Page 9 - Priorities #40 2008-March

SMB: You have a real passion for sports. How does that relate to not only your vision as an educator but also as a craftsman—the physical aspect of engaging in the sports for the school and for yourself?
FM: Well I’ve always enjoyed sports. My dad and I were great fans of two sports really, one was football. I grew up on football and boxing. At one time in my life I aspired to be a golden gloves boxer in New Jersey. Well luckily I never quite made that so my nose is still fairly straight and my ears are
not cauliflower. But I’ve always maintained a great interest i boxing and love football. I also like other sports. But I had never seen a soccer game until I came to California. At Priory I’ve come to really love that sport because kids can play almost at any size.
Basketball, baseball, whatever; I enjoy them all. So when I was driving the school bus it was always a lot of fun because I could see not only the home games but the away games too.
SMB: So sports are important.
FM: I think they’re very good for the kids. It gives the kids a chance to be competitive but also to kind of develop a good sense of sportsmanship. To be competitive when they’re on the field but know that it’s not a matter of violence. Unfortunately I see that too many of the professional and sometimes college players exemplify a kind of lifestyle that serves a very bad example for our kids. Sadly, they don’t see themselves as role models for our kids and I think that’s a real disappointment. It would be much better if we had role models out there who could give the kids some aspirations to be good sportsmen and women and to live good and healthy lives rather than resorting to drugs, steroids, and things like that.
SMB: You’ve traveled quite a bit. I’m wondering what experiences in your own life have been important to you? You’ve taken the Andes trip and had the opportunity to work with a master guitar maker. Can you speak to some of those experiences?
FM: Some of my best memories were the two years I accompanied a group of our students to the Andes Mountains. We treked up to the place where a plane had crashed in deep the Andes back in the 1970’s. A book was written by one of the survivors called Alive. We rode up on horseback
to about 12,000 feet where the remains of the plane still lay and many victims of the tragedy are
buried. It was on top of that mountain along with Roberto Canessa, the author of Alive and one of the few survivors, that I celebrated mass in a blinding snowstorm.
It was a wonderful, wonderful experience and one of the things that I will never forget. I know that the students that were on those trips will never forget it either. I also had a chance to meet the other survivors. They made it through that horrible 10- week stay on the mountain experiencing little or
no food, an avalanche, and eventually resorted to cannibalism. To talk to them and to hear about their experiences was amazing. Roberto Canessa was
the real heroe of that crash as he was the one who finally found help. He commented to me on several occasions that he had been to a school run by the
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