Servite 1970 Club Team (above) published in the 1971 yearbook.

1969 yearbook showing Soccer Club during our sophomore year.

Interview with Joe Scavo, 2011

About the time of our 40 year reunion in 2011 I had a project that I was working on.  I would

ask the question:  "How were you Catholic in 1971?  How are you Catholic now?

This recording was with Joe Scavo.  I did not know Joe all that well during the Servite years.

But I was so grateful to have spent this time together with Joe.  Joe's respect for all, his deep insight

into himself and others, and the wonderful kindness of the person he was is well expressed in this

discussion.  

 https://vimeo.com/494131562

Charlie Motsko and the Legend of the Golden Gloves

 

Fr. Charles Motsko was the principal of Servite for all four years the Class of '71 was there.  Charlie had a reputation for being an uncompromising adherent to the principle of swat first, ask questions later. 



I had the pleasure of spending a couple of hours with Charlie shortly after our 40th, in 2011.

He was the 11th of 12 children, born the son of a coal miner in a small town in Pennsylvania.  He and five of his brothers

enlisted in the US military during WW2, but being the youngest he shipped out to the Philippines after the war ended.

 

There he became an aide to a Catholic military chaplain, Fr. Mulcahy  and first encountered the Servite order when he

received a publication "Novena Notes" sent from the Servites in Chicago ten thousand miles away.  He met a lot of 

priests in the Philippines as his assignment was to drive them around. He had had a devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows

as early as age 8, so the Servites caught his attention. 

 

He wrote for information, and the Servites sent him an application which he filled out and returned.  He went to the Servite Seminary in Granville Wisconsin on the GI Bill.  He was a  classmate of Fr. Donovan and Fr. George Luznicky. He studied Philosophy at Lake Forest in Waukegan Illinois for 2 years.  

 

He was ordained in 1955.  His younger brother Andrew also became a Servite brother.  Brother Andrew spent most

of his 40 year Servite career as a stonemason building churches and other projects in the Servite South African mission in Zululand. One year when he was Principal at Servite, the Parents Club gifted him a trip to visit his brother for 2 weeks in South Africa, which he greatly appreciated.

His first year he was assigned as a math  and religion teacher at St Philip's in Chicago, a Servite all boys high school. His next four years was spent teaching at the minor seminary  with Fr. George in Hillside Illinois teaching the eighty or so students Latin, Math, History, English and Everything Else.

His next assignment was to Anaheim in 1959, the second year of operation at the new Servite HS. Since there was no priory,  7 or 8 Servites lived in a second floor classroom of the high school that first year and ate meals with the students in the cafeteria. The following year the Priory was completed, and new Servites came including Fr. Grimes, Fr.George, and Fr. Brennan. Charlie taught Latin and Religion.

During the course of our conversation I asked him about the  Motsko Golden Glove Legend, and he was more than happy to fill me in...

                               Dave Molina