I never met Father Tom Prag. This does not prevent me from picturing him, a tall Jesuit with a terrible ear for languages, strolling the sidewalks of north Denver. He walked slowly not because of any physical ailment but because that’s how he did everything. He spoke with deliberation. He listened with deliberation. He told Jim Garcia, then on Our Lady of Guadalupe’s parish council, that eating was a form of prayer and should be done thoughtfully. “Everything was a form of prayer to Father Tom,” Garcia says.
He lived on Lipan Street near the church. There, he established a tiny Jesuit community in what was described to me as three sheds. Jesuits take a vow of poverty, but even in that neighborhood at that time, the accommodations were meager.
It was the mid-’90s. Father Tom was 57. By then, he’d been a Jesuit for half his life, ordained in 1969 in his hometown of St. Louis.
His love was spiritual formation, leading retreats. He had the temperament for it. He was, in his deliberation, a still man. Not the stillness of absence but of awareness. This is what being a good listener means, to be attuned, to silence the noise within. It is an act of humility.
Even as a young man, his presence was calming, says Father Michael Sheeran, president of Regis University. Sheeran entered the Society of Jesus with Prag in 1957.
This presence made possible conversations that may not have ordinarily taken place, bridged factions in the neighborhood, some of them among longtime Latino residents and the more recently arrived Mexican immigrants.
Find out how we Jesuits can serve the Latino community — these were his marching orders. So Father Tom lived among the community, and he listened.
You know where this is going. Father Thomas S. Prag died Saturday. A heart attack. He was 71 and had just taken on a new assignment directing spiritual retreats in St. Louis. The irony of a deliberate man dying suddenly did not escape his Jesuit brothers, who noted it may have been the only thing Father Tom did in a hurry.
He would have appreciated the joke. Back when he was living on Lipan and the neighborhood was showing the first sign of gentrification, he watched a young, professional couple buy the house a poor Mexican family once rented, and he turned to Garcia and said, “Well, there goes the neighborhood.”
What Father Tom heard after all that listening was that education was the No. 1 issue. Too many of the neighborhood’s young people were never finishing school. At the time, David Card was running a food bank in the old St. Patrick’s school on West 34th Avenue and Pecos Street.
“I’d see kids, 8 or 9 years old, and their eyes were bright, and they were full of dreams,” Card said. “By 11 years old, the light was gone.”
Discussions about a school for the children of Our Lady of Guadalupe parishioners had been ongoing, and Father Tom joined them. He was, Father Sheeran says, “no one’s idea of an administrator, but he was a major force.”
“He was the linchpin,” Garcia says. “The forces had mustered, but he was going to make the school happen. He was its primary advocate, and it was his sole focus.”
Escuela de Guadalupe opened in 1999 in the old St. Patrick school. Since its beginnings, it has been a private dual-language elementary school with a strong Catholic foundation. About half of its students speak English as a primary language, and half speak Spanish. By the third grade, students are moving between both languages.
“It was always going to be a dual- language school,” says Card, who is the school’s president. “There was this fundamental thing about dignity. By honoring the cultures and languages of the people who lived here, by treating them as learning tools, the founders hoped our students would be more able to appreciate others, respect them and, honestly, love them.”
Says Garcia: “Father Tom didn’t have a political bone in his body. He didn’t talk about education reform. He didn’t think about CSAPs. It was about being present for a people who didn’t have a voice.”
About 100 students now attend Escuela. It is has been heralded in many circles as one of the neighborhood’s best-kept secrets. It has longer school days and a longer school year and an active parent community. Its standardized-test scores — not CSAP but a private-school equivalent — show all of its students to be proficient in math and reading in both Spanish and English by fifth grade. After they leave the school, mentors guide them through middle and high school.
Each time I visit Escuela de Guadalupe, I marvel at these children who can glide from English to Spanish and back without batting an eye.
“I’m a little proud of myself,” 8-year-old Adrianna tells me. “I think I’m going to pass every single grade.”
Just as Father Tom would have wanted.
Tina Griego writes Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
