Excitement

Yesterday I got news that I’d been accepted into the M.S. in Educational Leadership at St. Bonaventure University. I am beginning a course of study which I hope will prove interesting and provide me with needed professional growth. September 4, 1957 as a four year old boy I entered a Franciscan institution. Now, fifty-two years later I’m doing the same thing. I was excited then and I’m excited now. The most poignant memory I have of 1957 is riding the bus to that school. In the ensuing nine years I became a graduate of St. Piux X School in Delevan, New York and was formed and informed by the Franciscan Sisters of Allegany. Little did I know what a profound effect they had on my life.

Much has changed in the past fifty years but the values that have formed my life came from my parents and those tireless Allegany Franciscan Sisters. It was they who taught me to read and what a gift that has been to a curious fellow like me. it was those sisters and later Franciscan friars at Archbishop Walsh in Olean who would animate my life in ways that I never imagined. I remember sitting in study hall as a high school freshman looking west at the tiled roofs of the campus of St. Bonaventure University. I remember following the St. Bonaventure basketball team. Bob Lanier, Bill Kalbaugh, Paul Hoffman, Matt Gantt and Greg Gary stirred my young imagination. I attended only one game at the Reilly Center in 1967 but, I often followed their exploits on my AM radio. I watched the “Big Cat” and his mates subdue the Purdue Boilermakers on television with my Dad and brother.

Much of my life has centered around St. Bonaventure and now I’m a student. I’m enrolled in a program that will see me attending classes at St. Bonaventure’s Buffalo center at Hilbert College and taking much of the course of study on-line. I’m not sure what to expect, but I’m excited nonetheless.