I Want to Be a Priest
When you open Holy Trinity Catholic School’s 1953 yearbook, the first photo is not of the school but of the exterior of the church. Above the church picture is the sentence: “Daily Mass is the Source of Strength to live for God, to serve the neighbor, to merit for heaven.”
As Father Monahan writes in his biography of Stanley Rother, “To a Catholic youngster sensitive to color, design and symbolism, as Stanley’s later life would reveal, the old-fashioned church must have been a good teacher.”5
Stanley would have been conscious of his family’s deep and profound Catholic roots in this church and community. The side altar on the north side of the church was the gift of his greatgrandfather Frank Emil Rother. One of the church windows features St. Aloysius, a gift of Friedrich Schmitt, his maternal great-grandfather. And Stanley must have known that his greatgrandfather Schlect was the one who carved the artwork at the top of the pillars in the church. Perhaps he even found inspiration when he gazed at the window of St. Francis Xavier, the 16th-century Jesuit missionary to the Far East — a gift from two other missionaries, Bishop Meerschaert and his own pastor, Monsignor Steber.
We don’t know exactly when, or for how long, Stanley discerned his priestly vocation. In truth, the long-standing assumption in the family, and for most of the boys in his graduation class, was that Stanley would become a farmer like his father, and his father’s father.
We do know that Betty Mae announced her vocation decision first. She told her parents that she was ready to skip senior year and join the community of sisters that had been so present and active in her entire life, the Adorers of the Blood of Christ.
When Stanley finally told them his news, his parents were more than a little surprised by the announcement.
“I didn’t know he was going to the seminary,” remembered Sister Marita. “I thought he was going to farm. We all did. I found out about his plans when we were both arranging to leave the same year — which wasn’t too smart of us,” she added. In retrospect, it must have been particularly difficult on their mother to say good-bye to both of them that same year.
Tom distinctly remembered the summer he turned 13. “First, they drove Betty Mae to the convent in Wichita, then my parents turned around and picked up Stan’s luggage and drove him to San Antonio — all on the same trip.” On a practical level, “it was hard on us when they left. Sister Marita used to help me dig potatoes, and that was over. And Stan helped milk cows, so Jim and I had to take care of the cow milking and all the chores. Then my dad always had a hundred acres of alfalfa to put up, so that put the load on us, and the plowing and the combining.”
Indeed, life would never be the same for the Rother family after that year.
Everything Changes: The First Seminary
In September 1953, 18-year-old Stanley began the first of two years at St. John’s Seminary, a preparatory program in San Antonio, Texas, designed for young men arriving straight out of high school.
Even for a disciplined farming teenager used to hard work, like Stanley, the rigorous and formulaic schedule of the school must have been a surprise. Rising bell at 5:30 a.m. Lights out at 10 p.m. Assigned times for prayer, meditation, and spiritual reading. Mass. Study and reading periods. Appointed recreation and relaxation hours.
Vincentian priests administered St. John’s Seminary, and its sequel in graduate work, Assumption Seminary. A religious community that pioneered higher education throughout the Midwest and Texas in the early 1900s, the Vincentians had a special charism for missions and seminary education.
As Father Monahan noted, “[T]hey pushed what they considered sound piety, an adequate understanding of holy things, adherence to the rules of the house and the essentials of being a gentleman.”6
St. John’s seminary was located next to Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de Acuña, one of San Antonio’s five mission churches founded by Spanish Franciscans in the early 1700s. From its architectural design to its artistic frescoes and limestone carvings, the historic mission church must have fascinated and surprised Stanley as he attended daily Mass there with the other seminarians — a foreshadowing of an even older Spanish church he would encounter years later.
Stanley completed the first year at St. John’s without incident, and he went home to Okarche the following summer to work the family farm, helping his father and brothers with the harvest.
During those early seminary years, “Stan would always be home for harvest,” recalled Tom. “Dad would run one combine and Stan would run the other one.” One particularly busy harvest, “Dad and Jim were cutting wheat with one combine and Stan and Father Von Elm were binding oats at the same time,” Tom remembered. Father Von Elm not only visited the Rother farm with great frequency, but one summer he also made money for his vacation by working by the hour for Franz Rother.
One of Stanley’s close seminary friends, Joseph Hybner, remembered enlisting his help in planting holly bushes and American elm trees on the campus, many of which are still standing. “Stanley was very strong, very tough. If we needed something moved, we called on Stanley.” Joe, who was also from a farming family, explained, “We weren’t afraid of work.”
During one school break, Stanley and a group of seminarians traveled with Joe to his hometown of Shiner, Texas, where they visited the Shiner Brewery and danced at a community dance hall. The next day, the two young men visited the local Catholic high school and were taken by surprise when some of the girls in the school recognized them: “Those are the guys we danced with last night!”
Stanley’s courses in his first two years at St. John Prep were pretty basic: speech, logic, English, education, religion, and Latin. And his grades were mediocre, at best, including an A in religion, but Ds in English and logic.
Decades later, Sister Marita was surprised to find out that Stanley began keeping a daily diary during his second year at St. John’s. His entries were succinct and almost always factual, listing events he attended and people he was with. But perhaps not surprising, what never varied were his frequent remarks about the weather.
On September 6, 1954, the beginning of his second year at St. John’s, he wrote: “Arrived at Seminary today. Saw the show ‘The Egyptian.’ Started our half-day recollection tonight after night prayers. Warm. Weight 168.”
Stanley wrote his diary as though he was talking to someone, although obviously not expecting that anyone else would read it. He often mentioned receiving or writing letters to family, in particular to home, meaning to his parents.
His journal entries also revealed an early and sincere concern about his studies, including his ability to succeed in the seminary. In spite of the limited four-line space allowed by his journal for each day’s entry, it is significant how often Stanley mentioned how long he spent on classes, whether or not he was prepared for a class — even listing the grades he received.
In November 1954, for example, Stanley recorded in his journal the grades for his first quarter of studies:
| Speech C | Religion A |
| Logic D- | Latin C- |
| English D- | |
| Education C- |
Looking over her brother’s journal entries decades later, Sister Marita observed: “He was honest and open, baring his feelings in some regard, acknowledging he had faults, and open about his relationships with the priests and other seminarians, as well as his relationship with Mary, Mother of God, and his God.”
It wasn’t until reading the journals that Sister Marita learned that it was in his late teens, maybe 20, when Stanley developed the habit of smoking a pipe. Not surprising, said Sister