Yellowjackets Club Newsletter – August 2024

Sunday, August 25, we celebrated the birthday of Fr. Bob McGrath.

From around 1960 to 1968, Fr. McGrath served as a vocation director for the Oblates’ Southern Province. It’s remarkable how many students entered St. Anthony during those years because of their contact with him.

Fr. McGrath never taught at St. A’s, and I doubt many of us know much about his life. So, let’s start with his parents—John and Marie Griffin McGrath. Both, I believe, were born in Chicago.

They had three children: Marilyn (born in 1926), John J. (1927), and Robert James (August 25, 1929).

The family always lived on the South Side of Chicago, and during the 1930s they bought a home in the Canaryville neighborhood.

The Encyclopedia of Chicago says that Canaryville, a largely Irish community, “enjoyed a reputation as one of the toughest neighborhoods in the city from the late 19th century through much of the 20th century…. Given its proximity to the stockyards, the area’s physical environment and economic life were shaped by livestock and meatpacking from the 1860s until the industry’s decline in the postwar era…. Gangs helped establish the neighborhood’s truculent reputation…. Boasting a strong Democratic Party machine throughout the twentieth century, Canaryville also embraced a rich Roman Catholic cultural life centered on St. Gabriel’s Parish.”

The cornerstone to St. Gabriel’s was laid in 1887. Even the church history says, “it was primarily an Irish parish, supported by Irish immigrants working in the Chicago stockyards.”

The McGrath family home was on the same block as St. Gabriel’s Church and its elementary school. All three of the McGrath children, I believe, attended elementary school at St. Gabriel’s.

According to the 1940 census, Fr. McGrath’s father, who had only attended school through the 8th grade, worked as chief clerk for a railroad.

After St. Gabriel, Bob’s older sister Marilyn attended Mercy, an all-girls Catholic high school on the South Side, where she was taught by the Sisters of Mercy. She then attended college at Mundelein—an all-girls Catholic school, also on the South Side, where she was taught by the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She graduated in 1948.

Fr. McGrath’s older brother John went a different route. He left Chicago and entered St. Anthony as a freshman in high school in 1941. Younger brother Bob followed him two years later, entering in 1943.

Also in Fr. Bob’s freshman class was a fellow Chicagoan—a Polish guy named John Sokolski.

The Paduan reports that during his time at St. A’s, Fr. Bob played sports on the B teams for two years, but “a serious accident” prevented him from playing any varsity sports. He was a two-year member of the choir, and he was active in the Paduan. In his junior year, he was assistant editor. In his senior year, he served as editor.

The final Paduan before his class graduated asked what each member donated to the students coming up behind them. It said that Bob donated his humor, his personality, and his “Pepsodent smile.” He graduated from high school in 1947 and then finished his first year of college at St. Anthony in 1948.

Interesting bit of St. A’s history: from 1944 to 1955, St. A’s graduates left for the Novitiate after only one year of college. (The school even included an eighth grade from 1944 to 1949.)

Following his first year of college at St. Anthony, Bob McGrath entered the Oblate Novitiate of Notre Dame in Richelieu, Quebec, Canada—about 20 miles east of Montreal and the St. Lawrence River. He professed his first vows in 1949 and returned to San Antonio for his philosophy and theology studies at the DeMazenod Scholasticate (now the Oblate School of Theology).

Fr. Bob stayed quite busy at the major seminary. He was in the choir and was involved in the theater. He taught catechism in Port Lavaca for two years and was an assistant at the Oblate summer villa. He helped build a sidewalk in front of the Grotto at the DeMazenod Scholasticate and planted hedges. And above all, he was a writer and editor. He served as a correspondent for the Oblate publication in Rome, he was associate editor and a columnist for “Mary Immaculate Magazine” (a publication of the Oblates’ Southern U.S. Province), and he filled almost every staff position on the Scholasticate’s newspaper “The Observer,” including reporter, columnist, news editor, art editor, managing editor, and editor in chief.

Fr. Bob’s older brother John was ordained by Archbishop Lucey on September 8, 1953, at St. Mary’s Church in downtown San Antonio. He then began 50 years of parish ministry in such Texas towns as Harlingen, Port Lavaca, San Benito, Edinburg, Sweetwater, Kingsville, Brownsville, Carrizo Springs, Del Rio, Corpus Christi, and Eagle Pass.

Two years after his older brother, Fr. Bob McGrath was ordained to the priesthood on September 8, 1955. He too was ordained in St. Mary’s Church in San Antonio by Archbishop Lucey. It should be noted that Fr. Bob’s fellow Chicago classmate John Sokolski also was ordained that day.

Fr. Bob McGrath’s first assignments were at Sacred Heart Parish in McAllen, and then at Sacred Heart in Brownsville.

And it was around 1960 that he was appointed to serve as one of the vocation directors for the Oblates Southern Province.

It could not have been an easy life being a vocation director. He had to be on the go all the time, traveling from one town to the next.

My suspicion is that the summer Workshops were the best tool he and the other vocation directors had. No need to make a lifetime commitment at this point, he probably said to each potential applicant. Just come down for a week and see what you think of the place. Once the boy was at the Workshop, then they could try to sell him on coming back as a freshman.

I know I was interviewed by Fr. Bob at one and maybe both Workshops I attended. I suspect most of us were.

As I recall, Fr. Bob had a warm, friendly, easy-going manner about him—and he did have a great smile (as the Paduan once noted). Attendance at St. A’s was strong during most of the 1960s. I feel certain he deserves much of the credit for that.

His term as vocation director ended in 1968. After that, Fr. McGrath first was assigned to be the retreat master at Ave Maria Retreat House in Marrero, a suburb of New Orleans. He also served at St. Patrick’s in Houston, at Sacred Heart in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and at Queen of Peace in Aurora, Colorado. During his time in Colorado, he also served as chaplain to the Catholic Boys Scouts in the Pikes Peak region, as chaplain to the Sierra Club, and as a member of the Vicariate Council of the southern region of the Denver Archdiocese.

In later years, Fr. Bob was the first pastor of Blessed Sacrament in Houston. His last assignment was as chaplain at Incarnate Word Convent in Corpus Christi. In 2001, he retired to the Oblate Madonna Residence.

Fr. McGrath passed away on May 30, 2006, at the age of 76.

Bob Webking once noted how many times Fr. McGrath shows up in our biographies and suggested that we consider Fr. McGrath to be an honorary member of our Class of 1969. I would agree with that.

I know we’ll all want to take a moment to remember Fr. Bob McGrath—the priest who led many of us to St. Anthony—on what would have been his 95th birthday.

Tom Kleinworth, Class of ’69.

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