Skip to main content

The Passing of a Great Man - Monsignor Thomas Bennett

Hopefully everyone has had the opportunity to have a teacher that touched your life and/or affected who you are as a person in a way no other has. For me, one of those teachers was Monsignor Thomas Bennett. To many, he was Father Bennett as he acheieved his title of Monsignor while I was in school at St. Charles Prep in Columbus, Ohio.

Fr. Bennett passed away on Sunday at the age of 76. The story in the Columbus Dispatch can be found here. He taught at St. Charles for 46 years. He was the kind of teacher, priest, man that made you grow up from being a snotty high school kid into a man. He had many quirks which made him all the more lovable.

If you did something stupid or swore in class, Father would make you do pushups at the front of the room. If a woman entered the classroom, everyone must stand (St. Charles is an all boys school). He was a disciplinarian, but a just one. He made you study and work, but not just because. There is a Facebook group called Msgr. Thomas M. Bennett Fan Club with over 750 members. He was famous for his one-liners and tongue-in-cheek dry humor.

"Now gentlemen, let's turn our happy thoughts to the joys of history."
"I was sentenced to St. Charles for kicking the bishop's dog."



Requiescat in pace.

Comments

Lisa Junker said…
Matt, I'm so sorry for your loss. One of my closest friends actually went to St. Charles, and I've heard him talk about Fr. Bennett before--clearly he made a great impact on a lot of St. Charles students. My condolences to you and the many other people he inspired.
September 10, 2008 at 10:00 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

10 Thoughts on #ASAE10

Ok, so I could have spelled out the title, but chose the hashtag - #asae10. Supposedly there were over 8,000 tweets with the hashtag, but probably countless more direct messages of messages that left out the hashtag but were conference related. Two years ago, we were using twitter as a backchannel to talk about speakers. Now, over 800 people sent conference related tweets. If you aren't on Twitter, you are already late to the party. Anyway, on with the post... In no particular order, my thoughts on this years ASAE Annual Conference: 1. LA was a good venue. Lots to do. Hotels close by. Only downside was the rooms were a bit of a hike. 2. I missed Sunday because of family obligations. That really put me behind the 8 ball. Since I led a session, that meant I only got to go to 3 true sessions. Sorry, I don't count Joy Behar and the closing session. Although Marshall Goldsmith was good, I probably wouldn't have gone to see that speech as a Learning Lab. 3. Based on #...
11 comments
Read more

The Whole Cook Source Flap

I am going to give my 2 cents on this whole Cook Source thing. If you don't know what I am talking about, you can read more here and here . I am sure a few folks are going to take umbrage with my stance, but that is bound to happen. So a magazine found a blog post, liked it, printed it while giving credit to the author. The author hears about it, and gets pissed? She wants printed apologies and a donation made, because she got published? What am I missing here? Who wouldn't want their stuff to be published while being credited? Isn't that one of the main tenants of blogging, to be linked to? Sure, the response from the editor was one of the dumbest things ever written and she handled it tremendously bad. However, I am just floored that this person is pissed off. True, the internet is not public domain. However, every college paper in the world has citations. And all those students didn't contact the author to make sure they can use it. And every blog post ...
8 comments
Read more

Where do you draw the line on social media?

I try to keep up. I have a feed reader . I blog . I comment on other people's blogs. I tweet . I have multiple websites . I have accounts on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and others. But you have to draw the line somewhere. I wrote earlier about being app'd out . I still feel that way. But each day I feel farther behind. Maybe not behind, but not necessarily maximizing potential. I don't Digg. I don't StumbleUpon. OK, maybe I do like once a month if I have some spare time. But I know I am missing out on a lot of cool things. I usually check out other people's links to cool tools or the next new thing. But right now, I feel like I am in the Dip . Any suggestions on how to get out?
6 comments
Read more