More letters to the editor
Memories
This edition [Spring 2004] brought back "long ago" memories. When I graduated (or was it discharged?) from Elder High School in 1941 I wanted to go to UC and study architecture. My father insisted that I go to XU's evening college, which was downtown, as this edition shows. My dad had gone to St. Xavier High School in the same building. He also insisted that I enroll in the business administration program.
The financial program was taught by "Uncle" Joe Link (also in this edition). He was a real character and excellent motivator and teacher. At the end of the year the accounting professor took me aside and told me to study medicine, engineering or something else, but get out of accounting. I took his advice and enrolled in UC's evening college. As they did not have an evening program in architecture, I enrolled in mechanical engineering.
Uncle Sam came after me in early 1943 and woe and behold I was in the Army now. They did not know what to do with me so they sent me to the Pennsylvania State College for a year to study...mechanical engineering. Then to the Corps of Engineers as a map maker. When the Armistice was signed in Europe my outfit was sent to Germany to finish mapping Patton's route to Moscow. As Germany was farther from Cincinnati than Paris, I secured a transfer to a payroll department to work on the P.O.W. pay accumulation payroll (alas, back to accounting, which I was told to avoid). Upon my discharge from the Army, I returned to UC, attending three nights a week and some Saturdays (Sunday was reserved for large engineering homework problems) and graduated in 1957 with a B.S. in M.E. degree.
During this period I returned home one evening and saw three little kids in our house. My wife informed me that if I would socialize with the family rather than go to work and school, and study all the time, I would know that they were my children. Anyway, upon my UC graduation, I returned to XU for the M.B.A. program. In spite of what the accounting professor told me at the old downtown campus, I passed the managerial accounting course requirement. Bob Helmes, with whom I had worked, received his part-time study D.B. degree from Ohio State and became the Dean of XU's evening college. Bob asked me to teach the evening purchasing class (purchasing was my profession—I was seduced from engineering work to the business end by the offer of a much larger salary in 1947). I taught the course for 13 years.
During this time I retired from the City of Cincinnati at the tender age of 54. After my retirement from the city, at the suggestion of Helmes and friends on the business and engineering staff at UC (where I took advanced graduate courses), I secured a Ph.D. from an adult school named California Western University after two grueling years of study and research. I then also taught the M.B.A. materials management course until I retired the second time in 1992, for good.
That is my story about XU's downtown campus, Joe Link and my return to XU. By the way, one of our granddaughters is an XU student, and I love the "new" campus.
Ed Lohaus, '62 MBA
Seeing With Two Eyes
Fr. Bracken writes "We've got to change our concept of God" and "We find the self revelation of God in Jesus Christ." [For the Love of God, Spring 2004] I believe both are true, our perception of Christ and the reality of Christ are not yet aligned and because of this we are not properly formed in Christ. Jesus was formed by two persons—the Holy Spirit and Mary—and seeing the "and" here is critical to seeing the whole picture. Jesus spent 30 years being formed in the love of his mother, and then was empowered for public ministry by the Holy Spirit. God chose to reflect unique aspects of His wholeness in the incarnation of Jesus through each parent. Were not each of our hearts formed from our mother's? Marian formation in love and humility precedes and magnifies the Holy Spirit's power to bring about the kingdom of peace and justice.
I find my concept of God flawed when I look at God solely from within my own gender paradigm. God made men in His image and made women in His image, yet men and women each see and manifest God uniquely. When I, a father, look at God only from the perspective of my fatherly heart, I see him only out of one eye, as it were. When I give my heart to Mary, she gives her heart to me, then I can see God with two eyes—from the perspective of a mother's heart and that of a father's. Two are gathered as one and suddenly 10 fold more of God's wholeness are revealed through this stereo perspective. This is the fruit of the Church's tradition of consecration to Jesus through Mary.
I believe radical religion and terrorism result from compartmentalizing and isolating love of God from love of neighbor. Saul terrorized and killed Christians out of love of God before his conversion to Paul. Years later, he discovered the importance of love above all other spiritual gifts. I find this compartmentalizing common to man's thinking, but foreign to Mary's because she is Mother of all. She does not discriminate but holds her love of God and love of all mankind in her one immaculate heart. The only new commandment Jesus gave us also places the love of God and love of neighbor together into one sacred heart. Thus, he totally loves his father and totally loves his mother and totally loves each of us with the same heart, and he gave us a new commandment to love in this same way.
It is my hope and prayer that all Xavier graduates are formed in the love of the Immaculate Heart as well as the power of the Holy Spirit. Those graduates will be properly formed in Christ and will learn to use the power of the Spirit to creatively bring about perfect mercy and perfect justice without war. How many wars have been started by mothers? Who is it that continually tempts us to ignore and dismiss the women in our midst? Without our Mother's Immaculate Heart to aid our vision and formation, we will continue to misuse and profane the power of the Spirit to accomplish that which is not his perfect will. The Kingdom of Heaven will continue to suffer violence, and the violent will continue to attempt to take it by force.
Paul Cranley, Class of 1971
