When Mike Moran retired in May 2008, he had spent more than 40 years at Catholic High School for Boys in Little Rock. The first four years he was a student — during the remainder he taught, with at least 43,000 class periods during his tenure.
He couldn’t stay gone for long. By June his thoughts had returned to Catholic High, and he started writing them down.
“Proudly We Speak Your Name: Forty-four Years at Little Rock Catholic High School” is not a history of the school, Moran said.
“’Memoir’ may be too formal a word,” he said. “Remembrances or recollections might be more accurate.”
He started recording his memories at the suggestion of friend and former classmate Roger Armbrust.
“Actually Ted Parkhurst, who coordinates book publishing for the Butler Center, said he thought Mike should write a memoir when I mentioned to him last year that Mike was retiring,” Armbrust said. “So I mentioned it to Mike over lunch soon after he retired.”
Butler Center Books, part of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies at the Central Arkansas Library System, published the book this month.
“Mike’s writing the memoir seemed natural to me,” Armbrust said. “He was an English teacher who understands the importance and power of writing, who wrote the script for the CHS 75th anniversary video, and who had been weaned in the Catholic High spirit as a student before becoming a teacher.”
But Moran said he wasn’t sure.
“I don’t know if I’d have that much to say,” Moran said he told his friend.
Two months later he contacted Armbrust to tell him he was finished. Moran said Armbrust responded jokingly, “What took you so long?”
Moran starts the book with a section on his days as a student (“My Catholic High–1957-1961”).
“That part went pretty fast,” he said, with stories of life at the “old school” at State and 25th (Roosevelt Road) streets before the move to a new building in 1961.
The next two sections cover faculty and staff and the students (“the boys”). The final section focuses on the former principal, the late Msgr. George Tribou.
“Anyone who was here (at the school) from 1950 to 2001, when he died, has a fair number of Father Tribou stories,” he said.
The cover of the book features a photograph of the stained glass window from the school’s chapel. Moran took this photograph and those used for the inside and back covers. The black and white photographs in the book come from Catholic High School yearbooks.
Moran points out an interesting coincidence. The publisher chose at random a page of student photographs to run as an illustration. The page he chose contained a picture of Richard Cochran, who is now an English teacher at the school.
Although many of the references will resonate with Catholic High alumni, Moran does not think an “immediate connection” to the school is necessary to enjoy the book.
“The bulk of the stories are humorous,” he said and added, “You couldn’t live in Little Rock too long without knowing about Father Tribou.”
The book covers a wide range of people, from “teachers here 50 years ago to some who are still here,” he said.
Even as a student, Moran played a significant part of the school’s history. He graduated from Catholic High School in 1961, which made his class the first group to graduate from what he calls “the new school” in its current location on part of Lee Avenue, now known as Father Tribou Street.
This fall the book will become part of another Catholic High School tradition, the outside reading assignment. Each student is assigned to read one extra book a month and take a test on it. This September all four grades will read Moran’s book, with students getting the book at the wholesale rate.
“I hope (the students) learn a little bit about Catholic High history. I hope they get a sense from the stories from the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s that we have a lot in common,” Moran said.
He suggests maybe he should write the test as a favor to the teachers, but he adds, “Probably they would rather I just grade them all.”
The current head of the English department, Gretchen Gowen, read the book before suggesting it to principal Steve Straessle and the other faculty members.
“I think this book summarizes what the late Father George Tribou called ’the Catholic High experience,’” Gowen said. “Mr. Moran’s ability as a teacher is legendary, but in this book he humbly defines what it is to be part of a place and an endeavor that is much bigger than any individual.”
Gowen adds the book will probably become a regular assignment for ninth graders.
“Our reading program seeks to get boys excited about reading. What better way to get them interested than by giving them a book about their own alma mater?” she said.
Royalties from sales of the book will go to the Catholic High Foundation for the Michael J. Moran Endowed Scholarship. The fund provides aid to “boys who might not be able to attend (the school) because of expense,” Moran said.
The organization will also hold a roast and toast of Moran at 6:30 p.m. April 25. Tickets are $40, and proceeds will benefit the scholarship.
Moran said he is prepared for the roasting.
“You bet — I’m ready,” he said. “I’ve got my ammo pretty much ready to go.”
He is most concerned about his sister, Luci Hall, “because she knows more about me than anyone else,” he said. “At first she denied being involved. Now she’s acknowledged she’s on the list.”
Another participant and former classmate Don Jack sent a note to Moran after a profile of Moran ran in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette April 5: “The High Profile was wonderful. It didn’t do you justice, but I will.”
Moran was working on a master’s degree in English at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville when Father Tribou called and asked him to teach at Catholic High in 1968.
“It was my first full-time job after college,” Moran said. “Nine months at $600 a month.”
After teaching at the school for a few years, he considered going back to college to get a doctorate. Then he read two different books that both dealt with the politics of college academic departments.
“It convinced me that was not where I would be best situated,” he said.
During his 40 years, he taught Latin, world history, national problems and introductory math, but his favorite course to teach was English, including grammar.
“I used to compare (teaching grammar) to teaching auto mechanics,” he said because the comparison gave the students a sense of its importance.
He did have the chance occasionally to teach female students in the school’s summer driver education courses.
“Once I yelled at some girls for talking while I was teaching — I was not prepared for the ensuing tears,” he said. “I just got used to the all-male environment.”
While he does miss being in the classroom, he does not miss grading.
“The older I got, the more obsessive I got about getting my papers graded. It weighed on me. I marked every punctuation error and made comments,” he said.
Now instead of working with student writing, he writes his own works.
As a first-time author, Moran found the publishing process interesting but “weird.”
“The folks at the Butler Center were accommodating and helpful. But everything’s new,” he said.
After finishing the book on Catholic High School, he wrote a novel he would like to publish. However, because he used characters from novels by J.D. Salinger and James Hilton, the book cannot be published without permission.
Salinger, 92, is “very fierce” about not giving permission, so Moran would have to change that character. Currently he is trying to get permission from the estate of James Hilton.
“If they say no, it will be 75,000 words of exercise. I’ll go on and try to write something else,” he said. “It was great fun. I looked forward to writing it every day.”
“Proudly We Speak Your Name: Forty-four Years at Little Rock Catholic High School” will be available for purchase at the roast and toast and from WordsWorth Books, the Catholic High School office and Amazon.com. It lists for $24.95.