HOLLAND, Mich. (WOOD) — Practically 55 years in the past, a younger Pope Leo XIV would’ve walked the grounds across the Felt Mansion throughout the property’s time because the St. Augustine Seminary Excessive Faculty.
Rev. Thomas Becket Franks remembers his years on the faculty. He was one grade above Pope Leo XIV, often called “Bob” Prevost to his former classmates.
“For me, it was more in terms of connecting with people, personalities, community and interacting as a young teenager,” mentioned Franks.
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It is comparable tales from former seminarians like Franks which are serving to the Felt Property crew piece collectively the story of the grounds.
A 1963 picture of clergymen with the cornerstone of Hickey Corridor at St. Augustine Seminary Excessive Faculty in Laketown Township. (Courtesy pals of the Felt Property)
An undated picture of clergymen at St. Augustine Seminary Excessive Faculty in Laketown Township. (Courtesy pals of the Felt Property)
“It’s a part of the history that isn’t frequently put in the forefront. And this now this is a great opportunity for us to dig deeper,” mentioned Elizabeth McEwen, govt director of the Felt Property.
She mentioned the small crew has been working by way of their archives, connecting with former college students and household within the current days.
“I’ve had a number of students who have said ‘Watch out now, this is going to be part of a pilgrimage.’ So we have identified that we have work ahead of us now to be able to do justice now to that portion of this history of this property,” she defined.
The seminary highschool was demolished after it served as a state correctional facility. Its cornerstone and balcony medallion may be discovered a little bit off a path on the Shore Acres Disc Golf Course. The mansion nonetheless hosts its historical past. The Felt household offered the mansion to St. Augustine Diocese in Chicago. McEwen mentioned the constructing served as the primary seminary.
The balcony medallion of St. Augustine Seminary Excessive Faculty, on the property of the Felt Property. (Might 11, 2025)
The constructing stone of St. Augustine Seminary Excessive Faculty, on the property of the Felt Property. (Might 11, 2025)
Its ballroom could be the dorms for the very first college students. As class sizes grew, the seminary expanded into the bigger constructing a younger Robert Prevost would attend within the Nineteen Seventies. The mansion would then home Spanish Augustinian nuns. McEwen mentioned that was a chapter of dramatic change for the mansion.
“They were very, very strict in how they could interact with the public and how they could exist in the spaces that they were in. So anything that was too extravagant, too fancy was pulled out of the mansion,” she mentioned.
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Elegant paneling round fireplaces, chandlers and different fixtures had been eliminated whereas plumbing was expanded on the second ground. The fixtures that had been eliminated had been saved by a development employee and later returned to the property. A workshop was arrange in a single room whereas the first-floor kitchen housed the bakery. McEwen mentioned the doorway of the mansion was subdivided to incorporate a wall with a turntable. She mentioned mail may very well be dropped on the desk and turned over so the nuns wouldn’t need to have direct join with mail carriers or males from the seminary.
Franks mentioned whereas the constructing was off limits for the seminary college students, the nuns had been part of faculty life.
“We did our own laundry and stuff but they cooked the meals and did the dining room laundry and set the tables and stuff,” he mentioned.
In between the highschool and mansion, college students would play sports activities within the small valley.
“Football and softball would have been out in the field between the two mounds,” mentioned Franks.
Yearbook photographs present Prevost as being a part of the tennis and bowling groups.
A younger Pope Leo XIV, then “Bob” Prevost, featured in a yearbook from St. Augustine Seminary Excessive Faculty.
Franks remembers Prevost having a “profound” talking voice and was a assist to his classmates no matter grade.
“‘I have a problem with my English paper.’ People would say, ‘Go see Prevost,'” he mentioned. “And he was so patient. He would sit down with them and say, ‘This is what I would suggest. What do you think about if we do this? What do you think about that?’ He had a great patient, quiet demeanor.”
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Now, Franks mentioned Pope Francis should have seen one thing in then-Cardinal Prevost.
“We are going to see a Pope that will listen to the flock and be there when they need him,” he mentioned.
As for Felt Property, the following chapter means sharing the tales with a rising neighborhood, she mentioned. It is time of nice change because it seems to be to proceed its preservation and restoration work.
