Sister Agatha Wassinger, A.S.C., taught third and fourth grades in one classroom at Holy Trinity, so she had Stanley and Sister Marita together. She described Stanley as “a good child” who she never had to correct. “I think studying was a little hard, but he worked like a trooper.” One story about Stanley that she’s never forgotten was the day a doctor came to give immunization shots to the students. When Stanley saw the needle, “he turned pale. For just a second, he kind of passed out. He was so embarrassed.”
Stanley’s cousin and classmate Harold shared with him a passion for vocational agriculture activities during high school. “He showed steers. I showed pigs,” Harold remembered. Stanley was elected president of the Future Farmers of America during his senior year. “We showed our livestock at the Oklahoma City fair, and Stan won some prizes with his steers.”
Harold also described an embarrassing incident, during that same event in Oklahoma City, when he, Stanley, and other Okarche boys were caught being mischievous. “We were walking down the midway. We’d seen one of these girlie shows. As we were going up the ramp, there was a minister of a church in Okarche looking at us!”
Classmate Mary Jane Schwarz, who became Sister Denise, once she joined the Adorers of the Blood of Christ, said that Stanley was thought of as an average student academically. “He was quiet, reserved, but still kind of ornery. He always had a twinkle in his eye when he was up to something.”
Holy Trinity School and parish encouraged the students to take advantage of and participate in as many activities as their farm chores would allow — and the options were many, especially opportunities to grow in the Catholic faith. Stanley, for example, was trained by Monsignor Zenon Steber, his pastor, to be an altar server when he was only eight years old — and continued to serve until graduation from high school. In addition to daily Mass at eight o’clock every morning, the school held an annual retreat for its students. The high school yearbook for 1953, the year Stanley graduated, was dedicated to Our Lady of Fátima.
Along with his family duties, Stanley pursued a myriad of interests in high school: he was on the basketball team, first as a player and then as a manager; in Future Farmers of America, becoming FFA president his senior year; and in drama, including a title role in Don’t Take My Penny. Stanley was also involved in the movement Young Christian Students and in the Sodality of Our Lady, an association that fostered devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Stanley did not struggle academically in high school. In fact, he had only one low mark of a D, in religion, the first semester of his sophomore year. He graduated sixth in the class of 22 students.
They were a close-knit group who “ran around together” in high school, Mary Jane remembered. “We did a lot of things as a group. Stan and I wrote to each other, even while he was in Guatemala.” When Mary Jane entered religious life, Stan attended her reception and profession into the Adorers of the Blood of Christ.
Emalene Reherman Schwarz was one of a handful of young women who dated Stanley Rother in high school. A lot of the social activities, however, were done as a group. On weekend nights, for example, Emalene recalled how a group would come together to drive to the Highway 81 Cafe, 10 miles away in the larger town of Kingfisher. But if it was a Friday, she explained, the teens would wait until after midnight to have their hamburgers.
According to Emalene, Stanley was not particularly shy around girls. She remembered that Stanley’s locker was next to hers at school, and he had “a nice smile” and laughed easily. “He was a nice, quiet, pleasant person to be around, an enjoyable person, a warm person.” Physically, Stanley’s high school transcript described him as 5 feet, 10 inches tall, weighing a lean 162 pounds, with brown hair and eyes.
In the 1950s, and in this agricultural setting, it was a reliable assumption that boys would become farmers after they graduated from high school and that most girls would marry a farmer. In fact, only four people in their graduating class entered college, and of those four, three of them were religious vocations.
Needless to say, religious vocations were dynamically promoted by the sisters at the school and by the pastors at Holy Trinity. But they were also promoted by Oklahoma’s Bishop Eugene McGuinness, whose well-known motto was, “You’ve given me your money, now give me your flesh and blood!”
By 1953, four men from Okarche had been ordained priests and approximately 40 women had entered the Sisters Adorers of the Blood of Christ.
Looking back on their years growing up together in such a close community of families, many of whom were relatives as well as friends, Stanley’s classmates are especially touched that the only official reunion of the class of 1953 took place when Stanley was ordained. Franz and Gertrude Rother reserved seats for the classmates to attend and celebrate together Father Stanley Rother’s first Mass.
Stanley’s Road to the Priesthood: A Vision of Mission
The man who was Stanley’s first model of priestly ministry was Father Zenon Steber, a native of Alsace-Lorraine and former missionary. At the age of 22, Father Steber left everything he knew to serve as a priest in the tropical Gold Coast, modern-day Ghana. Although he was forced to return home after contracting a serious illness, Father Steber didn’t deter from his call to serve as a missionary priest — this time applying to Bishop Theophile Meerschaert, the vicar apostolic of Indian Territory, including the Oklahoma Territory.
When Father Steber was assigned to Okarche in 1903, it was clear from the start who was in charge. A short and stout man, Father Steber was by all accounts a commanding presence in the Catholic community at Okarche. Yet stories about his strict rules regarding the code of behavior at church and school are balanced by his personal interaction with the people.
Emalene Reherman, Stanley’s classmate and lifelong friend, admitted that as a child she was afraid of Father Steber’s strict and stern demeanor. There was a reason that misbehaving children were sent to Father Steber. The altar servers got a special dose of discipline, especially during Mass when he’d call altar servers “Dummkopf!” if they missed a cue. But Emalene also knew that “his heart was in the place of being a good priest.”
By the time Stanley was born, Holy Trinity pastor Father Steber had become a monsignor. And it was with this missionary priest that Stanley first experienced the sacraments and liturgy: his baptism, First Communion, confirmation, and reconciliation.
In the years when she was still called Betty Mae, Sister Marita remembered Monsignor Steber’s strictness, but also how much he loved being around the kids. “I remember him coming by my desk and taking long curls from each side and tying them together under my chin,” she said. “When he’d be on the playground, we would all run and want to be around him.”
In truth, we have no way to know how much Stanley took in and incorporated Monsignor Steber’s discipline, style, or French gentility. But it is safe to say that his first pastor must have influenced him deeply in his 12 years of schooling before heading to the seminary.
Perhaps the missionary spirit of Monsignor Steber even instilled in Stanley a more global and inclusive experience of the Catholic Church and its vocation to service and mission, one more expansive than Stanley would have known otherwise, growing up in Oklahoma’s farm country.
There were two other men who would directly influence Stanley’s image of the priesthood in Okarche: Father Edmund Von Elm and Father Camille Boesmans.
Father Von Elm was assigned as a pastor to Okarche in 1947 when Monsignor Steber became seriously ill. The young American pastor became a good friend of the Franz and Gertrude Rother family and spent a lot of time visiting, dining, and even working in the fields with the Rother men.
And Father Camille Boesmans, a young Belgian missionary who had been expelled from China, was assigned as associate pastor to Holy Trinity Church, ministering to the school and the parish during the four years that