Thomas Kennealy, S.J.: Looking Back on 50 Years
Jul 25, 2019
Thomas Kennealy grew up in a Catholic family on Cincinnati’s west side. The oldest of six children, Kennealy attended St. Xavier High School downtown. He was so inspired by his Jesuit teachers that he decided in his senior year to join the priesthood. In 1949, he entered the Society of Jesus, earned master’s degrees in Classical Language, French and Linguistics, as well as a licentiate in Theology and Philosophy, and was ordained in 1962. He recently celebrated his 70th anniversary—the Jubilee year.
“l felt that was what God called me to do,” he says. “The idea of life as a preacher and teacher of young people was appealing to me. I can honestly say, I look back on those 70 years, and it was the right thing to do.”
Kennealy, 88, retired in May after 50 years at Xavier. He held many roles—faculty member, associate dean, committee chair and most recently, University Archivist. Below, he shares his thoughts and memories of what he did, what he learned and whom he met along the way.
THE EARLY YEARS
In 1965 I had gone to the Milford seminary and was teaching Latin and Greek, and suddenly there were no students. The seminary was huge and I would have spent my career teaching young novices, but that ended abruptly in the late 1960s. I was without a job so they sent me to Xavier in the fall of 1969 to teach French and linguistics for the English Department.
In 1969 there were major problems in the country. We were in turmoil. The Vietnam War tore the country apart, there was the Civil Rights Movement, we had riots a few blocks away, and Vatican II was making changes in the Catholic Church—I thought the changes were long overdue. These were very crucial issues. It was a time of great confusion and was disturbing to all of us at the time. That was the Xavier to which I came.
ON STUDENTS
There was a great deal of agitation with the students, and a great deal of freedom was accorded them, and we are better for it. It is a great deal different today. Students today have become much more serious and focused because life is more complicated. They know life won’t be easy. There is a seriousness today about students. They have lost of some of their spontaneity, but that makes teaching them a bit easier.
ON TEACHING
Teaching language is different because you are engaging the student not lecturing to them. I talked to them in French all the time. I enjoyed it and continued teaching one class a semester after I went to the dean’s office.
IN THE DEAN’S OFFICE
In 1974 I became assistant dean then associate dean for the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Social Sciences (now the College of Professional Sciences). I am most proud of the work we did with good academic advising. I was convinced it was essential and those students who needed it got the extra help. I was concerned with how they were doing and spent a lot of time helping them change majors or courses, or if they had problems. They would confide in me.
A wonderful thing happened to me around 2004. A group of students asked me to be their moderator of a club devoted to prayer and bible study called Life After Sunday. It still exists and is one of the real consolations and graces of my years at Xavier. It was an entrée for me to help students build faith and find God.
AS DISCIPLINARIAN
As the disciplinarian, my task was to decide which students would not return. It was always difficult to do. Sometimes it’s the most honest thing to do—and one of the most painful aspects of the job. But I owed it to the students to be honest—and to the University as well.
AS ARCHIVIST
In 2006 I decided to retire, but there was still one job I wanted to do. There was no archivist, and so I became the archivist that fall, and I worked that job until just now. The archives were sadly neglected. When I walked into the climate control room the first time, I was appalled. Things were left lying around. I found all kinds of interesting things—publications about the University, minutes of Board of Trustee meetings, documents going back to the founding of the University. I rescued them, put them in order and digitized them.
I found the Historia Domus going back to 1846-1848. It’s the Jesuits’ History of the House. In every Jesuit house, at the end of the year, someone wrote up a history of what happened that year, always in Latin. There were letters written in Latin going back to the 1800s to our superiors in Rome. A student named Charlie Rosebrough was good at Latin and I gave him the job of translating the Historia Domus. He got the bulk of it done and it’s now digitized.
There was also an intriguing story about St. Xavier downtown in the 1880s. The church had a terrible fire on Holy Thursday. The roof collapsed into the church and only the walls and foundation remained. The fire was of unknown origin, but I found out in the Historia Domus that the writer thought it was arson because it began in the front and back of the church simultaneously. Another Jesuit Diary also describes the fire and thought it was arson. It was during the days of the anti-Catholic movement prejudice in Cincinnati.
We also found records about when Xavier became a university in 1931. There was discussion about changing the name for about 20 years. Finally around 1931, our anniversary year, Father Brockman put an end to the discussion. Some of the suggested names were Sheridan University, Cardinal Newman University, Cardinal Bellarmine University, Southwest Ohio University, St. Xavier University. One alum said get rid of ‘Saint’ and that’s the decision that was eventually made. 
We began to do oral histories…and also gave talks about Xavier history. Fr. Francis Finn is my favorite. He wrote 35 or so novels with characters and dialogue for boys and even one for girls. He was a principal and superintendent of St. Xavier grade school downtown for poor children from the Bottoms area. They were immigrants. He declared free school tuition for all but he raised money to get the school an endowment. He got to know the poor people downtown and was so concerned about a girl and her siblings living on their own that he went every Saturday with groceries.
IMPORTANT MOMENTS IN XAVIER HISTORY
One was the decision to go big with basketball and build the Cintas Center. Fr. (James) Hoff, S.J., was a close friend. He raised our vision in a way no one else did. When he gave his inaugural address at Music Hall, he pledged to raise the endowment from $25 million to over $100 million and recruited people like Charlie Gallagher and Bob Kohlhepp and Mike Conaton to support Xavier. He made a difference at Xavier.
ON 50 YEARS
I never thought I would be here 50 years, but I suspected I would be here a long time. I became tenured faculty, and Xavier became my anchor. The years truly have flown by. When I moved here in 1969, I lived in a house on Ledgewood Avenue, then in 1970 we Jesuits moved into Schott Hall and filled it until 1990 when our numbers began shrinking. We gave Schott Hall back to the University and moved into the Jesuit Residence on campus.
ON AGING
The secret is associating with young people. You can’t avoid aging, but you don’t have to get old. Aging is one thing, but growing old is a matter of the soul. You don’t have to let that happen. What’s helped me is being with young people. I do believe the students gave me as much as I gave them. They kept me young.
WHAT’S NEXT?
I want to build on my interest in Fr. Finn, research his life and works and write up a biographical sketch. He was a hero to me. He was everything a good Jesuit should be—he had deep faith and did wonderful things with his talents. He was an innovator and educator and a social apostle to needy families. I still do the noon Mass at Bellarmine every Thursday. I told the library crew I was stepping down but not out. I’m not leaving Xavier. Xavier has been very good to me.
By Brendan Bergen and France Sloat, Office of Marketing and Communications