Stories and Photos

Gerald Walling, SJ

I entered the Jesuits because God extended my life and gave me two big pushes. I had served in the United States Marine Corps Reserve from January 1948 to January 1950 when my enlistment expired. My father urged me to reenlist but an inner voice told me not to. Five months later the Korean War broke out and my infantry battalion was sent to North Korea in the Allied push to the Yalu River. In October the battalion encountered the Chinese pouring across the Yalu. The fighting, at 25 below, was desperate. I wouldn't have survived.

That same October back in Chicago I met a young woman whose charm, intelligence and spirituality overwhelmed me; I had never met anyone like her. But on a date in February, 1951, she stunned me by saying she was going to become a nun. How could she take all that talent and vivacity, and pour it into a life of service of others? God showed me it was love.

I began to think, if she'll give her life, why can't I? Since God had saved my life, why shouldn't I? The next month when Dr. Tom Kennedy, director of Psychological Services at Loyola University, asked me what I was going to do after graduating from Loyola that June, I said I was thinking about becoming a priest. What kind, he asked. "I guess diocesan." "How you ever thought about the Jesuits?" "Sure, but I don't think I have what it takes." "Yes, you do; I'll get you an appointment to see [Jesuit] Fr. Henderson next Tuesday."

How could I know I was embarking on the greatest adventure of my life? To studies in theater at the Goodman School of Drama and Northwestern University? To playwriting and teaching in university theater departments at Loyola (Chicago), Marquette and Creighton? To a morning in April, 1978, when Dan Flaherty, the provincial of the Chicago Province, would urge me to become a professional actor, leading to the roles of Fr. O'Reilly in the musical Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up? To a doctor on One Life to Live, and to Prison Guard #2 in The Blues Brothers? With the grace of God, I've had a good run.

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