13 minute read
True Believer
If one Jesuit is a tough act to follow, imagine following 27. By all accounts, though, Prep’s first lay president is up to the task, bringing together a deep appreciation for the charism of Jesuit education, an impressive resume as a teacher and administrator, and a vision for forming young men in the 21 st century. His unabashed love of Prep’s past and present and boundless enthusiasm for its future don’t hurt, either.
by Mike Jiran, ’03
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At the Mass of the Holy Spirit in September, Michael Gomez, Ed.D., ’91 (center) was formally commissioned as Prep’s 28th president. Participating in the ceremony were, left to right, former Prep president Joe Parkes, S.J., ’62 (now the Provincial Assistant for Secondary and Pre-Secondary Education), Phil McGovern, ’76, P’11 (chair of Prep’s board of trustees) and Suvan Bhat, ’20 (Student Council president).
Mike Jiran, '03
Prep’s new president is beaming. Maybe you, too, were already in awe of Saint Peter’s Prep. Maybe his earnestness in declaring his own reverence has won you over. Either way, you find yourself nodding along and a smile breaking across your face. It’s Thursday, September 5. In the Prep library at the start of his 67 th day in office, Michael Gomez, Ed.D.,’91 is addressing Prep’s faculty and staff during the first of a series of opening meetings for the school year. This scene, and that statement, profound in its simplicity, would echo throughout the first 100 days for Prep’s 28 th president: in informal conversations with colleagues in July (days 1-31) and various small groups of students in August (days 32-63), at freshman orientation (day 60), and at the President’s Reception (day 80), among others. It carried into day 103 as he met with a group of 7 th graders touring the campus.
For now, though, back in the library, the mood is infectious, and a tone is being set. Some have wasted no time in donning their 2019-20 Faculty/Staff T-shirts, which proclaim these 130 women and men to be “A Peter’s Team,” and introduce a theme for the year:
Over the next two days, members of Prep’s adult community will prepare for the year ahead, in part, by sharing pictures and words that answer a simple question: “Why do I work at Saint Peter’s Prep?” The answers are as diverse as the people who share them, but common themes emerge: family, joy, love, faith, commitment.
On a Thursday morning in October, Dr. Gomez (who prefers to be addressed as Michael, (“except by students”) sits behind a small wooden desk, his late father’s desk, in his office at the end of Shalloe Hall. Those themes that emerged in the “why” exercise, he explains, are the backbone of Prep’s culture, perhaps its greatest single asset. “Obviously, I think there’s an awesome energy in the building right now. There’s a palpable vibe filled with joy and hope and excitement as we look ahead,” he says. “Our faculty and staff clearly love our young men wholeheartedly, and it’s clear we’re all striving to teach them not just how to make a living, but how to live.”
Culture is lived, seen, heard, felt. The hallway leading to the president’s office is dark, aside from the lights in three trophy cases that arrived this summer. The treasures on display are by no means an attempt at an exhaustive catalog of Prep’s successes; instead they are a collection of athletic, co-curricular, and academic awards, along with other relics, brought together by the various teachers, coaches, and administrators who previously held them—some with a personal attachment, some by the random chance of having inherited an office and found an old trophy in a closet. They were arranged in the cases by many hands: Dre Bellamy and Rocko Tejada, P’19 of Prep’s operations staff, first and foremost, but also various denizens of Shalloe’s second floor, including Maryphyllis Locricchio, P’95,’96, assistant to four presidents over the past 25 years, and Michael himself. The trophies span several decades and run the gamut of Prep life. If there’s a common thread, it’s that they are all first-place trophies, “Except my baseball cap from when I was captain of the best 14-12 Prep baseball team of all time,” he laughs.
Past a display case of Prep spirit pins through the years, on the left, is the office that has housed Prep’s presidents starting with the legendary Jim Keenan, S.J. “I saw Fr. Keenan the morning of the Mass of the Holy Spirit,” the current tenant remarks, “and I asked if I could borrow his office for the next fifteen years or so.” If the space itself can be read as a cultural object, a walk through it reveals four things are held in the highest esteem. The first is openness, from the open door to the airy layout of the space that invites conversation with colleagues, students, and other visitors. The second is the responsibility of leadership, as seen in the photographs of world leaders past and present and an extensive library of books on management and pedagogy. The third is Bruce Springsteen. The fourth, more important even than The Boss, is Prep itself: its history, its people, its personal impact. “I’ve had the opportunity to earn degrees from a number of great institutions,” Michael is fond of saying, and on his office wall is the evidence: Penn, SUNY Binghamton, Columbia, Providence College. “But,” he adds, “the one that has made the greatest difference is right here at 144.” Indeed, his Prep diploma holds a place of pride on the bookshelf, alongside the books he taught as a member of Prep’s English department from 1997-2002. Directly opposite the desk hangs a framed copy of “I am the Prep,” a poem by Tom Hart, ’61. “I keep it in my line of sight because it’s a reminder to be humble,” Michael explains. “Those last lines, ‘...with full intent that, when I have moved on, each time and place and the lives thereof shall be better for my having been there,’ that’s the goal...My time as president will be limited. I hope it doesn’t end for a long time, but it will end.
Personalized for the Gomez family, this copy of "I am the Prep" occupies a place of pride in the president's office
Mike Jiran, '03
That’s a high bar, of course, because Prep is already in a position of tremendous strength. Under the guidance of the past three presidents (Jim Keenan, S.J., Bob Reiser, S.J., and Ken Boller, S.J.) the past 25 years have seen the campus thoroughly modernized to meet the demands of an ever-growing program of academic, co-curricular, and athletic offerings. The curriculum continues to develop in measured response to the demands of a changing and interconnected world, the desire of many students to challenge themselves with a broader and deeper range of coursework, and the opportunities presented by improvements to the physical plant. The visual and performing arts are thriving. And in the background, through it all, Prep’s downtown Jersey City backyard continues to evolve beyond the imagination of even the most wild-eyed civic booster.
An array of trophies, reflecting the diversity of Prep’s academic, athletic, and co-curricular achievements, illuminates the hallway leading to the president’s office.
Mike Jiran, '03
So what comes next? As Prep approaches its sesquicentennial, Michael gives the kind of answer you’d expect from a proud product of Jesuit education—succinct, straightforward, and deceptively simple at first, with the built-in promise of more layers left to unpack:
This might sound like just a call for more bricks and mortar; it’s not. “Prep is so much more than our buildings,” Michael explains. “It’s the entire Prep experience that these buildings allow us to provide.” Rather, “Build up,” “build on,” and “build always” are three distinct but related pathways to Prep’s continued success.
First, “We must continue to build these young men up, build our faculty and staff up, and let everyone know we are in this together, together, together.”This means continuing to provide students with the academic background and the self-confidence to realize “they can put a dent in the universe,” which is, of course, a more modern echo of Ignatius’ call to “set the world on fire.” Sometimes it also means greeting students at the doors in the morning or leading a P-R-E-P chant at a football game. Sometimes it means reminding administrators, teachers, and students alike, “your success is my success; your failure
Welcoming the Class of 2023 during freshman orientation, Dr. Gomez explains the “Prep kind of love” they can expect to experience at Grand & Warren.
Mike Jiran, '03
is my failure,” or “the greatest sin at Saint Peter’s Prep isn’t failing; it’s not trying your best.” It’s this embrace of humility that ultimately forms the core of Prep’s identity as a Jesuit institution, striving to love one another the way God loves us. It is, in Michael’s words, “A Prep kind of love, a love that challenges these young men, holds them accountable, teaches them to think independently and critically. It’s a love that teaches them to value collaboration and the powerful statement, ‘I don’t know yet, can you please help me?’”
Like generations of Prep men, Michael expresses a faith fundamentally shaped by Prep’s retreat program. “At the core of my faith is the Emmaus story, which I heard for the first time as a junior on Emmaus 83,” he explains. “The idea of finding God in the mundane, ‘in the breaking of the bread,’ completely changed my way of seeing the world, as did the expression ‘our hearts on fire,’ and just sharing our faith and our joy with others, it all began on that retreat. That’s when I really started to understand something that we try to teach our young men at Prep: we are clearly imperfectible, and will forever be imperfectible, but we will forever be loved by God and called to love one another.”
This is the ground that Prep will build on. “We build on our legacy, our glory, our pride. We build on that foundation.” What is “Our Pride and Our Glory,” aside from the song that now concludes not only assemblies but also the school day each Friday? It’s an indomitable spirit, humble yet resilient. One that ”says ‘we will always win.’ Maybe not immediately, but eventually.” It’s the vision that sees opportunities in challenges, victory in defeat, greater learning in moments of struggle. In his remarks to the school community following his commissioning at the Mass of the Holy Spirit, Michael cast even Prep’s familiar Marauder athletic logo in the role of this sort of visionary. One theory for the presence of the eyepatch in the stereotypical image of a pirate, he explained, is that 18th-century sailors might have covered one eye while on deck in the sun’s glare, then switched to cover the other in the gloom below deck, reducing the time it took their eyes to adjust and quite literally find the light in the darkness. Whatever Prep does, it does from a place of stability, building upon nearly 150 years of history, more than 470 years of Jesuit educational tradition, and a healthy dose of that spirit, the essence of what Michael calls”Prep Magic.” It’s present, he explains, even in Prep’s most challenging moments, from the 1989 football team’s come-from-behind win in the state final, to the first days back after Hurricane Sandy slammed Jersey City, all the way up to his experience as a young English teacher as Prep’s faculty and administration sprung into action, “with no playbook,” as the unimaginable unfolded before their eyes on 9/11. “We rallied to ensure every student was cared for and got home... then set up Prep as a refuge for displaced folks who needed a place to stay.” He often cites this as the moment that inspired him to shift his career focus from the classroom to educational administration.
The “first 100 days” provided an opportunity to step back and look at everything with fresh eyes—even the eyepatch worn by the familiar Marauder icon.
Mike Jiran, '03
Michael cites the leadership of then-principal Jack Raslowsky, ’79 and Prep’s administration as the events of 9/11 unfolded in Prep’s backyard as a major career influence. The duo of presidents (Jack became the first lay president at Xavier High School in 2013) caught up this fall at Prep’s Athletic Hall of Fame dinner.
Mark Wyville, '76, P'11,'17
Prep has done great things, through the hard work of so many on campus and with the dedicated support of so many in the broader Prep community, and there’s much to celebrate. But Michael remains realistic about what’s needed if the school is to continue making strides. “We need a multi-purpose space to provide a home for theatre and concerts. We need more gym space, more places just to play. We need more room for art.” Looking out the window at the roof of what is now O’Keefe Commons, but was Saint Peter’s Church until the Archdiocese closed it a decade ago, he adds, “We need a dining hall that’s not undersized and in a converted church.”And perhaps most significantly for Prep’s mission, in order to make the many gifts of a Prep education attainable for students and their families, “We must continue to build our endowment to provide financial aid and scholarships.”
Pressed to identify one more need, he smiles as he glances over to the office wall and the wooden carving of his favorite building. “We need an updated English building.” The smile becomes a laugh. “I’m sorry, Fr. Joyce,” he adds, referring to his predecessor (and Prep’s president during his student days), Jim Joyce, S.J., who dubbed it the Humanities Building in the early ‘90s. “But now that I’m president, can I just change it to the English building?”
Whatever you call it (indeed, prior generations of alumni might call it the Freshman Building or even the Science Building), the building across Warren Street holds a special place in Michael’s heart. It’s clear his time teaching in E304 left its mark on him, and indeed, he left his mark on the room, too. On each of the three classroom floors in the building, the room numbered “-04” is long and narrow and known to many teachers through the years as “the bowling alley.” Since the installation of an elevator during the Keys to the Future capital campaign of the ’90s, each of these rooms has also had a large closet (or a small office) tucked away behind the elevator. In that out-of-theway space, in E304, there is a note from a former occupant, scrawled on the wall before he left for Omaha to become assistant principal for student affairs at Creighton Prep:
Michael’s note to future occupants of his former classroom. Katherine Lochbrunner, who taught Latin in E304 from 2002-2005, followed suit upon her own departure.
Mike Jiran, '03
That enthusiasm has only grown stronger in the past 17 years, and if Prep’s new president sounds like its number one cheerleader, there’s something to that. After all, Michael did serve as the Marauder mascot during his senior year, and on an October Friday, he was only too happy to join current Marauder Nick Gronda, ’20 and his henchmen in leading the school in a rousing chorus of the Prep fight song over the PA system. But while the energy he brings to the work is impossible to overlook, it’s just the beginning.
As Prep approaches its sesquicentennial, it does so with a seasoned and substantive leader at the helm. Six years as principal at Saint Joseph’s Prep in Philadelphia and seven as the founding principal of Cristo Rey Philadelphia High School have provided ample experience in every aspect of the life of a Jesuit school: guiding and maintaining an institutional culture, leading and empowering the team that brings the mission to life, supporting the pursuit of excellence in academics, athletics, and co-curriculars, building relationships with donors and other stakeholders who scaffold the work, and everything in between. Working with a team to build a school from the ground up was excellent preparation for the work of leading Prep to the next level. But it’s also plain to see it was a role Michael truly cherished, and that Cristo Rey was a community that embraced him wholeheartedly.
Among all the superlatives he joyfully heaps upon his alma mater, that might be the most powerful endorsement of all.
The former Marauder joined his successor and the current crop of Henchmen to lead the school in the Prep fight song, “A Peter’s Team,” via speakerphone.
Mike Jiran, '03
