OP-ED: A hidden talent discovered 50 years later
In 1970, I was recruited to teach at a junior high school in Johnstown.
Although the 1970s would mark the beginning of the American steel industry’s decline, Johnstown was still a happening place. There were jobs, families, and lots of kids in the city schools. My bands and orchestras regularly had well over 100 students, and that number remained high throughout my years there.
With four performing groups, I often had help from adjunct instructors who specialized in string and woodwind instruments. One of my favorites was a seasoned professional named Dick O’Connor.
Dick helped me. He also taught me about the need for patience and persistence in teaching.
After seven years in Johnstown, I taught in a neighboring school district, and two of Dick’s children were students there. One was Jimmy, an accomplished saxophone player.
After graduation, Jim went to Duquesne University, majored in English, and then pursued law.
About 10 years later, after I transitioned from teaching into hospital administration, Manning “Jim” O’Connor walked into my office with one of his law partners and announced that he was counsel for Mercy Hospital in Johnstown.
To say we bonded would be an understatement.
Twenty years after that, I ended up in Pittsburgh, where breakfast meetings with Jim became almost routine.
I am proud to say we have now been friends for nearly 50 years.
A few weeks ago, Jim called and told me he had written a novel. He asked me to read it.
In the interest of full disclosure, had anybody else written a novel centered around the Catholic Church, I probably would not have rushed to comply.
After nearly 80 years of organized religion trials and tribulations, some earned, some inherited and some undoubtedly self-inflicted, I have often struggled to separate faith from the human beings and institutions that sometimes make a mess of it.
But this was Jim’s book.
So, I started reading and believe me when I say that I am glad I did.
“A Separate Satisfaction” begins with Declan Brady, a successful lawyer, husband, and father whose life is destroyed when his family is in an accident. His grief is compounded by almost unbearable guilt over choices he made that night.
Eventually, Declan walks away from his old life, becomes a Catholic priest, and serves in Africa before being ordered home to take over a troubled parish.
That is when the novel really catches fire.
Declan discovers a church struggling financially and spiritually, people damaged by abuse and secrecy, and a hierarchy sometimes more concerned about protecting the institution than confronting uncomfortable truths.
Unfortunately for them, Father Declan Brady may wear a Roman collar, but underneath it is still a very good lawyer.
He begins asking questions.
Along the way, Jim introduces us to people wrestling with their own wounds.
There are mysteries and confrontations, but the heart of the book is redemption.
Not cheap redemption. Not the kind where everybody says three Hail Marys and everything magically disappears.
Real redemption.
The kind that requires honesty, accountability, forgiveness and sometimes admitting that the person you most need to forgive is yourself.
That surprised me.
So did Jim.
His writing is masterful. The characters are complicated, believable, and very human. Nobody gets a halo simply because he wears a collar, but nobody is beyond hope because he has failed.
Perhaps that is what affected me most.
“A Separate Satisfaction” isn’t really a book about the Catholic Church.
It is about the difference between faith and institutions, justice and revenge, guilt and responsibility, and holding onto love without allowing guilt to destroy what remains of your life.
And somewhere inside all of that is an old friend I first knew as a kid with a saxophone.
I thought I knew Jim O’Connor pretty well after nearly 50 years.
Turns out he was hiding one more talent from me.
Nick Jacobs lives in Windber.