On Wednesday, I saw one of my heroes speak to a group of several hundred people. He’s Father Bob Welsh, a Jesuit priest who led St. Ignatius High School into its current prominence as one of America’s top high schools. Choose academic, sports or service standards and St. Ignatius Cleveland will rank among the top in the country.

Father Welsh is an amazing combination of ambition and humility. So while his deeds are legendary to others, his speech related only to the formation of young men that became the dedication of his life.

We teach our students to become “men for others,” said this octogenarian priest and he told us that thought becomes only more important to him as “I shed this mortal coil.”

On returning to Ashtabula, I met with Kelly Sposito whose husband, Jake, has brain cancer. He’s 36 and they have a four year old son. Jake, like Father Welsh is a rare combination of ambition and humility.

Jake and Kelly own a coffee shop, a place where they turn green beans to brown and provide an atmosphere that forms and reforms people by oozing love, acceptance and humor. It’s not a high school that’s graduated thousands of young men but it has affected me and many other lives in our little town.

I have watched Jake build the shop over seven years in a tough area of our economically distressed town. It’s a remarkable success and the street has grown around it.

I carry in my wallet a hard copy of an email Jake sent to all his friends on our street sometime after he was diagnosed. We’ve been anxious to help him, but he wrote:

“If you wish to help me, keep growing the district we have all worked so hard to achieve. It would give me more hope to see that good work continued than any efforts directed at me personally.”

Like Father, Jake doesn’t want to talk about himself. He wants us to carry on “for others.” Jake and Father Welsh have done an amazing amount in their mortal coil. So, as a reminder to do something with my time here, I carry Jake’s email, Father’s thoughts and the ideas many other of my heroes have planted in my mind. That is, the thought of living in this moment.

And over time, I want to follow Father Welsh and Jake’s example by living these moments each in a manner that will benefit others, just as their lives do.

Peace,
Tim McCarthy