The Gates of Saint Charles: Testing the Waters of a Religious Vocation: a Memoir

By John Allen Resko

Professor John Reskos memoir narrates a religious struggle against the backdrop of the Great Depression, World War II, and Pre-Vatican II Catholicism. His dissection of the components of a religious vocation led him in a direction befitting his temperament and natural inclinations rather than the ease of their achievement. He describes his struggle to define a religious vocation and ultimately find the strength to follow his best instincts.

It was not easy for a poor boy of uneducated immigrant parents from Austria-Hungry to find his way in the world. But the solid educational foundation provided by the Church proved to be the gateway to a greater purpose. He earned graduate degrees from both Marquette University and the University of Illinois. His doctoral work at Illinois was in the field of reproductive biology. These events portended a successful scientific career in Oregon.

The events recorded in The Gates of Saint Charles are coupled with the history of the times and the dogma and traditions of the Roman Church. A small window has been opened into the life and education of seminarians during the time covered by the memoir.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 19, 2010
• ISBN: 9781440193002

John Allen Resko

John Allen Resko earned a doctorate from the University of Illinois and is a professor emeritus in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, School of Medicine, of the Oregon Health & Science University. He lives in Hillsboro, Oregon, with his wife, Magdalen. They have two grown children, four grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

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Copyright © 2010 by John Allen Resko

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4401-9299-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4401-9300-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009912705

iUniverse rev. date: 08/10/2015

Contents

Part I The Genesis of an American Family

Chapter 1 My Parents

Chapter 2 Happy Days Are Here Again

Chapter 3 The Flat

Chapter 4 The Church of Saint George

Chapter 5 I Begin My Education

Chapter 6 A Budding Biologist

Chapter 7 The Early Part of World War II

Chapter 8 The End of the War and Thinking about the Future

Part II Testing the Waters of a Religious Vocation

Chapter 9 The Sauerkraut Tower

Chapter 10 Ora et Labora

Chapter 11 Dr. Moore

Chapter 12 The Kind Phillips-Jones

Chapter 13 Out of Step

Chapter 14 A Change of Venue

Chapter 15 The Golden Gate

Acknowledgments

After much turbulence, amid waves of indecision, an eleventh-hour decision made all the difference.

To Magdalen

Your beauty never fades. Our meeting was providential, meant to be through the mediation of an alphabetical system for seating. Without the Jesuits, none of this would have happened.

Preface

December 10, 1980, was a cold, rainy day in Portland, Oregon. The location of the medical school on a hill overlooking the city favored a swirling wind, which cut through the layers under my raincoat as if wanting to chill me to the bone before my interview. I taught reproductive endocrinology at the medical school for over ten years, but my primary appointment was at the Primate Center located in Beaverton, a small city about ten miles west of Portland.

About two years earlier, a search was initiated to replace the long-time chairman of the physiology department in the School of Medicine at the Oregon Health Sciences University. My reason for seeking this position was not compelling, because I was satisfied at the Primate Center, but the possibility of a new challenge and the submission of my name by others into the pool of candidates were the circumstances surrounding my application for this position.

Many candidates interviewed for this job. I too interviewed and went through all the hoops required of all other candidates. After I completed my interview, I did not have any communication with the search committee for more than a year. A rumor circled that the search committee was not interested in hiring a local candidate. Because of this rumor, I concluded that my candidacy was no longer viable; therefore, I went about the duties for which I was hired and cloistered myself in my laboratory at the Primate Center.

A few days before December 10, 1980, I received a phone call from the dean’s office at the medical school. The dean’s administrative assistant made an appointment for me with Dean Ransom Arthur at his request. It was to this appointment that I was now trudging up the front steps of the administration building on this cold, blustery day in December.

I had not met Dean Arthur before, so this was the first time for both of us. Arthur was trained as a psychiatrist and spent some time in the navy. He frequently used military jargon in his speech and writings. I recognized this at once when he said to me, "John, I would like to offer you the post of chairman of the physiology department in the School of Medicine."

I responded by saying, I will need time to think about it. One of the key issues was the level of freedom I would have in building the department into a quality teaching and research entity, according to my standards. Several weeks later, I received assurances from the dean that a strong physiology department was in the best interests of the school. I accepted the position and served in this post for eighteen years.

Despite its many challenges, I considered this appointment to be a personal triumph, which could have occurred only in America the beautiful under the guidance of divine providence. During this time, I could not but recall my humble origins, which would seem to preclude an appointment of this type.

My parents emigrated from Austria-Hungary at the turn of the last century. Working class by birth, they came to America to avoid European chaos and better themselves and their children. Many of their expectations were fulfilled in the early part of the century. But, something happened. The Great Depression, like a great tsunami, swept away the excesses of the Roaring Twenties.

I was one of those born during the Great Depression. My family was as poor as church mice according to some, but even the mice had given up and departed by the time that I arrived. Poverty, however, is hardly recognized by the young. I learned of my family’s fiscal condition only because someone told me later on. During this time of deprivation, I was having a good time: with playthings that I made, turtles that wandered into our yard from the creek below, and the myriad farm animals and plants, which became the objects of my curiosity. Our poverty, however, was not to be confused with the poverty and the homelessness found in the big cities during the Depression—it was something the color of deprivation. Public assistance was a dirty word in our household. So my family, during the bleak years of the 1930s, struggled as one to make ends meet but without any of the luxuries of life.

I developed a keen interest in nature, the seasons, the stars, and animal and plant life, but nobody was there to offer explanations. There was no cozy library to which I could retreat on a cold winter day to read the classics and no tradition of higher education in my family on which to base a dream. Instead, my parents did the next best thing. They taught me how to work and appreciate its value. They taught me to persevere through difficulties and in prayer. They taught me to believe in that which I could not see. They assembled a family unit that we valued, so much so that even a child could perceive its importance.

In the eighth grade, I dreamed of becoming someone great, someone well educated and rich. This, however, seemed to be an impossible dream, because I associated success and education only with money. But there was no family money for even the basics, let alone for higher education. I had a good friend who invited me to go with him to summer camp. We did not have the thirty dollars for me to go.

In 1944 my brother entered the seminary. Following his example, I did the same in 1947. I made this decision without much thought or advice. As I retrace my steps, I followed a person who was a good friend as well as a brother without realizing that we had entirely different temperaments.

I pursued the educational experience in the seminary with great energy and purpose. Then I was confronted with differences of opinion, about God and faith, the origins of the universe, and evolution. How confusing it would become!

For a time I concluded that mankind was basically evil, about to self-destruct, but Mother Church and many good people, some of whom held religious views that differed from mine, came to my rescue. From these experiences, I began to appreciate the goodness of those around me. I became close to the Church. I loved its teachings, which provided solid guidelines by which to live. I was disappointed at times with the Church until I came to the realization that my disappointments arose because of the imperfections of humans in her midst who find a way to destroy and misuse even the most sacred of God’s gifts.

After many years of perseverance, I concluded that the religious life was not for me. Even though I loved the Church and my faith was immovable, I was never happy. I was trapped in the pursuit of a vocation in which I did not belong. Finally, I left the seminary, not because I disliked the priesthood but because I loved it. Now I was free to choose whatever I wanted to do but ill prepared to do much of anything in the modern world with a degree in philosophy.

I was convinced that science was the area that would best fit my inclinations and talents. This bit of logic, however, was easier said than done. I was soon to find out that my deficiencies in science were many and that I would have to attended Villanova University and Marquette University for three years to make up these deficiencies. I was able to do this and finally constructed an academic transcript that was strong enough to make the first cut of applications to graduate school. These were difficult years in which I survived by taking jobs in factories, in construction, and as a teaching assistant in the zoology department at Marquette.

My life after the seminary would not have been the same had I not met Andrew V. Nalbandov. Professor Nalbandov was an internationally known reproductive endocrinologist at the University of Illinois at the Champaign/Urbana campus. He was highly recommended by the Marquette faculty as someone who would be a close fit for my interests. Nalbandov invited me to interview for a research fellowship in his program in January of 1960. I was discouraged, because he clearly indicated to me during this interview that he did not think that Catholic universities trained their students properly for the rigors of the doctoral experience such as that found at the University of Illinois. I responded in kind to these unsavory remarks by saying, If you will give me a chance, I will show you what a poor Croatian from the coal fields of Pennsylvania is capable of doing. Perhaps this was the most important statement that I made during this interview, because Nalbandov was not looking for the usual but the unusual. Something made him change his mind, because he accepted me into his program. Having done this, he supported me and my work without reservations. Nalbandov insisted that his students do their own work and be able to defend it after completion. I owe him a great debt, because he taught me the value of independent thinking in science and persistence in the pursuit of an idea in the laboratory.

Nalbandov’s agnosticism, however, surrounded him at all times, and I was never able to make inroads so that he might understand my faith. He rejected religion of all kinds with the cynicism and pessimism of the Russian literature of which he was an avid reader. Despite our differences in religious philosophy, we were compatible enough that I could complete my doctoral thesis and publish it in a prestigious scientific journal.

In the year 2000 I received an e-mail from a woman in North Carolina. She found my name on the Internet after searching for her mother’s maiden name (Resko). She inquired about her grandfather, Michael Resko, who lived originally in Patton, Pennsylvania. Was he a relative of mine? Michael Resko was my father’s brother and my Uncle Mike. I provided her with information about her grandfather, and she planted the first seed of writing a memoir in my mind.

My first cousin, once removed, from North Carolina will be quite disappointed, however, when she learns that this recording of the part of my life, 1932–1957, was not written as a family genealogy but as a testament to the genealogy of the spirit, the faith, which was the bequest from my parents. This bequest was so permanent and powerful that it survived in those times when perseverance was the last log on the fire. Perhaps something I say in the pages that follow will help others to persevere in completing their dreams in good faith.

The hows and whys of my appearance on the doorstep of the dean of the medical school on that cold, blustery day in 1980 are not completely understood, not even by me. That appearance, however, seems to provide a logical conclusion, albeit incomplete, to the story of a poor boy testing the waters of a religious vocation and its eleventh-hour resolution, a brief glimpse into what happened after he opened the Gates of St. Charles outward into the so-called world.

Part I

The Genesis of an American Family

Chapter 1

My Parents

The Maternal Side

They carried bundles on their backs

but hope in their hearts.

The Carpathian Mountains separate Poland from Slovakia, and for centuries, armies seeking conquest either from the north or the south used the Dukla Pass to avoid the rugged terrain of the Carpathians. At the southern end not far from this pass is the town of Stropkov.

Due to its strategic location, armies of the Poles, Hungarians, Ottoman Turks, Russians, Germans, and other conquering groups trampled its fields and molested its people; thus, the process of building and rebuilding was not uncommon over the centuries.

The conversion of the Slavic people in greater Moravia has been attributed to the brothers Cyril and Methodius, who came from the Eastern Church in the year 861. It is believed that this part of Moravia looked to the east for its conversion, because the Eastern Church promoted a liturgy in the vernacular whereas the Roman Liturgy was performed in Latin. Whatever the reason, Cyril and Methodius became great saints of the Slavic people, the homeland of at least part of my heritage.¹ Records of Stropkov go back to the thirteenth century. Catholicism flourished under the stewardship of the Franciscans, who settled there in the seventeenth century, and a Jewish community prospered along with the Catholics. In fact, Stropkov became a center of Judaism in this area because of its well-known rabbinical school. Many rabbis can trace their spiritual origins to this school.²

More important to me than any of the above-mentioned history is the fact that my mother was born in Stropkov. Emory Haluska, my mother’s grandfather, was a farrier in this town. He married a Hungarian woman, Anna Tunder. Their boy baby was christened Janos (the Hungarian name for John); thus it appears great grandmother, Anna, was a strong and assertive woman who insisted on calling her child by the Hungarian rather than by the Slovak form (Junko) of the name John.

I will not present my family’s genealogy in any depth, because personal genealogies seem trivial unless one can trace roots back to Adam, which none of us can, or contemplate the genealogy of the Christ. Spiritual origins, on the other hand, such as the spiritual origins of the Jews as chronicled in the Old Testament and those of Christianity as found in the Acts of the Apostles, are important for understanding these two great religious movements and their relationship to one another. Finally, the way that I view genealogy is that while it is easy to beget, taking on the responsibilities of begetting is more difficult. It is important to know and record something about those persons in our ancestry who fulfilled these responsibilities as an example for others to imitate.

Janos was an active, intelligent child who had many playmates, some of whom were Jewish. The Haluskas were strict Roman Catholics and their children were baptized and required to receive all the sacraments whether they wanted them or not. The young Janos seemed to have a natural attraction to the Church, so his mother questioned him, Janos, what do you want to be when you grow up?

His answer was unexpected. I think I want to be a Jew, he replied. And why do you want to be a Jew?