Sold

One way I get news from home is the crumpled up newspapers that are used instead of packing peanuts. The Christmas boxes brought headlines about a laundromat's new "green" dry cleaning machine, an ice hockey tournament for local adult leagues, the return of soldiers from Afghanistan, Eagle Scout achievements, upcoming gun legislation, ... it's so nice a read a small town paper again. And then a small piece from the Associated Press filled a small bottom corner: "College to move next spring." I read on with interested, though my heart lurched before finishing the first sentence, "... college is poised to move into the former headquarters of the state's Catholic church."

The state's Catholic church is the secular way of saying the Roman Catholic Diocese that geographically encompassed the entire state. (Not all dioceses are entire states; some states have so many Catholics that there are several dioceses.) The headquarters in question were an 1800-something building, an orphanage in previous generations, that looked over the lake.

I interned in that building during my college summers and upon graduation landed a full-time job there, as a reporter, television producer, web designer, and general press relations assistant. Our part of the building bridged the old and new sections, where the heat was blasting and the air conditioning non-functioning. A mouse ran under the chair I was sitting in once. Popping floor boards were attributed to ghosts, as well as lights that turned off. Though the lights may have been the former secretary of a past bishop; she had apartments between some of our offices, and if we stayed too late working she would come out and turn off our lights. On Mondays the building had a picketer, someone who had lived there decades ago as an orphan and wanted restitution for something. The weather moods of the lake were there any time we walked the many-windowed hall. My director said the lake view was the perk that compensated for the poor pay.

The people that worked in the diocesan building were as varied as any job-based television show could muster: the bishop and his dog, the confident secretaries, the bored secretaries, the too-smiling secretaries, the tiger secretaries defending their boss's door, the priests who were trapped behind a desk wishing for a parish, the priests who were better behind a desk than in the pulpit, the data entry clerks who never smiled except at the mention of their planned Disney cruise, the nervous seminarians, the multi-tasking directors, the all-talk directors, the harried handyman, the whistling janitor, ...

Where are they now? I left ten years ago this summer, so many have already retired, but some have not. With the disappearance of the central building, necessitated by around $20 million in lawsuits centering on the activities of a priest serving the diocese during the 1970s and since then formally defrocked, what has happened to their jobs, the ministries they served? I know that the department I was part of has disappeared from the website roster.

Recently I came across a T-shirt that my coworkers made me as I finished my first summer internship: "I survived ... [building name]." Survived indeed.

Now the building will have a different name, and be home to a growing small college. Better use perhaps, after all the grief some claimed it represented. But for me, the sale is... like home is gone.