Memories from Jerry Bergevin

Jerry Bergevin attended St. Joe’s from 1964 though 1967, one year ahead of my class. He transferred to Callicoon from the Franciscan Seminary in Santa Barbara, California. He is sharing with us a portion of his life’s recollections. I am grateful for his submission [now I have the weekend off.] But seriously, he brings forth, as the Scriptures put it, “new things and old.” His encounter with Father Brennan over a suggestive birthday card he received is a classic.
 
Anyone with St. Joe’s mud on their boots is welcomed to share, as Jerry did, recollections recalled from the distant past and/or your “interpretations” of Callicoon life from the distance of seniority. Just email your rough draft—whatever length—to me at [email protected] and, if possible, a phone number for editing purposes.
 
Now, for the first time in eleven years, a new writer takes the Café console. And very well, I might add.
 
AROMA HILL
 
In 1964, after finishing my junior year at St. Anthony’s Franciscan seminary in Santa Barbara, I transferred to St. Joseph’s Franciscan seminary in upstate New York. St. Joe’s was a combined high school and junior college, so I spent three years there. The school was situated in the Catskill Mountains on a hill above the Delaware River, 118 miles northwest of New York City in the small town of Callicoon.  There were several playfields for baseball and flag football, a fieldhouse for basketball, a boxing ring, and a large pond where we ice skated and played hockey and where I fished for bass and sunfish. It also had a barn and a herd of 50 milk cows.  Residents nicknamed the area above the school “Aroma Hill,” for obvious reasons. Students drank the milk the cows produced. In the spring when the herd transitioned from eating hay in the barn to grazing in the new-grown grass in the pasture, there was a decided change in the milk’s color and taste. We drank it anyway. One visiting Sunday my family and I watched as my classmate John Hickey and a Franciscan brother delivered a calf.
 
When I started my senior year at St. Joe’s, I joined a class that had been together for three years.  The culture at St. Joe’s was somewhat different from St. Anthony’s.  In some ways, it was freer. Smoking was allowed in the rec rooms during designated times, although, strangely enough, only cigars and pipes, not cigarettes.  Guys who were hooked on cigarettes at home switched to small cigars. They inhaled the cigarillos which made them worse. At St. Anthony’s we were mostly restricted to campus, but at St. Joe’s students travelled more often—to schools in the area for basketball games and debate tournaments and to New York City to attend plays and concerts and visit museums.
 
Overall, though, the two seminaries were much the same. My classmates at St. Joe’s were a bunch of fun-loving guys, as were their counterparts on the west coast.  We loved joking around, playing pranks, making fun of each other, and mimicking our teachers, sometimes harshly.  Our physics teacher, Fr. Cronin, was the butt of many jokes, partly because he was so very serious about his subject.  He was short, had a kind of crooked grin, and would address us in a formal way. “Men, when I worked at G.E. . . .” he would say, pronouncing the “G” and the “E” slowly and deliberately.”  We nicknamed him “The Man” and imitated his speech and crooked smile. One day, when the class was particularly unruly, “The Man” grew very upset and addressed us, shaking with anger:
​
“Men!  Do you think this joke is a class?”
We could hardly stifle our laughter.
 
Theater was a great outlet. I had a modest part in John Osborne’s play Luther. My classmate Mike Chepiga played Luther. A student in the class behind me assumed the role of the Papal representative who sold indulgences to the masses. I’ll never forget his scowl as he looked over the crowd/audience and began his blistering speech with the line, “Do you know who I am and what I am?” It still makes me cringe.
 
My three years at Callicoon have left lasting memories that were very positive. I enjoyed the camaraderie of my classmates. In academics I graduated third in my class. As I’ve described, theater and literature were highlights. I won a trophy at a debate tournament. Up to that point in my life my performance in competitive sports had been mediocre at best. But in my final year I found rare success on the baseball field. I had the third highest batting average on the team.
 
But, above all, at St. Joe’s my interest in reading and writing developed. I wrote stories and poems and published them at every opportunity. In my first semester I published a piece of doggerel in a Christmas newsletter in which I mentioned each of my classmates by nickname— “Mother,” “Stick,” “Goose,” “Pigeon,” “Biff,” and “Puffy.” For the most part, guys loved the satire. However, one tough guy thought I slighted him in my poem. He confronted me, looked me square in the face, and raised his fist as if to strike. My first critic. Then he broke into a wide grin. As the new guy, I didn’t have a nickname yet. After the poem came out, they dubbed me “Pindar” after the ancient Greek poet. Some of my poems and stories were published in the school literary magazine, The Cord and Cowl. The “cord” in the title referred to the Franciscan habit, a brown robe and hood with a white rope around the waist. Three knots in the cord represented the vows which friars made when inducted into the Order--poverty, chastity and obedience.
 
Which brings me to the main significance of my three years at St. Joe’s. After graduating from St. Joe’s in 1967 the next step would have been going to “novitiate,” which some have described as “boot camp” for prospective priests. As the date neared I began to seriously consider what it would be like to be ordained a Franciscan priest. For the first time I imagined how my life would change when I took those vows. Consider the vow of poverty. As a young man Francis of Assisi gave away his rich father’s money. A central mission of the Order he founded was to serve the poor. Francis wanted his followers to live a simple life with little or no material possessions. Was the prospect of living a life of poverty what drew me to the religious life? Not exactly. Aside from reading about St. Francis, before and during my time in the seminary I gave little thought to poverty. I encountered many panhandlers on the streets of my hometowns of San Diego and Philadelphia and New York City which I visited on field trips or on vacation. When confronted by a seemingly healthy man sitting on the sidewalk asking, “Spare change?” my attitude was one of benign indifference. I would usually give a quarter or a dollar but that was the extent of my interest.
 
But my time in a Franciscan seminary subtly influenced my attitude towards money. My late brother Dennis—who built a successful business—used to joke that I never abandoned the vow of poverty. There’s some truth in that. Aside from paying my bills and keeping the wolf from the door, I have never had much interest in money. Money has pretty much returned the favor by avoiding me. As consumerism and corporate greed take over the world, I find a life of voluntary simplicity attractive. As John Lennon sang, “Imagine no possessions. . ..”  It’s one reason I’ve been a democratic socialist for all my adult life. I don’t pretend to live up to those ideals, but the Franciscan experience has somehow been incorporated into my worldview.

Along with the vow of poverty, becoming a Franciscan meant taking a vow of obedience. I suspect it would have been a major problem if I had gone on to novitiate. I’ve always had a problem with authority. I’ve never liked other people’s rules. I’m told I was unruly as a toddler, and I chafed at the discipline of a Catholic school taught by nuns. On the other hand, in my seven years in a Franciscan seminary, aside from a couple minor infractions, I kept to the program. Any serious departure from the rules would have meant instant dismissal. Along with my classmates I took advantage of those rare times we were “set free” from Joe’s. Memorably, a few of my classmates and I visited Mike Chepiga whose family lived in Manhattan. We were in the streets near my classmate’s home at four o’clock in the morning tossing a football around. A policeman came by and chased us home. That was the extent of our “wilding” in the big city.  But within the walls of the seminary discipline reigned supreme. Sometimes I would sneak down to the TV room after the lights were out. At least once I was caught by the Prefect. I wordlessly went back to bed. I often stayed up to read with a flashlight. A friend and I would go out to shoot baskets outside of designated rec hours. Even the slightest infraction brought great pleasure. But, as I said, for the most part I followed the rules. I wouldn’t have made it through seven years otherwise.
 
Finally, the vow of chastity. Everyone knows that the Catholic Church demands celibacy from its priests. It is probably what comes to most people’s minds about religious life. Given their importance, chastity and celibacy were seldom discussed openly at St. Joe’s. We were sometimes warned to avoid “occasions of sin.” We took that as code for sexual temptation, but no details or examples were given. Yes, of course, when visiting Sunday came around—once a month—we all checked out everyone else’s sisters.  The highlight of every basketball game against regional schools was the cheerleaders. But, aside from that, there was not much in the way of sexual temptation around Callicoon, deep in the Catskills, a hundred miles upstate from New York City.
 
Vacations at home were another matter. There was every opportunity for mischief. No priests were around to monitor our conduct. A [Callicoon] classmate described an unusual incident when he was home. A girl he knew asked him, “Do you want to fuck me?” Apparently, nothing came of it. Just his telling the story shocked the hell out of me. It was one thing to use the word fuck, or flash our middle finger, which we did freely. It was quite another to have the real thing up for discussion. I had nothing to add to the conversation. I had no experience with sexual temptation to relate. But one minor incident exemplifies how seriously chastity—sexuality—would have been taken once we took formal vows.
 
One day Fr. Brennan, the Prefect of Discipline, called me into his office.  I had received a birthday card from my female cousin. My cousin wasn’t aware that all our mail was opened and read by the Prefect.  Brennan showed me her card.  On the front of the card, it read:
 
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE A LITTLE SEX FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY?
 
On the inside was one word in extremely small type:
 
Sex
 
After showing me the card, the Prefect asked me for an explanation.
 
“Who is [name]?” he asked
.
“She’s my cousin.”
 
“Why would she think it’s appropriate to send you a card like this?
 
“I don’t know.”
 
He gave me a fiercely penetrating look and waited for a better answer
 
“She probably thought it was cute.” She was a normal, lively teenager, known in my Italian American family as the Beatlemaniac.  She was probably trying to be provocative with her card, but it was just harmless fun.
 
The Prefect listened to my explanation suspiciously.
 
I told him that she and I had danced together a few times at family parties, but that’s as far as it went.
 
“Well, write and tell her that there will be no more cards like this.  In fact, she’s not to write to you at all.”
 
 
He let me go with a warning.  Now that I think back on the episode, though, I shouldn’t have been surprised at her sending me the card.  Not that I had given her any overt or covert sexual message. But I joined in the fun of family parties with all my cousins, male and female. My large extended Italian American family—uncles and aunts and cousins--was as earthy and loose about sex as they were about everything human. In their eyes I probably didn’t come across as bound for celibacy. If I ever came home wearing the robe and sandals of a Franciscan, that impression would dramatically change.
 
As I said earlier, after graduation I was destined for the next stage in the preparation for priesthood, the year of “novitiate.” Becoming a “novice” would have been my most serious step towards priesthood. When I think about my three years at St. Joe’s I recall a relatively carefree period of my life. Yes, there was the stress of classes and exams, and we were under constant supervision. But most of the basics of life were taken care of—food, shelter, the company of others (although restricted to the male sex). In addition, we took it for granted that our lives had a serious purpose—that of dedicating our lives to God and service of others—which was if not always present in our mind than as a prospect on the near horizon. Our identity as “seminarians” cemented a sense of meaningful occupation.
 
However, I didn’t continue with my classmates into novitiate. Instead, I transferred back to the west coast, staying with the Franciscans for one more academic year, 1967-68, at San Luis Rey College near Oceanside, California. It would turn out to be a crucial year—in fact, the culmination of my Franciscan experience.