Norman Calvin Franco with his trusty saxophone June 15 at the Marianist-run St. Anthony School in Wailuku where he learned to play the instrument as a high school student. Behind him is a statue of Blessed William Joseph Chaminade, founder of the Marianists. (Photo courtesy of Brother Fred Silbereis, SM)
Maui resident and lay Marianist Norman Franco wrote this article on June 12 for Marianist Father Roland Bunda, pastor of St. Anthony Parish in Wailuku, Maui, and his fellow Marianists in appreciation for the group’s long presence on the Valley Isle. After 138 years, the brothers and fathers of the community, also known as the Society of Mary, will bid aloha to Maui on June 30. They have been at St. Anthony School for 138 years and have staffed the parish for 45 years.
By Norman Calvin Franco
Special to the Herald
Now that the Marianists are leaving Maui after more than 130 years of serving the people of Maui at St. Anthony Parish, I thought I should reflect on what they have meant to me.
It started on a summer day in 1960 in the plantation town of Haiku. I was waiting with great expectation and a slight case of nervousness for the mail to arrive to find out if I was accepted at the fantastic St. Anthony School, Maui’s premier Catholic boys high school. My good friend and cousin, Russell Nascimento, already got his notification of acceptance and I was wondering when mine was going to come.
I finally saw the letter addressed to Calvin Franco. (My mother called my brother and me by our middle names.) You would have thought I had received a letter of acceptance from Notre Dame or MIT. I was in great jubilation, dancing to all kinds of gyrations. My mother couldn’t understand why I was so excited. Well, I guess I felt that, after nine years of being taught by nuns, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, I was finally going to receive a high school education from men known as the Marianists.
Who were these men? I didn’t know any of them but I knew that they had an excellent record of turning out outstanding graduates, leaders in the Maui community. Men like Toshie Ansai, Joseph Williams, Ernest Louis, Abel Kahoohanohano, whose brother Anthony, also a St. Anthony graduate, was a Medal of Honor recipient. Wow! I would be going to the same school as these outstanding men and many more like them.
I remember my first day of school. We lived in Haiku, about 20-plus miles from Wailuku. I had to wake-up at 5 a.m. and catch a ride in my dad’s 7-Up soda truck to the Star Ice and Soda Works plant where I transferred to his friend’s truck who had the Wailuku route. He dropped me off at the school about 7 a.m., a whole hour before it opened. I was one of the first kids on campus. I was lost, so I hung out in the church. When I heard the school bell ring, I went to the office to find out where I was supposed to go.
The brothers were strict
Besides my cousin, Russell, there were a few of us from St. Joseph Grade School in Makawao who were blessed to be accepted at St. Anthony. The brothers were strict and gave us lots of homework. I struggled with Latin, but it was the only language offered. The tuition was only $50 a year but we had to buy our own books. I was a little nervous about meeting new classmates and hung around the guys I knew at St. Joe’s. After a while, the brothers had us integrated and we all became the SAS Class of 1964.
I wanted to play football but, because I had to catch the bus back home, I couldn’t stay after school for practice. I joined the band. Mr. Walter Garcia the instructor was tough and highly regimented — a St. Louis graduate. He would give up his lunch breaks to teach us beginner’s band as well as the regular one. It was amazing how much we could learn in one hour. The boys from central Maui were able to have additional instruction time at his home on Saturdays. I was not able to go to those special sessions because I was too busy doing my weekend chores at our home in Rice Camp, Haiku.
Somehow, I learned how to play the saxophone. First with an old C-Melody Sax (they don’t make them anymore), then an alto, then finally a tenor. About 15 years ago, when Father Roland asked me if I could play a musical instrument, I told him yes, but that was in high school. (I did play briefly in the UH marching band as a freshman, a fact I would brag about to my kids when we went to UH games.)
One of the moments I will always remember while a student at St. Anthony was being invited by the Marianists brothers to their home before graduation to see if I would be interested in becoming a Marianist. I told them yes, that I would be very interested but I would have to talk to my parents first before accepting their invitation. Well, my dad left it up to my mother. She told me that since my brother Stan was already in the seminary to become a Sacred Hearts priest that I should go to college and decide afterward if I truly wanted to become a Marianist.
Though I ultimately did not follow that path, I am still to this day very thankful to the Marianists for choosing me out of all the boys in the Class of ‘64 to become one of them. That is why it is so hard to see them leave Maui now. It is like losing a dear friend. We love the brothers and sisters of the Society of Mary and we pray that someday they will come back to Maui to be among us again to at least help us with the lay Marianist organization.
What did I learn from the Marianists at St. Anthony? I can tell you it was much more than how to play the saxophone (to “harmonize and not agonize,” in the famous words of Mr. Garcia). I learned about social justice, to love my neighbors as myself, to be concerned for people less fortunate than myself and, when life gets tough and I don’t know where to turn, to pray the rosary daily and ask Jesus and our Blessed Mother for their intercession with Our Heavenly Father.
Life will go on here on Maui and at St. Anthony without the physical presence of our dear Marianists, but they live on in each one of us who were either students or members of the St. Anthony ohana as parishioners. God bless the Marianists always and in all ways!
