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Abbot Baruch de Tocqueville (57) is Father Superior of St. Mark Abbey of the Society of St. Barnabus and the president of St. Mark Seminary.  The abbot is preoccupied, distant, nervous.  Afraid to displease anyone, he resists taking a firm stand on controversial issues and generally confuses the members of St. Mark’s monastic community.  He teaches religion and Greek and entertains himself by fastidiously rearranging the items atop his massive oak desk.  Plump with short gray hair, he habitually fondles his bejeweled gold pectoral apostolic crucifix.

Ampsterdam George (Amp, 67) & Ola Mae Bernard (62)are a kind, friendly American Gothic couple who live down the road from St. Mark Seminary.

During the Depression, Amp and Ola were photographed by Dorothea Lange of the Farm Security Administration.  Amp retired from the phone company after 40 years as a pole climber.  Using a broad leather waist belt, he would shimmy up telephone poles to make repairs.  The neighborhood children watched him, and the dogs barked at him.  Ola was a homemaker all her life but has never known motherhood.  She compensated by baking for the neighborhood children.  Her specialty was pecan pies.  At Christmas she delivered individual pies to everyone.

Amp drives the laundry truck from Saint Mark’s to Saint Monica’s, and back with clean laundry.  He also works doing heavy gardening at the convent.  Amp and Ola know many of the seminarians and often speak with them when they walk by.  Ola bakes cookies, cakes, and pies both for the monks and seminarians of Saint Mark’s and for the nuns, novices, and postulants of Saint Monica’s.

These days Amp and Ola spend their spare time sitting in high-back wooden rockers on their porch under the ceiling fan.  Tall and sinewy, Amp dresses in faded blue-jeans overalls and plaid flannel shirts, usually red and black.  Amp’s cap is a grungy Brooklyn Dodgers cap from the 1956 World Series.  Short and sinewy, Ola wears a high-neck, plain cotton dress.

Angus Bartholomew Yeats (10, runt) is D.J.’s younger brother.

Antonia Josephina Jones (Toni, white, 51, gray hair, weathered, natty dresser) is John’s wheelchair-bound mother.

Brother Hildebert Brunovsk (47) works as a cook in St. Mark’s refectory kitchen and rings the bells of the Abbey Church to summon the monks for the chanting of the eight Divine Offices every day.  As a joke one year, the graduating class of seminarians gave him a coffee mug with “World’s Greatest Ringer,” triggering a raft of copycat “World’s Greatest” coffee mugs.  When he entered St. Mark’s Brother House as a postulant, Brother Hildebert gave his extensive collection of baseball cards to his younger brother.  He switched to Holy Cards and has amassed a mountainous collection of them, organized according to gender, country of birth, type of martyrdom, and type of miracles.  Now and then he gives out Holy Cards like candy to his favorite seminarians.  From decades of bell ringing, he has developed huge biceps, and his forearms have come to be so big that the seminarians call him “Popeye” behind his back.  Androgynous and baby-faced, with tonsured longish brown hair, he waddles when he walks.

Cynthia Roberta Messer (23) is one of Frank’s three voluptuous miniskirted sisters.

Douglas James Yeats (Doug, 46), D.J.’s father, is the youngest of five children, all raised in Detroit by their mother alone after their dad was killed in an industrial accident in the 1930’s.  Doug is a decorated WWII Army veteran with a Purple Heart.  He saw action in Western Europe, including the siege of Malmédy in the Battle of the Bulge, and he met Joy after a USO show.  He works as a road salesman for an appliance store, and to relax he mainly wants to sit in a rickety lawn chair and enjoy a cold beer.  Doug isn’t all that high on D.J.’s vocation and would just as soon see him leave the seminary.  A soft-spoken extrovert, straightforward, intolerant of guff, he suffers his wife’s contrivances with an even temper.  Blue eyes and a full head of gray hair, he is a burly six-footer.

Father Cosmas Kelly (Cosmic, 43) is the Spiritual Director of St. Mark Seminary at the time that D.J. and his friends enter St. Mark’s in the fall of 1962.  An ardent and unabashed apologist for the Church’s positions on moral theology, his periodic “Spiritual Talks” to the seminarian assembly invariably center on the sacredness of celibacy and the perils of carnal temptation.  He has a coffee mug with “World’s Greatest Spiritual Director.”  Somewhat bi-polar, his moods alternate between manic enthusiasm for everything and sullen depressions.  Short, blue-eyed, and muscular, he teaches Latin and algebra and fancies corncob pipes.

Father Petronius Siragusa (Pete, 51) is the Head Prefect and College Prefect (Fifth and Sixth Classes) at St. Mark Seminary.  He teaches history and civics and chain-smokes unfiltered cigarettes, preferring Camels.  The chief enforcer of discipline at the seminary, Father Pete patrols Winding Fork Road and the logging roads of the Abbey backwoods on a Harley, ostensibly to track down seminarians who have gone off campus without permission.  His cousin gave him a black leather motorcycle jacket with "God's Avenging Angels" painted on the back along with the Harley winged wheel.  Gaunt and willowy, with dark eyes, he has black hair slicked-back with more than a little dab of Brylcreem.  Fr. Pete has made more seminarians “kneel out” than all other prefects combined.

Father Thaddeus Blamphet (‘T,’ 41) is Rector of St. Mark Seminary at the time that D.J. and his friends enter St. Mark’s in the fall of 1962.  Father ‘T’s’ prized possession is a coffee mug emblazoned with “World’s Greatest Rector.”  Deeply committed to forming young men for the priesthood, he goes out of his way to pray with the mothers of seminarians for the vocations of their sons.  On Visiting Sundays he can be seen strolling through the seminary picnic grounds, talking with families, occasionally flirting with the well built mothers.  One night a week, while the seminarians are in study hall, Father ‘T’ sneaks into the seminary rec room to watch Petticoat Junction on television, favoring Billie Jo over both Bobbie Jo and Betty Jo.  Tall, handsome, with curly gray hair, he teaches French and geometry and smokes practically nonstop a Meerschaum pipe carved in the likeness of Richard Wagner.

Father Theodoret Schwartz (Theo, 79 in 1962) has taught Church History at St. Mark Seminary for over 50 years.  He reveres the Thirteenth Century as the “Greatest of All Centuries.”  Father Theo wanders around the seminary and abbey grounds saying his breviary in silence but with his lips moving.  His favorite depiction of Jesus is one of Christ as the Good Shepherd, with a lamb draped about the Savior’s shoulders.  Gray-bearded, hunched, and emaciated, he limps when he walks, throwing out his right foot at a pronounced angle.

Iolana Kanapohalai (19) is a dark-eyed, exotic Polynesian postulant at St. Monica Convent.

John Jean Jones, Sr. (Big John, black, 46, towering, buzz cut) is John’s father.

Joy Hope Yeats (43), D.J.’s mother, grew up the eldest of seven children in a strong Catholic family in a small rural town in the South.  She met Doug after a USO show during World War II.  Extremely religious, she goes to Mass several times a week and prays the rosary daily.  Joy sees D.J.’s vocation as a gift from God and wants him to become a priest in the worst way.  Garrulous, an “old fashioned” woman with bitter girlhood memories of the Depression, she is a mother’s mother, always looking out for everyone else.  She is a great cook and baker, pouts when she doesn’t get her way, and is manipulative but not Machiavellian.  Always cheerful, Joy dresses conservatively in dresses, even on Visiting Sundays, with a girdle, hose, and the rest of a 1950’s mom supporting accoutrements.  Petite, she has brown hair and eyes.

Jude Valentine Maclean (Vallie, 49, balding), an attorney, is Faith’s father.

Jude Victor Maclean (Vic, 53) is one of Faith’s two unmarried, unemployed nincompoop uncles.

Jude Vincent Maclean (Vince, 57) is one of Faith’s two unmarried, unemployed nincompoop uncles.

Judy Dickenson (17, cute) is one of Billy’s two sisters.

Justin Frederick Messer (Fred, 46, macho), a handsome police officer, is Frank’s father.

Lucy Dickenson (18, cute) is one of Billy’s two sisters.

Margaret Ann Yeats(Peggy, 17, nubile) is D.J.’s younger sister.

Maria Theresa Messer (21) is one of Frank’s three voluptuous miniskirted sisters.

Marjorie Agatha Maclean (Aggie, 54, teased blond hair) is Faith’s mother.

Monsignor John Purvis Denton (Purvis, 51) has had more than the usual number of assignments as a parish priest.  At the time that D.J. and his friends enter St. Mark’s in the fall of 1962, Purvis is serving as the Archdiocesan Director of Vocations.  The monsignor’s father was one of the best square dance callers around, sparking Purvis’s interest in dance at an early age.  Purvis plays square dance music alone at night in his tiny bedroom, calling the moves for the dancers.  He misses his barn dancing days at St. Clement Parish CYO.  He has assembled a hodgepodge of Western belt buckles displayed in glass cases in his Chancery office.  Still preferring to dress as if he’s going to a hoedown, Purvis accessorizes his priestly garb and Roman Collar with a cowboy hat with a Mexican silver crucifix in the front, a big silver belt buckle, a turquoise ring, and fancy leather boots.  Bow legged and slender, he sports a dirty blond handlebar mustache and lamb chop sideburns.

Pauline O’Neil Messer (42, hair in bun, girly) is Frank’s mother.

Sharla Janelle Jones (20, svelte) is John’s exotic fraternal twin sister.

Sister Mary Anastasia Vandergriff (20) is a postulant and novice classmate of Faith at St. Monica Convent.  Almost wherever she goes, Anastasia carries a dilapidated Bible with her reading place denoted by an exquisite needlepoint bookmark.  Red-faced and rugged, with a deep voice, she is dike-ish and has blue eyes joined by a thick ruddy unibrow.

Sister Mary Thecla Martin (20) is a postulant and novice classmate of Faith at St. Monica Convent.  Obsessed with tiny details, Thecla loves to do needlepoint.  She often dillydallies in the convent garden so she can memorize the colors of the flowers for inclusion in her free-style needlepoint.  Pale and pretty, she is giggly and has light brown eyes and delicate eyebrows.

Sylvia Louisa Messer (22) is one of Frank’s three voluptuous miniskirted sisters.

Victoria Dorothy Dickenson (37, red hair, chesty, divine bottom) is Billy’s widowed mother.

William James Jones (Will, 16, big, mountainous Afro) is John’s younger brother.