COLLEGE COUNSELING. AFTER FOCUSING ON THE RAPIDLY RISING LEVELS OF SELECTIVITY AND TUITION IN THE FIRST TWO PARTS, CRIMMINS SHARES PERSPECTIVES AND STORIES FROM HIS COLLEGE COUNSELING TEAM HERE IN THIS ISSUE.
When I worked in college admissions at Washington University in St. Louis, I had a dean who described his mission as “knowing every student by name and by story.” Those inspirational words have directed a lot of what I want to do in my profession and my life. They are also words that are personified in Jesuit schools worldwide through the focus on Cura Personalis, or care of the whole person. In SLUH College Counseling, we embrace this Ignatian concept by getting to know each student and understanding both their and their family’s goals. One of my favorite aspects of SLUH is the sheer diversity of students. Given the school’s generous policy of admitting students based on their ability to learn, and not their families’ economic circumstances, I’m constantly amazed by the students with whom I work. Each year I have students who will be the first in their family to go to college; students who have family obligations that they don’t want to leave; and students who are passionate about niche interests that can only be served from a limited set of colleges. While every SLUH graduate has an academic goal in college, it is rarely the only governing factor. Indeed, our students do very well in the college admissions process. We encourage them to consider the
SLUH College Counseling Embraces Highly Personalized Approach
possibility of applying to competitive schools and programs as an option – and every year we have scores of students admitted to these top universities and programs. However, I recognize it can be easy to pigeon-hole our students, painting broad strokes of acceptable outcomes and unfairly characterizing them as middle-class, white, multi-generational college going, protected students of privilege. As SLUH insiders, we know that is not the case. The truth is, every Jr. Bill is unique and multidimensional with their own distinct set of strengths, interests and ambitions. We work closely and carefully with each of them to continue their trajectories of achievement in the light of their unique circumstances. Recently, my team worked with a very remarkable young man. He had one of the top GPA’s in his class with an ACT score well above even the SLUH average. Teachers and parents knew he was applying to some very competitive colleges. At graduation, a colleague who was not familiar with his goals was taken aback upon learning his decision to attend Truman State University over other prestigious schools. In this young man’s case, it was an ideal choice. He had been awarded Truman’s most prestigious scholarships and was going to effectively be paid to attend college. The school covered his tuition, room fees, meal plan and even gave him a study abroad grant. Above all, it was a perfect fit for the student. He wants to be a teacher and is now pursuing his dream in one of the most reputable education programs in the nation. He will set out on a noble career path, clear-eyed about earning potential, without the burden of student loans. Another young man was a similar
standout, with an “A” average and a nearly perfect ACT score. He was admitted to several select universities, including Boston College and the University of Virginia. At graduation, the University of Wisconsin was named and I saw a few eyebrows raised as it was known he had been admitted to other seemingly more prestigious schools. What they may not have realized was that Wisconsin has the seventh best undergraduate business school in the country, as well as one of the top Russian programs. He made a fabulous choice for himself by entering elite academic programs that would continue his path of achievement. I realize anecdotes only tell so much. What I’m trying to convey is that there is a lot going on behind the scenes, sometimes for the student and his family, and sometimes with respect to particular programs inside of universities that may not be popularly known. It’s important to be sensitive with students who are going through the college admissions process, and to assume the best in them and their schools of choice. A common theme I hear from seniors as they approach graduation is one of exhaustion – exhaustion from a rigorous four years of SLUH, but more so, an exhaustion of all things related to the college search, and especially an exhaustion from outside voices challenging or questioning their carefully discerned choices. Having joined a number of retreats at SLUH, I’ve been introduced to the word “sonder” – that is, the understanding that everyone has a story and set of motivations as complicated or more complicated than my own. As we move into another graduation season and we see the hard-won achievements of our SLUH graduates, please keep that idea in mind. When you talk with them about it, please do so in a way that celebrates with them their successes and plans for the future. They’ve earned it.
GO FORTH The College Counseling Department was one of the first priorities launched from the Go Forth campaign.
Winter 2020-21 | 15
GLOBAL EDUCATION
Virtual Silver Lining
Hsinchu, Taiwan
Pamplona, Spain
Nanjing, China
St. Louis, MO, USA
BY ROB CHURA DIRECTOR OF GLOBAL EDUCATION
Santiago, Chile
Since the pandemic forced SLUH to temporarily suspend our international travel and exchange programs last spring, we have focused our attention on creating innovative and engaging virtual exchanges with our partner schools. This has yielded results far beyond any initial expectations, opening up new possibilities and opportunities for even more SLUH students and faculty to participate in a global learning experience. Whereas in the past that type of experience required a passport and a plane ticket, now it only requires a stable wifi connection. These newfound opportunities have been an exciting addition to the SLUH Global Education curriculum and are here to stay, even after we can resume our travel programs.
GO FORTH 16 | SLUH Magazine
The Go Forth campaign established a new Office of Global Education, an expansion of foreign language offerings to include Arabic Language and Culture Studies, and increased opportunities for SLUH students and faculty to incorporate international immersion experiences into the curriculum.
The process began last summer with two unique projects: • A virtual exchange involving SLUH Arabic students and their Moroccan peers working together on one of the 17 U.N. Sustainable Developmental Goals. • A series of discussions with students from our partner schools (Chile, China, Colombia, Russia, Spain and Taiwan), in which students shared their pandemic experiences.
Watch student discussions about the pandemic
SLUH TODAY
In both cases, all students came away with valuable insights on global issues, fascinating cultural perspectives, confidence in themselves and valuable leadership experience. With these successes, it was obvious that this type of virtual exchange was not just an acceptable temporary substitute, but a powerful new tool. We have built on that momentum throughout this school year. This fall and winter, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish classes have had regular language exchanges with students from our partner schools. This model has expanded beyond our language curriculum into other academic departments. Examples include: • Mixed groups of SLUH and partner school students have participated in engaging discussions of current and past events through virtual visits to the Missouri History Museum. • Numerous SLUH students of all grade levels have participated in an ongoing series of virtual student dialogues on social justice, student activism and other global issues.
• The entire freshman class engaged in a discussion with Juan Pablo Villalobos, the author of our summer reading book, The Other Side, as he joined them virtually from Barcelona. • For Christmas, we organized a Silent Night project with our band and choir program as well as those of several partner schools.
View Silent Night project
Looking ahead, plans are already in development to possibly create similar virtual experiences in Theology and various Social Studies courses. The feedback from students and teachers has been overwhelmingly positive – and these efforts have also yielded some very impressive, tangible results.
Seven Jr. Bills advanced as semifinalists for an appointment to the U.S. State Department sponsored National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y) program. This highly competitive program provides a fully-funded opportunity to study one of eight critical languages (SLUH teaches three of them, including Arabic, Chinese and Russian) for 5-7 weeks in a total immersion setting. The programs are conducted in a country where the language is spoken, and students live with host families as they take daily intensive language courses. Last summer SLUH had a record four students earn an appointment to this program, so chances look very good for another record year this summer.
INSIGNIS PODCAST GOES GLOBAL After a long break imposed by the pandemic, Insignis, the SLUH Podcast, returned with the final episode in the World Learning series. It features: • Sam Owen '17, who is in his final year at Caltech. His experience on Senior Project at San Yves Nutrition Center in Yoro, Honduras set him on a path that led to an internship at NASA and, in a surprising twist, to Iceland. • Retired teacher Charley Merriott, the founder and patron saint of the The Nutrition Center in Honduras, gives moving testimony to what his many years of service meant to him and how he saw it transform a generation of young men. • Patrick Mulligan '13, current Director of The Nutrition Center. His service to malnourished children compelled him to ask why so many were hungry in a land of plenty. That question ultimately drove him to found Nutrifund – a Nonprofit with a mission of addressing the root causes of hunger in Honduras. Insignis is available on the SLUH website, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
www.sluh.org/insignis
Listen to Insignis on iTunes
Winter 2020-21 | 17
WOMEN OF SLUH
IMAGE OF GOD’S GOODNESS “She is the reflection of eternal light, the image of God’s goodness.” - WISDOM 7:26
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SLUH TODAY
From the Blessed Virgin and Anna Backer to teachers and Mothers Club volunteers, women have played an unsung yet unprecedented role in the SLUH history of forming Men for Others. As part of the Bicentennial celebration in 2018, the school launched the Tribute to the Women of SLUH to bring the impact of countless dedicated women to life in a moving and memorable tribute. Art teacher Sean Powers '05 and students created a beautiful, unique work of art incorporating hundreds of photos of mothers, grandmothers, teachers and others. This artwork, which resides permanently in the Si Commons, gratefully recognizes the women who have toiled tirelessly, and largely anonymously, to make SLUH what it is today, and what it will be for future generations.
Below, we proudly highlight a few leaders at SLUH.
Addie Akin | Fine Arts Addie Akin is a skilled choral director and an accomplished pianist, vocalist and composer/arranger. She teaches/ directs four curricular ensembles and serves as moderator of the Acapella Club and music director for the Dauphin Players. She, with her husband Mark, composed and arranged incidental music to the Dauphin Players production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in 2017. Akin also rehearses and directs the music for all-school liturgies. “Addie brought a solid array of skills to SLUH when she took over the choral program in the fall of 2016,” says Dr. Joseph Koestner, fine arts teacher who preceded Akin as the school’s choral director. “In just a few years, she has become a major player in the SLUH experience. She brings her smile, laughter and positive spirit to everything she does.”
Listen to Akin's music from Romeo and Juliet on Apple Music
Connie Leinauer | Advancement As Parent Engagement Coordinator, Connie Leinauer works closely with the Mothers Club, Fathers Club, Alumni Mothers Club, PACES (Parent Association for Cultural Enrichment at SLUH) and AMDG–Ignatian Spirituality for Parents. She also manages and collaborates with volunteers who help with events like the annual Cashbah auction. A past parent (Dan ‘01, Patrick ‘02 and Matt ‘07) and former Mothers Club officer, Leinauer is committed to cultivating an authentic sense of community at SLUH while furthering the school’s mission of providing need-blind admission. “There's an old saying that if you want something done right, you should do it yourself. In our office, if you want something done right, you ask Connie,” says John Penilla ‘99, Director of Alumni and Parent Giving. “No challenge is too big for Connie and she's always there to lend a hand to get the job done. SLUH is a better place because of Connie's many years of selfless work.”
Kate Toussaint | Foreign Language A passionate and energetic Spanish teacher, Toussaint serves as Foreign Language Department Chair. In this role, she played a key role in two recent hires: Eyad Oqlat (Arabic) and Yves Conseant (French). A past STUCO moderator, Toussaint is also active in student life. She is the Anti-Racist Coalition club moderator and leads Voices of SLUH, an important initiative supporting the school’s efforts in diversity, equity and inclusion. “Kate brings many gifts to her work at SLUH, including intelligence, patience, empathy, curiosity and creativity,” says Frank Kovarik, English Department Chair and Director of Equity and Inclusion. “Kate has a sign on her classroom door that inspires many of us. It says, ‘Be kind, for everyone you know is fighting a hard battle.’ This sign expresses well the humanity and compassion that imbues Kate's work as teacher, department chair and contributor to SLUH's equity and inclusion efforts.”
Winter 2020-21 | 19
STUDENT MEDIA
New Publication Format Showcases Student Creativity
Sisyphus REIGNITES The Poemtree BY PATRICK TYRRELL ‘22
Roots grow from a solid foundation, the trunk, a thousand books yet written, branches like ladders to the sky, leaves of twisting and whirling verse, the fruit plump and sweet nourished by waters of knowledge past. I’ve built this tree and only by ignorance is it felled.
COVID-19 squelched the publication of the Spring 2020 issue of Sisyphus, the SLUH Magazine of Literature and the Arts. Two teachers sought to reignite it. In order to build interest in the magazine and provide a venue for students' creative expression during hybrid learning, moderators Frank Kovarik '94 and Rich Moran '66 decided to publish three mini-issues online throughout the first semester, in early October, on Halloween and on the day before Thanksgiving. To inspire SLUH writers and artists, the staff presented a theme for each issue—"change," "fear" and "communion," in that order—and invited submissions that somehow connected with these words. Kovarik was pleased with the results, not least because they provided an opportunity for the student editors to get together (albeit through Zoom and email) at a time when collaboration is more complicated to arrange. “It's actually gotten us to come together as a staff earlier in the year than we normally do, which has been good,” Kovarik told the Prep News. “It's also easier for people to access the publications when they're just emailed out than it would be to buy a copy of the magazine and read it in person. So posting the issues online might also increase readership.” The following student work was published in the Fall of 2020. Visit www.sluh.org/sisyphus to view past issues.
PHOTO IN FOREST PARK BY OWEN RITTENHOUSE '22 WATERCOLOR BY NATHAN RICH '22 20 | SLUH Magazine
SLUH TODAY
CHAMELEON BY NATHAN RICH '22
STAYING POWER BY NOAH APPRILL-SOKOL ‘21
The rumble of lawnmowers drifted through the open dining room window, interrupting the stillness of the summer morning. Sparrows chirped their summer song, laughter rose from the back alley. Typical sounds of a Saturday morning in my Saint Louis neighborhood, when time meanders slowly without urgency. But this particular morning, and others in the weeks to come, would take on a special purpose for me and my grandfather. We worked diligently together on a scaleddown model of a ship that last sailed in 1607. I was 10, my grandfather was 71, and the ship, or at least the historical record of it, was over 400 years old. The vessel, called The Virginia, had captured my imagination when I visited the historical society in Bath, Maine, a month earlier on a family vacation. My grandfather and I sat at the dining room table: Facing a drafting notebook, a pencil, and a calculator. A glossy paperback book—a souvenir
from the historical society—lay open on the table. My grandfather’s leathery scarred hands clutched mine, guiding the pencil across the graph paper. The lines on the paper detailed our plan, based on calculations I was just barely old enough to comprehend. “This is how I used to build models when I was a kid,” my grandfather reminisced, smiling at the memory. “Really?” I asked. It was difficult to conjure an image of my grandfather as a youth. I always imagined him grown-up and gray. “My friends and I loved planes,” said my grandfather. “We would go to the town library, find pictures of planes in books, and then go home to try to recreate them from balsa wood and glue. Now, I am doing the same with . . .” Ding-dong! Ding-dong! “...you,” my grandfather mused as the old clock chimed, heralding his departure. He rose slowly from the chair, searched his pocket for the floppy ballcap to protect his head from the sun, and stepped towards the backdoor. “‘Til another day,” he called while exiting.
“‘Til another day,” I repeated. The windowpane rattled when he shut the door. My grandfather and I have built projects together for as long as I can remember. They are as numerous as my collections of Legos, Tinkertoys, and Lincoln Logs. My grandfather’s engineering talents, coupled with my growing sense of wonder, have made us a formidable team, even if my attention sometimes wanders. Yet the ship project was different. Building a model—like the volunteers from the community in Maine who created the ship with original tools—had taken hold in my mind. I couldn’t fully explain: this project had staying power. It had real history. I sat on a stool at the workbench, hunched over the project. We had moved to the basement several weeks earlier. Tools were scattered everywhere. A wood-burner was clutched in my shaking hands as I engraved the phrase Noah’s Virginia, 1607-2014 into the stand that held the model. My grandfather looked over my shoulder, proudly smiling, knowing all the work, time, and growth that had occurred over the weeks. The workbench was paint-stained and had grooves where my carving tools had gone astray. My fingers now had a few scars too. “It’s finally complete,” I exclaimed, admiring the ship, decked out with riggings and cloth sails. “Nothing is really complete,” my grandfather retorted. Then, sounding philosophical he admired the letters of my name in the stand, and said, “We are all works-in-progress, ships that sail through history.” He stopped looking at the lines of my name and turned to examine the lines on his hands. The Virginia now sits next to my desk in the upstairs study, a memento of my grandfather and an important ingredient of who I have become. My grandfather taught me that we are all projects in time. The past never stays in the past; it lives through us in the present. That’s what gives history its staying power.
Winter 2020-21 | 21
STUDENT MEDIA
Persistence Marks Prep News 85 BY EDITORS OF PREP NEWS 85
The story of Prep News has always been one of persistence – of putting your head down in tough situations and sticking it out until the end. Even before a national pandemic forced us indoors and kept us from friends and loved ones, Prep News kids were known for their ability to tough things out when put in a corner. Be it cramming in a last-minute article, going the extra mile to get a worthwhile interview, or staying up until one in the morning to finish the paper for the Friday deadline, Prep News has taken advantage of our resources and persevered to deliver to the community. At the onset of the pandemic, we kept that same mentality. Despite a rocky ending to PN 84, as the 2020-21 school year began, the editorial team got to work setting a plan in place along with club moderator Mr. Steve Missey. Like a weathered boat, tossed about by a vicious storm, we checked for damages, took note of what we had at our disposal and set course for new land (PN 85, in this instance). Throughout our journey this year, we have encountered our fair share of new challenges, and our progress felt very much like that of a traditional hero’s story. When we were forced online for the week, we pulled together in an impromptu group Zoom to make edits, layout the paper and provide an energetic environment in a relatively lackluster situation. When we were down to only two editors following family tragedies and local COVID-19 cases, instead of skipping the week’s edition, we held onto the reins and used our creative problem-solving skills to make the Prep News more efficient and easier to manage. Time and time again, we have persisted, and we are not stopping soon.
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Prep News 85
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From the Vault
SLUH TODAY
New Media Club Fuels Student Creativity BY ANTHONY ADEM ‘21 AND MAX CHEHVAL ‘21 CO-FOUNDERS OF SLUH STUDENT MEDIA
SLUH Student Media started in the fall as a digital media group for students to learn and create their own media. We worked closely with the administration to secure funding to ensure our club is viable and sustainable for the SLUH community. In addition, Mr. Ryan Doyle, Digital Media Specialist, was hired last summer to bring a new light to the school’s digital footprint and to serve as our club mentor. We gauged a lot of student interest from all class years when we launched our club. Our first activity included teaching our new recruits how to work video cameras so they could become more independent and creative in their work. We also taught everyone how to fly and shoot video on a drone to add new dimension and depth to our content. Soon we began sending club members to athletic games to collect footage for a fall sports hype video, our first video we produced as a student group. We found many different types of angles and shots to create this video, meshing the creativity and ideas of several different students into one video to illustrate the importance of collaboration. After finishing the hype video, we took our production to the next level and introduced larger projects to the club. Two of these projects include: • One of our core members, Zach Brugnara ‘22, wrote a script for a short
View the Spirit Week video by SLUH Student Media film called 1-800-BREAKFAST that we began filming this semester. The film follows a student who unknowingly finds himself in the middle of a social experiment. When complete, it will be about 15-20 minutes in length. • Our other big project is a mini documentary about the SLUH 1970 State Champion football team, as this school year marks the 50th anniversary of that team’s championship. We’re working on this project in cooperation with Carter Fortman ‘21 and Luke Altier ‘21 of the Prep News – the first joint venture with our two clubs. Everything we’ve done with SLUH Student Media has aimed to preserve the media culture at the school after we graduate. Being able to collaborate with and share our creative insights with the younger students – both in our conversations and in the media we create – has been a vital and enjoyable aspect of this club. The most important thing we can do to help students grow to find their own interests is to fuel their creativity, and that is exactly what SLUH Student Media seeks to do.
Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? Gadfly returned last fall after a two-year hiatus, entertaining the SLUH community with a series of fun, humorous and even heartwarming videos. The student club created one of their videos as an homage to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off during the retro-themed Spirit Week.
Watch the video by Gadfly
Winter 2020-21 | 23
FEATURE
INNOVATOR 24 | SLUH Magazine
Today, the table leaves, which adorn the display case at the Innovation Lab, offer a glimpse into the creative mind and incredible depth of a man who is a master craftsman, prolific musician and selfless innovator. BY BEN DUMONT '92
When he was growing up, Jeff Schaefer made his mom a deal. If she would keep their kitchen table clear of stacks of paper, he would build new table leaves with wood that matched the original 100-yearold solid oak table. His parents had purchased the table at an antique shop because it was all they could afford, and the leaves it came with were generic. “My mom was always a collector of paper because she thought she may lose her memory,” says Schaefer, Director of the James Guth Costigan ‘62 Innovation Lab. “I wanted to do something special for her.” He spent weeks in their basement, secretly crafting table leaves that would bring the old oak antique back to life with consistency and
CURIOUS MINDSET Schaefer’s proclivity to build and create began with an innate curiosity for how things tick. He grew up in a neighborhood with acres of trees and no other kids. “I was young and bored, and we had a lot of tools, so I started woodworking on my own, then moved to metalworking and small engine repair.” His father enjoyed watching home renovation shows before they were in vogue. “I learned from that and started fixing things around the house to make life easier for my family,” he says. Schaefer adds that MacGyver also caught his imagination because of his “drive to create and learn and improvise” with limited resources. “I grew up as a tinkerer,” Schaefer says. “What really interested me was taking things apart and hitting them to see what they sounded like. I wanted to know why things sound certain ways, and how material properties and thickness and air depth affect the end result.” Schaefer became an avid percussionist and studied music in college before beginning his career teaching percussion in the Wentzville School District. As part
FOR OTHERS
“Doing stuff for other people is more the motivation and drive for me, rather than that one crowning project or thing I make.” - JEFF SCHAEFER
character. Unfortunately, his mom developed Alzheimer’s before he could finish the project – yet the table leaves endure as an “homage to that time” because of what they represent and the story they tell.
GO FORTH Go Forth funded the establishment of the James Guth Costigan '62 Innovation Lab and the staff to manage it. Jeff Schaefer serves as the Director of the Innovation Lab.
Winter 2020-21 | 25
of his job, he fixed broken music equipment. This simple yet skilled task inspired him to start his own side business acquiring derelict equipment, fixing it and selling it to schools that needed it. “It was something I could do to help others,” Schaefer says. He went on to pursue theater management in local schools, in addition to serving as a professional stagehand at UMSL’s Touhill Performing Arts Center. These experiences allowed him to cultivate his craft as a carpenter, machinist and stage craft builder. In his spare time, Schaefer made wooden drum sets from scratch. “I figured out what suits my sound, and it became my signature style for building.” His building talent caught the attention of Jazz St. Louis. “I still get compliments from the drums I made for Jazz St. Louis six years ago,” he says. “It’s neat seeing an array of national and international artists, and many big names that have played my drums and been happy with them. For me, what stands out most is
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not necessarily building the drums, but the response I get after I build them.” In addition to building custom percussion instruments and occasionally fixing broken equipment in his home shop, Schaefer enjoys working on his three classic cars: A 1968 Corvette; a 1949 Plymouth (all original); and a 1989 Mazda RX7, a birthday surprise for his wife. “The cars are a lot of fun,” he says, adding that his wife cried when he gave her the Mazda. “Doing stuff for other people is more the motivation and drive for me, rather than that one crowning project or thing I make.”
MAXIMIZING POTENTIAL When Schaefer arrived at SLUH in July 2019, he was tasked with establishing the school’s new Innovation Lab, a 5,200 square-foot space that features a fabrication workshop, classroom, general workshop, STEM competition space, and group meeting and planning spaces. He developed safety protocols and helped to finalize the space design and layout for optimal functionality.
Brendan Carr ‘21 illustrates how students with little to no woodworking experience can learn the safety protocols and skills to become autonomous in their project work in the Innovation Lab. With the support and mentorship of Jeff Schaefer, Carr began building a marimba last school year and hopes to complete it this spring.
“We wanted to create something that was safe and cohesive,” says Schaefer. “At the same time, we wanted to create tiered student involvement, so students can progress in skill operation and machine technology levels, and do it in a way we can support them and chart their paths.” The Innovation Lab equipment – including 13 3D printers, a CNC router, fully equipped woodshop, two laser cutters and a hybrid machine (3D printer and CNC milling machine) – provides seemingly unlimited opportunity for creativity. “I tell students, if they can dream it, we can make it,” says Schaefer. “Though it may not be to the same scale or of the same material, we can figure out
how to create the concept.” Brendan Carr ‘21, who had no woodworking experience, approached Schaefer about an ambitious project last school year. He wanted to create a marimba, a behemoth percussion instrument consisting of a set of precisely cut wooden bars, with resonators or pipes suspended beneath for sound amplification. Though the pandemic slowed his progress, he hopes to finish it this spring. “Mr. Schaefer is great to work with, mostly because we share many of the same interests,” says Carr. “I've learned a lot about woodworking from him, but I've also learned about workflow and how to balance massive projects with everything else in life.” In addition to working with students on individual projects, Schaefer, a colorful and effective communicator, teaches the Woodworking course and collaborates with faculty on class projects. Last year he teamed up with Jennifer Ice’s Latin class to create custom signet rings on 3D printers. “The students were excited to see how it went from paper design concept to 3D reality,” says Schaefer, who used the experience to discuss perception-based problem solving. “I encouraged them to look at their rings and ask what else they could be, aside from circles. How you look at something can change how you perceive it. It’s a great exercise for idea generation and allows you to look at problems from another angle.” Other unique projects in which Schaefer and the Innovation Lab have contributed include the
creation of a prosthetic hand and an elliptical pool table, as well as production of personal protective equipment for local healthcare organizations. “You can come to Jeff with an idea, and he can tell you not only how to make that idea a reality, he already has ideas on what pieces will be the most difficult to accomplish and a list of questions to consider,” says Robyn Wellen, science teacher and co-moderator of the STEM/ Robotics Club. “He is very practical and knows the tools in the shop so well. As soon as a new tool enters the shop, he is already researching how to make it better. “Jeff has so many ideas for the future of the space and ways that students can use it to express themselves in a safe manner. The space will only grow with him at the helm.” Moving forward, Schaefer continues to explore ways the Innovation Lab can be a catalyst for project-based learning in the curriculum as well as interdepartmental collaboration. All the while, he maximizes the potential of this space with his expertise, ingenuity and sixth MacGyver sense -- and when you see him there, he looks delightfully content, like he’s at home. “The stuff I do here is stuff I grew up doing.”
CREATIVITY OVER CAPITAL: Jeff Schaefer produced new classroom and campus signage in the Innovation Lab to enhance visibility and reinforce the school's brand. His expertise and ingenuity also allow SLUH to produce one-of-akind items, like the Scholarship Golf Classic trophy, in support of the school’s mission.
View a video interview with Jeff Schaefer
Winter 2020-21 | 27
21Artistry Hiblovic '21 Inspires Regional Creative Collective BY CARTER FORTMAN ‘21 PREP NEWS EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
In an instant, St. Louis U. High went from a bustling school filled with anticipation for Spring Break 2020 to, like the rest of the U.S., shutdown. Senior Philip Hiblovic, like others, found himself with much time on his hands. Art became an escape for him. With his school workload reduced and many of his other activities slowed, Hiblovic began writing and drawing in the safety of his own home.
He soon realized that even art’s escape left him yearning for more human connection. “Being an artist myself and in the local scene in general, I’ve made a lot of friends over the years who are also artists – all over the St. Louis area,” Hiblovic reflects. “At the beginning of lockdown, I saw them making more art than ever before with all the extra time they had.” Wanting to take advantage of the excess art and the community he knew they would bring, he organized 21Artistry, a collective of local teenagers (most from the Class of 2021) committed to showcasing the top artists of the St. Louis community. “In May, I assembled the group to provide opportunities for support, network and collaboration for all these creatives I loved,” Hiblovic says. He began with his friend, Carter Fortman ’21, who agreed to join the group as a poet and musician. Other early members of 21Artistry from SLUH joined like musician Alex Unseth ’21. He also recruited from Nerinx Hall, St. Joseph’s Academy, De Smet, MICDS, John Burroughs and Priory. “The process of creating it was difficult at first since it was such an unprecedented idea,” says Hiblovic. “I told my friend Carter about the idea, and we started reaching out to our friends, and they started reaching out to theirs. We created a group chat and started posting our work on Instagram, and it grew quickly from there.” In just the first month, the account had surpassed 700 followers, mostly from friends of the group’s members. Posts had been reposted on larger pages including a custom pair of shoes that was featured on the brand Odd Future. This gained them many followers and established them as a significant social media player for students throughout the area.
“It’s not just about us (the members) anymore; it’s about our community,” says Hiblovic. “I would say it’s felt like a movement more than anything. It’s made so many kids care about art who never took the time to appreciate it before.” After the first month, Hiblovic learned more about how the Instagram algorithm worked and took advantage of his newfound knowledge to grow the page beyond just their friends. It surpassed 1,000 followers after the first two months and continued to climb. The group added new members as the collective grew. For example, they brought Jack Janson ’24 onboard as a musician and photographer. They also added the local band, the Scamps, whose drummer is Robby @scampsofficial Brooks ’21, just days before they released their debut single, Beach Yu, on Spotify. “Coming to SLUH during a pandemic, it was hard to meet people,” says Janson. “But I found that 21Artistry gave me the community I was looking for and allowed me to grow as an artist, musician and photographer.” The group found an opportunity to combine their talents into a sector of the collective named “21Artistry Studios” that offered full service @keatondjones in photoshoots @zacfarmeart's studio that included hair, makeup, and custom styling. “It’s brought people together in ways I never thought possible,” says Hiblovic. “For example, when the Scamps told me they were dropping their merch, I worked with Jack to design it, Ava (Photographer, MICDS ’21) to shoot it and a bunch of our friends to model it. Opportunities for collaboration to that extent didn’t exist before this group.”
“Providing styling and photography services to our customers has been really rewarding,” says Janson. “I long for ways to use my art to benefit others, and 21Artistry is a perfect outlet for that.” Another favorite memory for Hiblovic happened with Alex Lepper ’21. “One of my favorites was definitely our photoshoot with Lepper,” says Hiblovic. “Jack Janson shot the photos in Tower Grove Park alongside our friend Ava, Alex Unseth ‘21, and Jacob Sprock ‘21. I @alex_lepper, loved Alex’s shoot photography by @jackjanson88 so much because these were his senior photos, and we created a lifelong memory around them that most people don’t get to have. It was super special to all of us.” The account is well over 2,100 followers and counting. However, Hiblovic has never strayed from his original purpose. “It has never really been about the numbers for us, but I am glad that we can provide high-quality art to all of those who want it,” says Hiblovic. For Janson, that mission is precisely why he loves the group. “The supportive community of 21Artistry is unparalleled,” says Janson. “I’m so happy I met everyone in the group and look forward to our upcoming work.” While the pandemic has reduced the opportunities for the group, they have big plans ahead. “Our plan once COVID-19 restrictions loosen is to have a concert with all the musical members of the group,” says Hiblovic. “Including Robert Brooks with the Scamps, Jude Fucetola ’22, Jack Janson and a lot more.” Jr. Bills who are members of 21Artistry include: Robert Brooks '21, Carter Fortman '21, Jude Fucateola '22, Philip Hiblovic '21, Jack Janson '24, Courtney Lucas '24 and Alex Unseth '21.
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Final Cut Crotzer '02 Brings Motion Pictures to Life with Passion for Editing BY RYAN DOYLE
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The year is 1992. Doc Crotzer is nine years old, and his aunt hands him a Panasonic camcorder to document a family party. This might have been ordinary for plenty of ‘90s kids, but for Crotzer, the experience was anything but ordinary. As he filmed his family’s escapades, his eyes were opened to the world of cinematic storytelling. He likely didn’t realize it then, but this first outing behind the camera was a catalyst that would eventually lead Crotzer to the professional film industry.
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Today, Doc Crotzer is best known as an editor for film and television. Highlights from his resume include Glee and Sons of Anarchy. But Crotzer didn’t attain such success overnight. His journey began at that fateful party in 1992 and continues to this day. At age 11, Crotzer discovered the creative potential of editing when he learned that he could dub films by connecting two VHS players. He proceeded to edit a supercut of all three Back to the Future movies. His journey continued in middle school where Crotzer and his friends started making short movies for fun. He would even strike deals with teachers to produce films in lieu of traditional assignments. Although his passion was evident from an early age, it wasn’t until Crotzer became a Jr. Bill that he realized his knack for filmmaking could be anything more than a hobby. “I hadn’t connected the dots that I could do it for a living until I took Mark Cummings’ Introduction to Film class,” Crotzer says. “He really pulled back the curtain on the film industry.” Cummings demystified the film industry and helped Crotzer realize that it could in fact be a viable career path. Cummings also introduced a critical appreciation for the art, analyzing films in a manner akin to an English teacher interpreting literature.
“Mark Cummings was hugely influential on me,” Crotzer says. “My only complaint about his classes was there weren’t enough to take one every semester.” After graduating SLUH in 2002, Crotzer enrolled at the University of Missouri. At the time, Mizzou didn’t offer a film degree, but that didn’t stop Crotzer. As a broadcast journalism student, he was granted access to video production equipment. He took full advantage of those resources as he continued to direct shorts and documentaries outside the classroom. Crotzer moved to Los Angeles after completing his undergrad. He was hired as a producer and editor making behind-the-scenes documentaries on feature films. Editing became his path to success in the film and television industries, and he has since edited major television series and feature films. His most recent project, Chaos Walking, will be released in March. The film is directed by Doug Liman, stars Tom Holland and Daisey Ridley, and is edited by Crotzer. But Doc’s credentials are not limited to editor. He has also worn the hats of producer, writer and director. Regardless of the role he takes on, Crotzer ultimately views himself as a storyteller, and his vast experience as an editor has helped him grow in that respect. “Editing helped me develop an intimate awareness of all the pieces you need to tell a story,” Doc said, which he credits as a key factor that now informs his direction when he’s at the helm of a project. All photos on set of Good Behavior in Wilmington, NC
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ETERNAL LIFE
RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW How SLUH’s First Asian Student Found the Secret to Enjoying Life BY JUSTIN SEATON ‘13
Jerry Shen ‘58 first fled his family home in Shanghai in 1945, when he was five years old, driven out by the attempted Japanese occupation of the city during the second Sino-Japanese War. He and his family returned later that year, only to be permanently driven out four years later by the Chinese Communist Revolution. At age nine, Jerry Shen had been twice displaced and forced to adapt to a new culture in a foreign place – St. Louis, Missouri.
From left: Jerry ‘58, Francis ‘96 and JP ‘98 Shen at the London 2012 Olympics cheering on the women's soccer team.
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U. HIGHLIGHTS
Left: The Shen's passport from China. Below: A young Jerry Shen '58
Now 81, with a gentle smile etched into his face and many years removed from the hardships that preceded his enrollment as St. Louis U. High’s first Asian student, Jerry has one piece of advice for young people: “Enjoy life,” he says with a laugh. Jerry was born to Jerome Shen and Theresa Yao in 1939 on the Shen family’s 24-acre Shanghai estate. The Shens had made their fortune as power brokers between foreign industrial leaders and the Chinese government. As a member of Shanghai’s elite, Jerome got the best education money could buy – Bachelor’s and M.D. degrees from St. John’s University, a prestigious Catholic school in Shanghai. At his mother’s behest, Jerome planned to move to St. Louis to complete his medical residency at Saint Louis University, which was closely affiliated with St. John’s, in 1947. However, in 1945, the impending Japanese occupation of Shanghai forced Jerome to take his wife and two young children on a 3-month journey
by horse and cart 1000 miles west to the refuge of Chongqing. Later that year, the Japanese forces retreated, and Jerome was able to safely return his wife and children to the family estate in Shanghai while he finished his medical education in America. As Jerome practiced and studied in the States, he watched the Second Chinese Civil War unfold across the sea, anxious for the family he had left behind. In the spring of 1949, Jerome gathered from American news reports that the Communist Party of China had nearly seized control. He acted fast. Following a harrowing series of close calls and sly negotiations – all documented in Francis Shen’s ‘96 biography of his grandfather – Jerome, Theresa, 9-year-old Jerry, and his younger sister Elizabeth managed their way onto the last ship out of Shanghai, the President Wilson, in May of 1949—one week after the successful communist takeover – and successfully made it to St. Louis – the only other
home Jerome had ever known. The Asian immigrant community in St. Louis at the time was small and fractured, meaning the Shen family had little choice but to break from the culture they had left behind. “We came here with the intention of being American, not Chinese,” says Jerry in a recent interview with SLUH Media. “We came here to escape an untenable situation. The American story is that people can come here for a better system of government. Immigrants bring their spirit. If they have the courage to leave their home, they bring a spirit of freedom; a spirit that they don’t want to be dominated; a spirit that opposes coups and systems of oppression; a spirit that all people are created equal.” Jerry’s mother and father chose to speak only English in their St. Louis Hills home. They became parishioners at St. Raphael’s church and sent their children to St. Joan of Arc grade school. By his freshman year at St. Louis U. High in 1954, Jerry Shen was the
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Left: Jerry Shen '58 in a chemistry lab at Saint Louis University, circa 1960. Right: Jerry Shen as a student at SLUH in the pool hall.
quintessential South City boy, with new roots being nourished by the city’s massive Catholic network and no concept that his enrollment would become a highlight in the deep archives of SLUH. Jerry was a very introverted student. His English, which he’d mostly learned from American cartoons in China, was solid when he entered SLUH, but his identity as an Asian-American student – by his estimation, one of the only Asian-American students in the entire city at the time – was shaky. “I never really sensed overt discrimination, but I did sense being strange and people not knowing how to relate to me, not having confidence that I did really belong,” says Jerry. “In St. Louis, being Chinese was a curiosity. It was hard for me to make friends.” Though he looked and felt different than most of his peers, though his background was exceptional and unique, and though he didn’t consider himself much of an orator, Jerry quickly found a niche in SLUH’s Bellarmine speech and debate club. “[Rev.] Tom Curry with the speech
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club got me outside of myself for a while. Not only did I learn how to speak; I learned how to analyze and to think. I was on the debate team and the extemporaneous speaking team. In fact, nowadays when I’m planning to write a speech or a paper, I still pace up and down the hall, which is a habit I picked up from Tom... I don’t know why I joined, but I’m glad I did. Otherwise, I would’ve been just a nerd,” says Jerry with his trademark, joyful laugh. From SLUH, Jerry went to Saint Louis University for his undergraduate degree, then Harvard for post-graduate studies in Chemistry. After two years, however, he "flunked out" of Harvard, which he admitted with another laugh. Jerry is as proud of his missteps as his successes, because he so ardently believes in the providence of God. Everything that happened to Jerry Shen, happened for a reason. “God has been with me all the time, and I’m just learning where his glory is, where his blessings are. And I’ll keep learning. I spent two years at Harvard, and I was asked not to come
back, and actually that was a blessing,” says Jerry, “because if I had finished at Harvard I would have gotten a job in the Northeast, and I would’ve never come back here and met Bridget. I would’ve never had the life I have now.” Jerry ended up completing his post-graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, then returned to St. Louis in 1973. Here he met his wife Bridget while he was working at Ralston-Purina. They met through a Christian Life Community group for SLU graduates, called “John: 23.” When they met, Bridget was taking spiritual direction from an old friend, Rev. Tom Curry, SJ, who would eventually preside over their wedding in 1976. Nearly 50 years later, Bridget and Jerry have published two books on marriage and the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. They have counseled many St. Louis couples on faith and marriage, and been positive examples for many others, including their sons Francis and John Paul (JP). Francis ‘96 and JP ‘98 Shen both graduated at the top of their respective
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Jerry Shen ‘58 standing in front of six of his patents in his office at SIU-Edwardsville. Before teaching chemistry at SIUE, Jerry was Director of Research Protein Technologies International at DuPont, where he invented new techniques for improving the use of soy protein as a supplement and meat replacement.
classes at SLUH. Francis was a track star. JP was a starting defensive end. Each of them went on to thrive at prestigious institutions and become leaders in their professional fields. (You can read about their many impressive accomplishments at www.sluh.org/trailblazers.) But when they think back on their childhood, neither of the Shen boys remember being pressured to succeed. Instead, they remember being raised in faith and humility. They remember being given a credit card so they could treat their classmates to meals. They remember their dad leaving work early every afternoon and driving to SLUH in his 20-year-old Buick Skylark to watch their football and track practices. “He was there so often I remember one of my teammates asking, ‘Does your dad have a job?’” says Francis. In fact, while his boys were at SLUH, Jerry was working full-time as a research director at Ralston-Purina, where he worked for 28 years. He then taught chemistry at SIUE for 10 years, led marriage counseling with his wife and eventually rekindled a serious interest in the game of bridge. Jerry has always been busy, always with the things that he finds compelling
– his travels, his wife, his boys, his faith – and much like his father before him, he has gone to great lengths to provide his loved ones with a good life. He relishes in their joy, and you can hear it in his laugh.
View a SLUH Archive video interview with Jerry Shen ‘58
“I’m not one of those dads that insists his sons do super well and forces them to do certain things. I want them to do what they want to do, and I want to support them as they do it, not because they need my pressure or support, but because I enjoy doing things with my sons… That is my best advice for young people. Enjoy life. That was something I couldn’t see while I was young, but now I can say about my life: I’ve enjoyed it. I never really worried about anything. The thing about eternal life is that you are experiencing some of it right here, right now.”
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FANTASTICAL CREATIONS
Large scale installation at T-REX
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What was the most important thing you learned at SLUH? Men for Others. What inspired you to start Third Degree Glass Factory? TDGF is a great example of the complementary relationship that I still have with my co-founder, Jim McKelvey. There's a very frank and simple explanation that Jim and I share when asked this question: Jim didn't have any time and I didn't have any money, while Jim had money and I had time. We both wanted a place to make glass. So I built it, and he paid for it.
Doug Auer '95 assembling a custom residential installation
Co-Founder of Third Degree Glass Factory Realizes Unique Vision, Continues to Build, Create In 1996, Doug Auer '95 began blowing glass as a student at the University of Kansas. The next year he transferred to SIU-Carbondale to study glassblowing while pursuing a degree in Industrial Design. He was hired by Washington University in St. Louis to teach glass blowing in 2000. In the fall of 2001, he teamed with Jim McKelvey (co-founder of Square, Inc.) to co-found and establish Third Degree Glass Factory (TDGF). He soon transitioned out of his teaching position to build the studio and focus on TDGF’s day-to-day operations. TDGF creates amazing experiences with glass and offers classes, hosts events, creates custom commissions and sells a multitude of unique and stunning work. In the following Q&A, Auer shares insights and perspectives from his remarkable journey.
What do you love most about your work? Since 2002, I've had the benefit of a ceaseless flow of problems to solve. More often than not, I love solving these problems. What has been your greatest professional challenge, and how did you overcome it? I spend more of my time managing interpersonal relationships than anything else. I joke frequently about how simple things would be if I was just working with robots, or the good 'ol days when there were only three employees versus the forty now spread over the three companies I oversee. As for overcoming this challenge, I won't. I assume it too will be a constantly flowing stream. I plan to just keep paddling. Can you describe a favorite piece of glass or artwork you created? Ironically, in light of my last response, my favorite glass works that have come out of TDGF are typically large installations that involve collaboration with other artists on our team. But even simple projects are gratifying, like repairing a broken lampshade for a customer who was convinced that our ability to do so had saved his marriage. People can be a challenge, but the value of a good team far outweighs the perceived conflict and difficulty that can occur when working with others. What advice can you share for students who wish to become entrepreneurs? It sounds cliche, but I'd say don't be afraid to dream, stay curious, find your passion and do what you
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ALUMNI love. For me, the second part of the equation is diligence. People often tell me I am hardworking – there's truth in that, but at the same time I rarely feel like I'm working because I love what I do. Who was your biggest mentor, and how did he/she impact you? It’s tough to pick just one, but I'd have to say John Mueller. Mr. Mueller encouraged me to pursue my passion for art during my time at SLUH. His passion was so evident, and his sense of humor, coupled with his ability to engage students of all interest and skill levels, has stuck with me. I wouldn't be where I am today without my time with him at SLUH. What are your hobbies or passions outside of work? I love historic renovation. It's now part of my work. I accepted an opportunity, presented to me by Jim McKelvey, to take on a leadership role in the redevelopment of a large section of Delmar surrounding TDGF along with a project to renovate several historic homes in the 5100 block of Enright, just North of TDGF and our relatively new business MADE, a makerspace.
“Be responsible. Create the life of your dreams.” - Doug Auer '95
Who is your favorite artist of all time, and why? M.C. Escher. The use of math, geometry and illusion within his work is inspirational. And that makes sense given that I see glass blowing as the perfect combination of physics meets art. It's a dynamic, fast-paced medium. The relatively short time frame of less than 30 minutes for a typical piece provides the instant gratification that is the perfect answer to my impatience! If you could create a billboard for the world to see, what would it say? Be responsible. Create the life of your dreams. To explore Third Degree Glass Factory, visit www.thirddegreeglassfactory.com
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Master Storyteller Values Creative Process, Catch-22 and Glenn Brummer Hollywood screenwriter Mark Gunn '89 is known for his work on Brightburn (2019), Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012), Bring It On Again (2004) and 2gether (2000). After SLUH, he attended College of the Holy Cross and USC, and was elected to the Writers Guild of America West Board of Directors in 2006. He is the cousin of screenwriter/director James Gunn '84, actor and political writer Matt Gunn '90, former Senior Vice President of Artisan Entertainment Patrick Gunn '86, actor Sean Gunn '92 and writer Brian Gunn '88. In the following Q&A, Gunn talks about the creative process, his experience as a screenwriter and much more. Can you describe your process as a writer? I write with my cousin Brian Gunn ‘88. We have an office in Pasadena and get together weekdays from around 10 until 5 and talk. Some days we’re figuring out a story, some days we’re cracking a tough scene, some days we’re writing dialogue. But we like to be in the same room, talking it through. Right now, due to Covid, we’re each in our home offices and work over the phone. We don’t Zoom because we can’t stand looking at each other for that long. You and Brian wrote and executive produced the recent horror movie Brightburn. Your cousin James Gunn ‘84 produced it. How did that movie come about? Brian came into the office one day and asked what kind of person would find a baby in a meteor in their yard and decide to raise it as their own. Ma and Pa Kent got lucky – the kid turned out to be Superman! But what if the super kid wasn’t wired that way? What if he was a nightmare? Felt like the start of a horror movie to us. We wrote the script then mentioned it to James, who loved the idea. So we all went off together and made this crazy evil kid horror movie. We had a lot of fun.
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“[Mr. Bill George's English class] showed me what storytelling could do, how it could change the way you see the world around you.” - Mark Gunn '89 What screenplay or film inspired you most? What about it spoke to you and how has it influenced your writing style? So many. I’ll skip the usual suspects and say Escape from New York. My brothers and I watched it about 500 times when we were kids. I think what drew me to it was the mixture of humor and action and just the outrageousness of the concept. And the plot has all kinds of fun turns – something all movies should aspire to. Almost every scene is a blast. Not many movies pull that off. That said, I also love the French New Wave and four-hour documentaries about libraries, so who knows. How did you break into the industry? After college, I moved to L.A. to go to USC Film School. I directed a short film there that led to a fantastic job making shows at MTV. But I wanted to make movies. So Brian and I pitched MTV a movie idea that was basically Spinal Tap about boy bands. They hired us to write it, then they made it, and it even became a TV series that we were in charge of. That got us agents and other jobs and we were off to the races. What is the biggest challenge you face as a creative? How do you overcome it? Rejection. External and internal. We’ve written a bunch of scripts that died somewhere along the line – because a movie star changed his mind, or a studio changed its focus, or because our script just wasn’t special enough. It’s heartbreaking every time. And I’ve had lots of ideas that I thought were first rate but didn’t survive contact with execution – plots, scenes, characters. Often they seem great at first then you realize they just don’t work and you have to kill them. That hurts. How did SLUH play a role in fostering your creativity? Was there a particular teacher or class that inspired you to think differently? My junior year at SLUH, I took an English class with Mr. Bill George that has stayed with me. He taught us Catch-22 and Grapes of Wrath, which I loved, but the class culminated in Macbeth. It
blew me away. It was the first time I felt like I understood not just Shakespeare, but literature. It showed me what storytelling could do, how it could change the way you see the world around you. Has your St. Louis or SLUH background found its way consciously or unconsciously into any of your screenplays? What I remember most about SLUH is the swaggering, sarcastic, brainy sense of humor. When I write a joke somewhere deep inside me I’m still trying to make my classmates laugh. I also did a lot of theater at SLUH, both stage crew and acting. The swashbuckling fun of putting on a show infected me. As for St. Louis, Brian and I get a kick out of naming characters after former Cardinals players. Glenn Brummer and Tom Lawless forever. Do you have any advice for current SLUH students who are interested in pursuing a career as a screenwriter or filmmaker? Write. Then rewrite. And finish what you start. I remember writing my first screenplay after college and thinking once I typed “The End” that was it, it was ready to become a movie that would play at the Des Peres 14 Cine. So wrong. It was terrible. So write and rewrite a lot. And write a lot of different things. Don’t settle on one idea as THE idea that’s going to change everything for you. You can’t know that. Just continue writing new stuff. You’ll keep getting better, I promise. Applies to directing, too. Do you have any upcoming projects you could talk about? We’re in the early stages of a streaming series with Orlando Bloom. It’s an adventure story full of puzzles and secret codes and undead pirates. And we’re about to start a movie based on a comic book where a group of thieves execute a heist during a giant monster attack on Miami. Kinda like Ocean’s Eleven with Godzilla. It’s going to be fun to write. Plus other stuff I can’t talk about. Outside of your profession, what are some of your favorite hobbies and interests? I spend too much time playing MLB The Show on my son’s PS4. Always as the Cardinals. And, well, I spend too much time obsessing over the Cardinals. But my number one hobby – and my greatest skill, not to brag – is embarrassing myself in front of my children.
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e v i t a e r C t ions S o lu
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THE SHOW GOES ON Jerry Anselmo ‘63, affectionately referred to by friends as the Godfather of Fundraising, has a magnetic, magnanimous presence, one overshadowed perhaps only by his compelling mission and purpose. In 2008, after enduring the sudden death of his son, Brian, Jerry hosted a golf tournament and dinner auction at Rockhurst High School, Brian’s alma mater, to fund a scholarship in his memory. A year later, Jerry and his wife, Mary Ellen, and their daughters built on their success at Rockhurst to further memorialize Brian by benefiting additional organizations. “I knew nothing about fundraising, but I knew how to run a business,” says Anselmo, who thrived in the insurance industry for more than 30 years after a brief stint in the U.S. Air Force. “I wanted to make things fun for everybody, so I came up with the idea to do a Dancing with the Stars event.” From 2009 to 2019, Anselmo’s annual events for the BMA Foundation (acronym
s, tacle s b o nd and nges to adapt a e l l a ity d ch ho reate opportun alumni w ty. c s a ui ic h the s of ingen ndem provided torie d s a n p e a r e Th sha lso vity has a owing we wn creati t i t ye oll ir o ate. F ough the v o n n i hr e us t inspir
for Brian M. Anselmo) grew from 400 to more than 1,100 attendees. These events, which included stars from the Dancing with the Stars TV show, donated a total of $2 million to several Kansas City charities that provide educational opportunities and promote animal welfare – causes that were important to Brian. “The reach of the BMA Foundation is all around Kansas City,” says Rockhurst High School President David Laughlin, who previously served as SLUH President. “It has helped centers for disadvantaged youth like Operation Breakthrough while championing education for young people at places like Rockhurst. “Jerry is bright, faith-filled and persistent. He's a connector who works very hard to achieve and exceed his vision for BMA. In some ways, you just don't tell Jerry 'no’ because he'll reframe the question to let you say 'yes.’ He is upbeat and positive, and his
sincerity to help others is palpable.” In 2020, the pandemic forced Anselmo to reinvent his successful in-person event. His solution: The BMA Tonight Show. This virtual fundraiser allowed Anselmo to impersonate Johnny Carson with his own personal flair in a highly moving and entertaining production. “Our event was a challenge as we almost had to cancel a week before,” says Anselmo. “I had to do a one man show instead of having people on stage with me. “The comments we received from our supporters were overwhelming. Many said it was the best virtual fundraiser in Kansas City in 2020 and very well put together. While it did not match what we raised the previous year, at least we were able to help our charities in a time of need.” Brian would be proud.
View the 2020 The BMA Tonight Show, hosted by Jerry Anselmo ‘63
Jerry Anselmo '63 (third from right) and his wife Mary Ellen (third from left) pose with celebrity dancing stars at their annual fundraiser in 2017.
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U. HIGHLIGHTS
Born from a Shoebox Linhares Brothers Innovate, Create Timely Venture Will Linhares '10
Dave Linhares '08
While the pandemic has caused many businesses to close up shop, Dave ’08 and Will ’10 Linhares opened their business amid the economic turbulence. But this wasn’t an oversight or a haphazard decision. Their unique business model is in fact designed to serve clients in a socially-distanced age. The brothers started Shoebox Studios, a video production company designed to curate media from clients remotely. Customers digitally send their photos along with testimony, and Dave and Will stitch them together to create captivating videos that tell meaningful stories. “The clients dust off their old ‘shoebox,’ find the treasured
photographs or videos they like and digitally deliver the media through our system for us to edit into the finished film,” says Will. Will acts as Shoebox Studios’ creative lead, while Dave manages the business and marketing aspects. The duo has generously lent their expertise on several SLUH projects, including Upward Bound, Voices of SLUH and a faculty video. “What I have loved most about this venture is the positive feedback from clients,” says Will, “I also love that Shoebox is truly a service for and of its time.” The Linhares brothers truly believe and stand behind what their company
does. It not only enables a safe way to collaborate creatively with clients, but it also preserves memories in a digital age where so many photos or videos get lost in the shuffle. Shoebox aims to correct some of the downsides of a culture obsessed with immediacy. “Home movies shot on Super 8 or VHS have gone the wayside of the Cloud, which is jam-packed with millions of photos and videos, most of which will never see the light of day again,” says Will. “But I have worked with families to collect these memories and edit them into something that can be enjoyed and revisited through posterity.”
Archival photos used by Dave and Will Linhares to create a tribute video to celebrate the anniversary of their grandparents.
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SLUH alumni in the poker group: Ray Boncek ‘79, Chris Clark ‘79, Mark Prosperi ‘79, Scott Intagliata ‘79, Dan Lauer ‘79, Bill Morrow ‘79, Dan Niehoff ‘79, Jim Venker ‘79, Frank Werner ‘75 and Tom Werner ‘79
HIGH-STAKES Friendships BY CHRIS CLARK ‘79 ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, CINEMA ST. LOUIS
The COVID-19 health crisis and resulting pandemic and quarantine have had all of us on edge and far less social than we like to be. Last April I was invited to join a group of guys I knew in a weekly poker game using both Zoom and a poker website. The dozen or so players represent not only my years at SLUH, but many other St. Louis-style connections to friends I have had my entire life starting in grade school. Sometime in the early 1970's an adolescent poker home game was started in various south side basements and rec rooms in the Immaculate Heart of Mary parish near Carondelet Park. The current game consists of a number of the key players from those initial gatherings but now also includes a freakishly interconnected group of guys from IHM, SLUH and DuBourg that either were already childhood friends or became better friends in college, but represent a who's who of most of my youth. The trash talk and competition is hilariously fierce and it's been great reconnecting and acting like 12-year-olds again. Each player freely admits how important the weekly games have become and how much we value the rivalries and fellowship.
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My brain has been firing non-stop with memories of these friendships and the bonds we have with each other. It's been especially poignant and empowering for me and I am so very grateful for the experience. The daily text battles are almost as fun as the actual games sometimes. Boundaries and filters are fluid, but nobody is allowed to go too far for too long or a public shaming followed by an apology are mandated. I myself had taken a long, circuitous path in life that had led me away from these friendships – and I missed a lot over the years – but like magic it feels like I never left at all. It's been amazingly cathartic. We recently edged up the ante by assigning poker nicknames for one another like Gabby and Amazing Tom. They haven't gotten to me yet. Let's see how this turns out. It's been an honor, gentlemen!
U. HIGHLIGHTS
SUNRISE SOCIALS BY THE CLASS OF ‘71
Winston Churchill famously said, “The pessimist sees the challenge in every opportunity; the optimist sees the opportunity in every challenge.” Consider us “optimists.” Our ’71 Sunrise Socials grew out of our monthly Manresan group – "an opportunity to share our faith and experiences of Ignatian Spirituality with others.” We’ve hosted, and relished, these sessions for the past nine years. Until Covid hit, our group consistently numbered between 12 and 15 classmates, with Fr. Sheridan, Fr. Marchlewski and Fr. Cummings serving as our spiritual advisors. In April, we met the Covid challenge by moving what had been in-person meetings at SLUH to the more secular Zoom environment. That gave us the opportunity to allow classmates who lived outside of St. Louis to participate. After one of our first expanded Zoom meetings, most of us stayed on and began having a more general give and take. And just like in our SLUH days, there was a lot of giving it to each other. We realized that with so many of us confined to quarters it might help to set
up a separate monthly Zoom session just to get reacquainted, and learn from the paths each of our lives took. We polled the congregation and found a lot of enthusiasm for the idea, and we’ve seized on that opportunity every month since May for a 90-minute session. To an outsider, it might look and sound like a cross between a gerontological convention and the Blue Buddy Bunch, but we’ve probably learned more about each other in the last eight months than we did in the four years we were together every day. The format is a general piling on for the first 15 minutes, and since June, two classmates then share their life stories with the group. These personal histories are not Facebook boasts or career highlight reels, instead recalling the joys and pains, the highs and lows we’ve each faced over a lifetime – and without prompting, how our time at SLUH helped us prepare for the challenges and opportunities we could not have foreseen. And in August, more than 30 classmates were able to commemorate
the 50th anniversary of the passing of our friend, classmate and class officer, Ed Hawk ‘71, with his brother John ’72. We now have over 30 regulars participating in the calls, from all over the country and all four time zones (it really is a sunrise event for a bunch of them), with more joining in each month. Another classmate, Bob Walsh, established our own SLUH ’71 Facebook page that now numbers 49 members and growing. There are few things from 2020 to look back on fondly, but our Sunrise Socials have shown how we can continue to be men for each other, especially in a time of crisis. And it has only drawn us closer as we approach our 50th Class Reunion later this year.
Each ‘71 class member is welcome to participate. If interested, simply send a note to alumni@sluh.org with your preferred email address, and you will receive the invitations and link to the Zoom sessions.
A THANKSGIVING TRADITION BY MICHAEL MEYER ‘10
Each year, several members from the class of 2010 had gathered the day before Thanksgiving with Doc Koestner, John Mueller and Dick Keefe to discuss the adventures of the year prior and what new avenues awaited in the upcoming year. It had become a true tradition. The year 2020, though, posed unique challenges to the annual gathering and could have warranted a “gap year.” However, a contingent from the annual pre-Thanksgiving dinner group met via Zoom, affirming that although the global pandemic had altered many facets of life, some traditions could still be upheld – especially considering that this dinner would have been the 10th anniversary year for our gathering. While we look forward to whatever awaits us in 2021, we are comforted by the fact that some traditions can still persist and remain routine in a fast changing world.
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ALUMNI
Answering the Call
Former SLUH theology teacher Fr. Matthew Stewart, SJ ’98 (pictured) was ordained a priest on Saturday, August 15, 2020. Fr. Stewart taught at SLUH for six years before entering the Society of Jesus in 2009. Fr. Stewart celebrated his first Mass in the SLUH chapel on Sunday, August 16, one day after his ordination. He now serves as parochial vicar at St. Francis Xavier College Church and assists at Loyola Academy.
Deo Gratis In gratitude to all Jesuits who inspire us and bring us closer to God, we recognize the following alumni who celebrated a Jubilee anniversary in 2020. Fr. John Arnold, SJ '58* 60 years in the Society Fr. Jim Blumeyer, SJ '49 70 years in the Society Fr. Vern Heinsz, SJ '60 60 years in the Society Fr. Jack Hunthausen, SJ '54 50 years in the Priesthood Fr. Gene Martens, SJ '50 70 years in the Society Fr. Gene Renard, SJ '47 60 years in the Priesthood Fr. Gary Seibert, SJ '60 60 years in the Society Fr. James Swetnam, SJ '45 75 years in the Society We also congratulate SLUH Principal Fr. Ian Gibbons, SJ (25 years in the Society) and Fr. David Suwalsky, SJ (25 years in the priesthood), Superior of the St. Jean de Brebeuf Jesuit Community at SLUH.
Interested in Pursuing a Religious Vocation? Visit beajesuit.org * Deceased
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U. HIGHLIGHTS
“A Home, A Haven, A Retreat” "In the middle of my junior year, I was dumped and struggling to figure out where God was calling me. It was one of several life crises I had as a high school student. I had considered entering the Jesuits after high school, but I felt some disquiet as I considered my friends and brothers who were going to college instead. I had to admit I also felt some jealousy in imagining what I would be missing out on. In the midst of that discernment, I took a moment to go to the chapel and pray in between classes. I talked it over with God and asked him to "let me wait." I can still feel that sense of peace that immediately washed over me. God and I were on the same page, and I knew I could go to college first. It was probably one of the most clear prayer answers I had ever received. Now, as a Jesuit, I look back gratefully on that early moment of discernment in the chapel. I pray that space can continue to support our students in their attentiveness and relationship with God." - PHILIP NAHLIK, SJ '11
As SLUH invests in a Center for Faith and Service through the Go Forth campaign, alumni reflect on what the prayerful space in the SLUH Chapel meant to them, and how it formed them as Men for Others. Share your own reflections and memories at www.sluh.org/chapel.
"I first took my personal prayer life seriously in the SLUH chapel. I remember the first week of my freshman year of high school discovering the vast silence of the chapel. It seemed almost impossible that in the midst of such a bustling school, such a large space could be devoted to silence. My time at SLUH was stressful, there's no denying it. Most of it was good stress though. I like to think I ran the gamut of SLUH. I loved it all, but I found it difficult to make time for silence. Some especially busy days, when walking from the Prep News room to Mr. Steingruby's calculus, I'd cut through the chapel — not to save time, but to have a brief thirty seconds of silent presence with God. God was present all around me, but He was there in the chapel in a way He could be no where else. I remember so many of my class Masses, the special brotherhood forged in that room. Confessions, prayer services, retreats, and Eucharistic adoration all contributed to it too. We've been to Mass in the field house, Si Commons, and on the upper field, but the grandeur of these places can't compete with the simple beauty of the chapel. It was in the chapel Fr. Hill led me through Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises, which gave me the bedrock for my spiritual life in college. Yes, we could have substituted other spaces — a quiet classroom, the quad, even the North American Martyrs conference room. But doing so would have put our spiritual lives second to convenience. Being in the chapel, in the presence of the incarnate God, filled our lives with grace and peace. Exposing students to that presence is at the heart and soul of our identity. It's clear how necessary our chapel needs repair. It's also clear how easy it is to forego such renovations for other projects. But beauty, stillness and presence raise the soul to God like no other. The chapel, and only the chapel, can best provide such an environment. It's a home, a haven, a retreat, and it makes SLUH, SLUH." - PAUL GILLAM ‘19
Revitalizing SLUH’s Sacred Space A new Center for Faith and Service will create a worship space that will enliven the senses and spirits of young men, as well as establish a new office of Campus Ministry that will house student-centered retreat and service programming. Learn about how the Go Forth campaign is investing more than $6 million to enhance the school's Jesuit, Catholic mission across two campuses: www.sluh.org/chapel
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ALUMNI
NOTEWORTHY Following is a sample of recent alumni activity and achievement. For an extensive list of class notes, visit alumconnect.sluh.org. The American Water Works Association (AWWA) elected Tracy Mehan '67 to the Board of Directors of River Network, a national organization that increases awareness of protecting waters in the U.S. Mehan currently serves as the executive director of government affairs for AWWA. Filmmaker Ken Kwapis '75 published his first book, But What I Really Want To Do Is Direct: Lessons From a Life Behind the Camera. Kwapis has directed for television (The Bernie Mac Show, Malcolm in the Middle, The Office) as well as cinema (He's Just Not That into You, A Walk in the Woods).
Frank Corley '77 (left) with Andrew Murphy 16
SLUH math teacher Frank Corley ‘77 had a productive sabbatical last year. He recounts one week from September: “My sabbatical allowed me to
46 | SLUH Magazine
travel to Baltimore to meet my new granddaughter and twice bicycle to Pennsylvania and back. On the drive home, I was able to visit Fallingwater for the first time (#BucketList), then detoured through Lexington and got to sit in the press box with Andrew Murphy ‘16 to watch him call a baseball game. When I got home, I published my most recent project, Flips, Turns, Slides, Shrinks: A Playful Introduction to Symmetry in Art and Mathematics, a book relating art and math via the symmetry I see in fifty-four artworks.” The Research Leader of the Food Safety and Intervention Technologies Research Unit (FSIT) at the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture's Eastern Regional Research Center in Wyndmoor, Pa., Dr. Brendan Niemira '87 was recognized as one of the top two percent most productive scientists in a recent study from Stanford University (updated science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators). Dr. Niemira leads a team of more than 30 scientists, engineers, technicians, postdocs and students in developing tools to kill human pathogens (such as
E. coli, Salmonella, Listeria, Shigella and norovirus) on produce, meats, poultry, shellfish and other foods.
marketing. Sebek played soccer while at SLUH and continued at Evansville as a defensive midfielder.
Colonel James "J.P." McDonough III '90 was selected to become the 89th Commandant of Midshipmen of the U.S. Naval Academy. He will be responsible for the dayto-day conduct, military training and professional development of more than 4,400 midshipmen. Joe Muller ‘94 published Among the Long Knives, a novel about a peasant boy in 17th century Bohemia who becomes a soldier for the Austrian Habsburg imperial army. Muller is the founding head coach of the SLUH rugby team and still serves on the coaching staff.
Kwofe Coleman '01 (pictured), a member of the SLUH Board of Trustees and Managing Director at the Muny, produced a Christmas special that aired on PBS. The musical, A New Holiday, follows a 10-year-old girl on a journey of hope, joy and love as she copes with the loss of her grandmother.
Dave Matter ‘96, Mizzou athletics beat writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was named the Missouri Sportswriter of the Year. Matter is a former Prep News editor at SLUH.
Sean Crotty '04 was named Associate Counsel in the Office of the White House Counsel for the Biden-Harris administration.
Matt Sebek '00 was named Chief Experience Officer (CXO) of St. Louis City SC. He is Major League Soccer's first CXO, a position that combines technology and
Joshua Ritchey '08 and his wife, Hannah, recently completed a one-year sabbatical traveling the world. They experienced 100 cities, 35 countries and four continents.
REQUIESCAT IN PACE Since July, SLUH has learned of the deaths of the following alumni. Eternal rest grant unto them, oh Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. List compiled 7/1-20-1/14/21
Bernard H. Mangelsdorf '40 William L. Hamblin '41 Robert G. Griffin '42 James D. Cullen '44 Henry E. Bredeck '45 Robert A. Hutchison '45 Thomas F. Landholt '45 William R. Schaefer '45 Clifton J. Seliga '45 Thomas P. Lawton '46 Richard M. Wagner '48 Larry R. Feldmann '49 Albert A. Nazzoli '49 Francis T. Barnidge '50 Charles L. Goedde '50 Thomas J Loftus '51 Kenneth O. Horrell '52 William J. Werner '52 John N. Crowley '53 Donald E. Henson '53 Thomas Cooper '54 Rev. John J. Ghio '54 John R. Keevin '54 Ralph J Kunz '54 Samuel W. Forder '55 John F. Lindeman '55 Robert M. Cradock '56 Rev. Thomas W. Cummings, SJ '56 Daniel M. Fraser ‘56 James T. Hillner ‘56 Edward L. Lanwermeyer '56 John S. Weyforth '57 Rev. John D. Arnold, SJ '58 Richard K. Coffin '58 Lawrence M. Stilinovic '59 David Behnen '60
Robert B. Coffin '60 Jerry F. Watkins '60 Robert E. O'Connor '61 Ben Stillwagon '62 John R. Crowley '63 Michael L. Kelly '63 Charles H. Paterson '63 Thomas G. Euson '64 Edward P. Rose '64 John T. Boese '65 Albert J. Krejci '65 John L. Niemann '65 Mark F. Haywood '67 William A. Werner '68 Melvin V. Jones '69 Michael S. Klix '69 Carlos A. Maitz '70 John W. Mitchell '71 Lawrence E. Alfs '73 Paul L. Snyders '74 Stephen J. Sweetin '76 Mark N. Johnson '89 Thinh Q. Nguyen '89 Michael T. Rathmann '08 Joshua R. Ritter '14
MAN FOR OTHERS:
FR. TOM CUMMINGS, SJ '56 (1938-2020) Fr. Tom Cummings, SJ '56 devoted his life to the Society of Jesus – and to St. Louis U. High. He was fond of saying he did four “tours of duty” at SLUH: • As a student from 1952-56. • He returned as a theology teacher in the 1968-69 school year. • In 1977, he was named president of SLUH; not yet 40 years old at the time, Fr. Cummings was the youngest president in school history. • He came back for his fourth “tour” in 2003, when he was named Superior of the SLUH Jesuit Community and joined the teaching staff. Among Fr. Cummings' many contributions to SLUH, perhaps his greatest gift was his spiritual leadership. His holiness was expressed with an exuberance for his faith that was infectious. A gifted homilist, he lived the Jesuit dictum of “finding God in all things” and brought his faith into everyday life with humor and joy. He inspired students, parents, faculty, staff and alumni to a greater love of Christ and deeper devotion to our Catholic faith. This is his lasting legacy at SLUH. Fr. Cummings died peacefully on August 9, 2020. May God rest his soul.
Please let us know if you learn of the death of an alumnus or friend of SLUH at alumni@sluh.org.
Winter 2020-21 | 47
ALUMNI
SLUH Welcomes New Alumni Relations Coordinator Chris Buerke '09 joined SLUH early this Fall 2020 as the new Alumni Relations Coordinator. His big goal? Sharing alumni stories and building community.
HIGHLIGHTS
“Our SLUH alumni are doing incredible things throughout St. Louis and all over the world,” says Buerke, “It’s exciting to think about what happens when we can welcome folks back to campus—and when we’re able to connect Jr. Bills from all sorts of different interests, careers, and so on.” As Alumni Relations Coordinator, Buerke will collaborate with the SLUH Alumni Board, working with leaders from every
ALUMNI CENSUS
The SLUH Alumni Census takes place every five years. With nearly 5,700 responses across 78 unique alumni classes (1943 - 2020) from our most recent census in 2020, we continue to gain a better, more holistic understanding of our graduate community. Following are highlights:
class to help move SLUH forward. He will also take charge of Reunion planning, updating the Alumni website, and a number of new initiatives, like alumni special interest groups, service and faith-formation events for grads, and (hopefully) some specific young alumni programming. Buerke earned his BS in Linguistics from Truman State University and his MA in Educational Administration from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He returns to SLUH after five years working in higher education, and three as both a creative strategist and writer. Have an alumni story to share? Contact Chris at cbuerke@sluh.org.
54%
72%
identify as Catholic
91%
earned a Bachelor's degree
Missed the Alumni Census? Stay connected and update your information today at sluh.org/alumni.
REUNION OF THE BILLS 2021 48
We look forward to welcoming our alumni community back to SLUH this fall. Visit sluh.org/alumni or check your inbox for Reunion updates, and we hope to see you soon!
achieved a graduate or professional degree
93%
would continue the tradition of sending their sons to SLUH
ADVANCING OUR MISSION
EMPOWERED BY OUR PAST
EMBOLDENED BY OUR FUTURE
WE GO FORTH $60,640,323 COMMITTED
Now is our time to shine. Help us to become a model of academic achievement and faith formation for the nation and the world with a deepened focus on financial accessibility, program excellence and a 21st century campus. With your support, we will, in the words of St. Ignatius, “Go forth and set the world on fire.”
www.sluh.org/goforth Winter 2020-21 | 49
GIVING
We are St. Louis New Presidential Scholarship Punctuates Commitment to Students from Entire Metro Area BY BEN DUMONT '92
From Ferguson and Frontenac to Barnhart and Belleville, Jr. Bills represent every corner and socio-economic strata of the metropolitan area. An anonymous SLUH alumnus and his wife have created a new Presidential Scholarship with a $1,000,000 gift to ensure students from multiple regions continue to benefit from the enduring St. Louis U. High tradition of need-blind admission and academic excellence. “We are very grateful to our alumnus and his wife for their incredible generosity,” says SLUH President Alan Carruthers. “They are furthering our vision of offering an excellent Jesuit education to talented students from all financial backgrounds, and from all regions in the metro area, in a deeply meaningful way. Their scholarship will have a ripple effect that extends well beyond St. Louis for generations to come.” The St. Louis Scholars program, named in honor of the SLUH patron saint, will provide up to full tuition
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assistance to three students of different regions of the area each year in perpetuity. Each scholarship recipient will be selected prior to their sophomore year and will be publicly recognized as a St. Louis Scholar their remaining three years at SLUH. Candidates for the scholarship will be recipients of need-based financial aid and will be selected based on their progress in growing as Men for Others, as outlined in the Jesuit School Network’s Graduate at Graduation. They will also be exemplary representatives from different regions throughout the metropolitan area, taking personal pride in their own neighborhood, appreciating the strengths and challenges of their neighborhood and city, and open to opportunities to build bridges across St. Louis. SLUH will be proud to hold up the St. Louis Scholars as ambassadors for the school with alumni, donors, and friends, as well as representatives of the metropolitan area within the student body. “I consider the education I received at SLUH to be the cornerstone for my further education, as well as my eventual career,” says the donor. “SLUH instilled in me the academic rigor and critical thinking skills that are essential in today’s ‘knowledge economy.’
ADVANCING OUR MISSION
“The school’s philosophy of meeting financial need is inspiring. I believe every boy who has the academic drive and prowess to attend SLUH must be able to do so irrespective of their families’ economic circumstances. I also believe it is the responsibility of those who have been blessed as much as we have to give back to the communities and institutions that were critical to their success.” The SLUH financial aid program meets 100 percent of families’ demonstrated need. Since 2008, the amount of direct aid has tripled, and the number of students benefiting from that aid has doubled. Today, the school offers a total of $4.4 million in financial aid to 43 percent of its students. The average amount of aid is $9,500, or roughly half of tuition. “I hope this scholarship affords its recipient students the opportunities to not only attend SLUH, but to transformationally alter the trajectory of their lives,” says the donor. “I hope it plays its small part to help offset the disheartening unequal access to great secondary education in the St. Louis area. And, I hope it helps to promote a sense of stewardship for the next generation of SLUH graduates.”
Many of these students, about 4 in every 10, are only able to attend SLUH with financial assistance. Here’s what a few students say about the impact of financial aid.
"Attending SLUH has given me the opportunity to grow and flourish as a person. I’m currently interested in pursuing sustainability and also incorporating business into my studies in college. I am so thankful for the financial aid over the past years. It means so much to my family and me." ALBERT '21
"I have seen the weight that financial aid has taken off my mom's shoulders. It allowed me the opportunity to go to the best high school in the world. My two brothers and I hope one day to pay it forward and donate our own money to help a kid in our same shoes go to SLUH." GUS ‘22
Although many think that the money donated by the Backers in the early 20th century fully funds the school, including financial aid, this would require an endowment in excess of $380 million. Contrary to popular belief, the value of the school’s endowment is less than other leading Jesuit and independent high schools nationwide. According to the recent alumni census and survey:
Transformational Impact Today, Jr. Bills come from 86 different zip codes and 168 middle schools on both sides of the river. Their parents range from corporate executives and university professors, to plumbers and cab drivers. While these young men live miles apart, in two-story homes and single-room apartments, they share one common theme: they have great intellectual ability.
Did you know?
"SLUH is an environment that will ultimately be the great building block of my success. I am filled with sincere gratitude to have the opportunity to attend SLUH." CHARLES ‘23
• 46% of graduates estimated the SLUH endowment value at $175 million or greater; however, the actual value of the SLUH endowment, as of December 2020, is approximately $63 million. • 43% of alumni believe the SLUH operating budget is $15 million or less, when in fact, the 20-21 SLUH operating budget is $21.8 million. SLUH has made great strides in the recent past to manage its operating budget and improve annual fundraising efforts to underwrite financial aid, thus preserving its endowment corpus, while simultaneously paying down its debt (primarily acquired in the 1990s to refurbish its aging urban facility and build the Joseph Schulte Theater). No debt has been assumed in the past decade. The net result is a notably increased net endowment. Even still, at an average draw of 5.75% annually, the school’s net endowment funds only about $3,300 per student.
Presidential Scholarship Program A Presidential Scholarship involves a minimum commitment of $1,000,000. Benefactors who establish a Presidential Scholarship are invited to develop criteria for the school to publicly award the scholarship to deserving students who receive need-based financial aid. Both Presidential Scholarship donors and recipients will be invited to connect in person at least once each year to celebrate the generosity and achievements of both parties. To learn more, visit www.sluh.org/scholarship or contact Linda Domeyer, Director of Leadership Giving, at ldomeyer@sluh.org or (314) 269-2113.
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GIVING
SLUH Day Meets the Challenge In times of need, the SLUH community responds. Alumni, parents, faculty, staff and benefactors rallied on St. Louis U. High Day 2020 to ensure all qualified young men can attend SLUH, regardless of their families’ economic circumstances. “The pandemic has amplified the need for financial aid for many of our families that are struggling economically,” says SLUH Director of Alumni and Parent Giving John Penilla ‘99. “We are grateful to everybody who contributed to this critical effort that provides Jr. Bills access to the full SLUH experience in academics, co-curriculars and faith formation.” St. Louis U. High Day celebrated the 202nd anniversary of the founding of the school with online days of giving from November 12-14. All donations supported the Jr. Bill Fund, which provides financial aid to families in need. The annual celebration concluded with a Mass of Gratitude in honor of SLUH benefactors on the school’s founding date, November 16.
See the number of gifts and amounts raised by each alumni class at sluhday.sluh.org
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GIVING HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE: Raised nearly $470,000 from 786 donors (gifts from 62 alumni classes, plus parents, grandparents and friends). These donations fund approximately 10 percent of the 2020-21 financial aid budget of $4.4 million. Gifts from 40 states plus Washington, D.C., with Illinois, California, Texas and Florida as top areas outside Missouri. Incredible effort by the Class of 1970 raising $170,450, buoyed by lead challenge gifts from Ms. Pamela Zilly and Mr. John Schaefer '70 and another anonymous class member. They each contributed $50,000 plus additional funds for a matching gift announced on the final day of the campaign. $10,000 matching gift provided by an anonymous Class of 1984 graduate. The Class of 2002 joined 1970 as top classes by donor, with 47 members of each class contributing to the campaign.
ADVANCING OUR MISSION
IT'S CASHBAH SEASON
A community celebration culminating
April 9-10
with a virtual auction and unique online engagement experience
Learn how you can help SLUH raise $1 million in support of financial aid. SPONSORSHIP • RAFFLES • CASH DONATIONS • ITEM DONATIONS • AMAZON WISH LIST
www.sluh.org/cashbah SLUH SPECTACUL AR CO-C HAIRS MEGAN BROWDY & SUSAN O'KEEFE cashbah@sluh.org | (314) 269-2158
Winter 2020-21 | 53
ENDURING
TRADITION OF
Alumni continue to experience firsthand the value of a SLUH education and the school’s enduring tradition of excellence. Over the past 10 years, about 20 percent of students have been the sons of SLUH alumni. Here’s what a few graduates say about why they send their boys to SLUH as well as how the school has strengthened its legacy over the years.
EXCELLENCE
Do you have a son – or perhaps a friend, relative or neighbor – who would benefit from SLUH and is interested in becoming a Man for Others? Learn more at: www.sluh.org/admissions
“The value of SLUH is embodied in the quality of the students – their intelligence, ambition and love for one another – as well as the excellence of the faculty and the presence of the Society of Jesus.
“The financial investment of Charlie attending SLUH never outweighed the holistic, religious, civic and community benefit we felt he would receive by attending SLUH. It was never an investment, it was a goal.
Students today are lucky to have a place like the Si Commons where they can be together with no agenda during lunch and after school – all with the beautiful Madonna Della Strada watching over them.”
There have been many changes around SLUH since I was a student. What has been most impressive are some of the same instructors still giving the same sacrifice to the young men as they have done for years. Mix that in with the new instructors and there is a very good balance.”
TOM ALBUS ‘90
(pictured above with sons Bill ‘24, left, and Charlie ‘21)
CHUCK MCCALL ‘90
(pictured above with son Charlie ‘24) 54
“St. Louis U. High is well known for rigor, discipline and leadership – and through a focus on faith development, it gives students the framework to use that rigor, discipline and leadership for the betterment of all. In an increasingly self-centered world, SLUH is a place that grounds young men while pushing them beyond what they imagine is possible. While it is more demanding academically, the school has developed support mechanisms in Counseling to foster learning and emphasize cura personalis, or care of the whole person.”
TIM RITTENHOUSE ‘93
(pictured at top with sons Miles ‘24, center, and Owen ‘22)
ADVANCING OUR MISSION
APPROACHING
100 at Backer Memorial Campus Evolution Marked by Creativity and Progress BY SLUH ARCHIVE COMMITTEE TERRY DONOHUE ‘63 RON HORST ‘63 MARTY O'BRIEN ‘63 LEE SCHILLIGO ‘63 DICK SCHRICK ‘63 BOB ST. VRAIN ‘63 NORM THOMAS ‘63
SLUH Archive Do you have SLUH memorabilia, artifacts or pictures of historical significance? If so, the Archive Committee would like to hear from you. Please send a note to archive@sluh.org.
Throughout the 202-year existence of St. Louis University High, creativity and progress have been the backbone of the school’s remarkable history and success. Originally created as a “school of higher learning for young men” by Bishop Louis DuBourg in 1818 (making it the oldest “high school” west of the Mississippi River), SLUH eventually grew to open two locations on the St. Louis riverfront, a third location at 9th and Washington, and the fourth location at Saint Louis University, where the “High School Department” was the largest and most important part of the entire school until the late 1880’s. Then, in 1924, Backer Memorial opened on Oakland Avenue, funded by a generous donation from Anna Backer, widow of George Backer (1869 graduate of the high school). Her goal was to create a school for young men to reach their greatest potential, something she continues to fulfill nearly 100 years later. The physical plant at SLUH has changed many times over the years to accommodate the needs of the students and the school. It will continue to do so as the 100th class at Backer Memorial – the Class of 2024 – finishes their freshmen year this spring.
SOME OF BACKER MEMORIAL’S EVOLUTION IS MARKED BY THESE CREATIVE ENDEAVORS: 1944 Excavation of a basement under the main school building for the creation of a large rec room, rifle range, storage and shower facilities. 1948 Addition of a new Jesuit residence wing built to the west of the existing building along Oakland Avenue. 1956 Construction of a new gymnasium along Berthold Avenue. 1968-69 Construction of the James Robinson Library. 1983-84 Expansion of the campus to the west with construction of the football field and surrounding track. 1996-97 Addition of Joseph Schulte Theater complex to the west of the gymnasium along Berthold Avenue. 1990s-2000s Acquisition of properties to the west and south of the campus; development of athletic fields, Drury Plaza and a shared parking lot with the Saint Louis Science Center. 2010 Construction of the Danis Field House south of the original 1924 building and conversion of the gym into the multi-purpose Si Commons. The creativity behind the progress of the past 202 years will undoubtedly continue through the current Go Forth campaign, which is helping to bring the nearly 100-year-old Backer Memorial building into the present, ready to deliver on its mission “to help students develop critical minds and a life-long devotion to learning that informs moral choices and transforms lives.”
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IGNATIAN REFLECTION
Embrace Your Creative Spirit BY SEAN POWERS ‘05 FINE ARTS TEACHER
I have the joy and honor to teach the Freshmen Visual Art course each year to about 80 incoming SLUH students. At the start of every course I informally survey my students: “How many of you are ‘terrible’ at art?” No less than 80 percent of students raise their hands. Their certainty astounds me each semester. How is it that the region’s best and brightest students can be so quick to freely admit their self-perceived creative incompetence? Sadly, by the time many of our teenagers arrive to high school their creative sparks – hallmarks of a happy childhood – have already atrophied. This should concern us both as individuals and as a culture. Personal creativity and spiritual expression are so closely linked together. Pope Saint John Paul II wrote in his Letter to Artists, “art offers both a new dimension and an exceptional mode of expression for (an artist’s) spiritual growth. Through his works, the artist speaks to others and communicates with them.” Like prayer, all forms of creative expression serve as modes of communication with our own selves, one another, and God. I have empathy for my students’ creative skepticism. The gift of creativity can be intimidating to receive and maintain. I loved making art well into my teenage years. As children, my older brother and I covered our parents’ garage with paintings of our favorite cartoons, sports logos and designs. I took many art classes at SLUH as a
student and proudly illustrated for the Prep News. Nevertheless, I did not think of art as anything more than a unique personal hobby. Like many of us, I was more concerned with fitting in than standing out. I did not take my creative gift seriously until I was well into my twenties and went through the intense retreat experience of St. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises. My spiritual director encouraged me to draw and paint some of my experiences of God that I had during my retreat. My simple sketches freed me to embrace more deeply both my prayer and art. Both prayer and art alike are expressive gifts from God. They both also require an immense amount of time, sacrifice and discipline. They both set us free. Since then I try to make it my personal mission and life’s vocation to share the beautiful harmonies between creative expression and prayer. Both inspire and deepen the other. Directing young SLUH artists more intentionally toward creative growth and artistic ability has helped many to open their souls more fully to God’s work within them. It’s slow work and it’s beautiful. I am pleased to report back that by the end of the course not only do our artists have far greater confidence in their creative abilities and artistic interest, they also discover a freeing joy in the process. For that I am daily grateful.
What creative endeavor opens your heart and makes you come alive? Seek it. Recognize it. Embrace it.
From top: Self portrait demo from Freshman Visual Art class; St. Ignatius' vision at La Storta; and artwork in progress for the SLUH Madonna Della Strada Retreat Center.
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SLUH welcomed Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski to campus on February 1, the first day of Catholic Schools Week, to celebrate Mass for the junior class.
#AMDG
When You Give to SLUH, You Give to the World A SLUH education is a tremendous gift, made possible by the generosity of our benefactors. Charitable gifts to SLUH’s Jr. Bill Fund go directly to support the 40 percent of students who receive needbased aid. Ultimately, they are gifts that keep giving as our seniors are sent out at graduation to “Go Forth and set the world on fire.” If you have not done so already, please consider an annual gift to SLUH:
www.sluh.org/giving. VISIT SLUH ONLINE www.sluh.org sluhigh sluh @sluhjrbills
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ARTWORK BY NATHAN RICH '22 | Sisyphus 2021 | www.sluh.org/sisyphus
