FA C U LT Y S P O T L I G H T
MARTY M CABE c
Valued Member of Priory Community for Almost 60 Years Teacher, coach, campus resident, administrator, mentor — very few members of our community have been involved in as many aspects of life at 500 South Mason as Marty McCabe. McCabe grew up in north St. Louis near Sherman Park. His father was an ironworker, his mother built torpedoes during World War II and worked for Knight Drug Company and a doctor’s office, and he had one older brother. He attended St. Mark’s Grade School and McBride High School. “I thought I was going to play some college basketball, but I got hurt my senior year,” he says. He volunteered for the draft, assuming the injury would disqualify him and then he could start looking for jobs. “Well, they drafted me, and so off I went!” He spent two years in the Army, including 18 months serving a deployment in Germany just outside of Nuremberg. After the Army, he attended Saint Louis University. An avid amateur baseball and basketball player, he continued his baseball career for SLU, and graduated in 3.5 years. During his senior year, he married his wife Sue, and they eventually had a family of eight children. A history and education major, his first job out of college was teaching civics and coaching basketball at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in North County. After a year on the faculty there, he had his first opportunity to come to Priory.
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“I met Father Paul when I was refereeing basketball,” McCabe says. “He asked me out to have dinner with the monks, and it was quite an experience because no one was talking, just one monk was reading.” It was another year before the job at Priory would pan out, so McCabe spent a year teaching at Belleville Cathedral High School, which was run by the Marianists. He joined Priory’s faculty in 1962 teaching 7th grade algebra and theology. “I enjoyed teaching the Old Testament because of all the stories. It was easy to get the kids excited about it and involved in it,” he says. George Halenkamp ’71 says the example McCabe set as a father also made him a natural fit to teach in the Junior School. “He’s probably the finest family man ever,” he says. “I think that’s part of why they had him teaching with the young guys — he was so good with kids that age because he always had one or two of his own!”
Enjoying the Priory Golf Scramble: Marty McCabe Jr. ’80, Bob McCabe ’88, Jerry McCabe ’81, Marty McCabe Sr., Bob Heitz ’11, and Joe Heitz ’09
