A Brief History of Thomas Aquinas College
(Spring 2001 Newsletter)
John Neumayr: Scholar-Athlete-Founder
If founding a college is a Herculean task, then how fitting
that one of the College's founders would be an outstanding
athlete-turned-philosopher.
Dr. John Neumayr, a four-year standout basketball player at
Notre Dame, knew there were higher things in life than 10-foot
circular rims. But he never anticipated that pursuing life's
great ideas would lead him to the founding of Thomas Aquinas
College.
Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Neumayr lived in and around
San Francisco from the age of 10. The second oldest of four
children, he always liked sports growing up. He excelled at
basketball in junior high and high school, and, at the Jesuits'
perennial powerhouse, St. Ignatius Prep, was selected to the
all-city team in his senior year.
He also excelled at track and field. As a sophomore, he set
the San Francisco City record in the high jump. His leap of
6' 5" under the old "tuck and roll" method
was thought by the legendary Stanford Coach Dink Templeton
to be a world record for a 15-year-old and stood at least
as a city record until Johnny Mathis delayed his singing career
to break it a few years later. (Surprisingly, Neumayr never
improved on the mark. "My build changed and I gained
20-30 pounds," he lamented.)
Neumayr was delighted when, in 1948, Notre Dame recruited
him for basketball and track. He had been hoping to go there
anyhow. As a 6' 4" small forward, Neumayr joined a team
that remained in the nation's Top 20 throughout his four years.
Not until his senior year did Notre Dame elect to play in
the post-season NCAA tournament, and when it did, it lost
in the opening round in spite of a 22-5 season record.
But it was during high school that Neumayr fell in love with
philosophy. One of his fellow basketball teammates, Cappy
Lavin, was a poet and scholar at heart, and the two young
men began to see that there was something more permanent than
the fleeting things of life. "We had spent a lot of time
talking literature and philosophy before we even knew what
philosophy was," said Neumayr. (Lavin ended up teaching
high school in Marin County; his son, Steve, is head basketball
coach at UCLA.)
Neumayr cultivated this interest in philosophy at Notre Dame
and, on graduation in 1952, decided to pursue a master's degree
in the subject there. He maintained his athletic interests,
coaching the freshman basketball team for two years and playing
in an exhibition league against visiting professional teams
and the Harlem Globetrotters.
He returned to San Francisco uncertain of his interests.
He pursued course-work toward a teaching credential, considered
practicing law, and even tested a religious vocation at the
Dominican novitiate.
During this two-year odyssey, his sister Mary introduced
him to one of her favorite teachers at the San Francisco College
for Women (known as "Lone Mountain College"). Mary
had guessed that her brother and her philosophy instructor,
Dr. Ronald McArthur, would get along well. She guessed right.
The two hit it off from the start. They played a lot of tennis
and talked a lot of philosophy.
McArthur then joined the faculty of St. Mary's, which featured
an Integrated Liberal Arts Program similar to the Great Books
curriculum at St. John's College. McArthur, who taught in
the philosophy department as well as in the Integrated Program,
urged Neumayr to hurry and get his philosophy degree at Laval
University, with the hope that the two of them might teach
in the program there.
Neumayr thus studied at McArthur's alma mater under his mentor,
the esteemed Thomist, Charles DeKoninck. But by the time Neumayr
obtained his doctorate in 1962, winds of change were blowing
at St. Mary's and McArthur counseled Neumayr to stay away.
The program was losing its moorings under new management.
For four years, then, Neumayr taught at nearby University
of Santa Clara. There he found a soul-mate in young philosophy
instructor, Marc Berquist, whose brother Duane he had come
to know at Laval. During this time he also met Bridget Cameron,
an Oxford University graduate from England working on a Master's
in American Literature at the University of California at
Berkeley. She finished the Master's and they married in 1963.
t winds of change were blowing in Santa Clara, too. Neumayr
and Berquist became witness to the disintegration of its Thomistic-based
philosophy department. In 1966, they both migrated to St.
Mary's when, under different management, it appeared there
was hope for the reformation of the program there.
But those hopes were soon dashed. Two years later, a new
administration decided to restructure the program and Neumayr
was advised that his teaching contract would not be renewed.
Anticipating this demise, McArthur, Neumayr, Berquist, and
others began discussing plans to establish a new college.
Again, Neumayr's sister became a linking agent. Hoping to
help find the college a home, Mary introduced her brother
to the Dominican Sisters who were facing a loss of students
at their all-women's college in San Rafael when the all-male
local Catholic colleges decided to go co-ed. McArthur and
Neumayr pitched their project to the Sisters who agreed to
let them open offices at their campus - an arrangement that
proved to be short-lived.
Thus in the fall of 1969, Neumayr came as the first Dean
of Thomas Aquinas College. He assisted McArthur and Berquist
in writing the College's founding document, and drafted its
first Student Bulletin of Information. He also traveled with
McArthur to give talks about the College and to recruit students.
And when the College finally opened for classes in 1971, Neumayr
taught.
Neumayr remained Dean until 1981, and in addition to his
full-time teaching responsibilities, has served as vice-president
and board member of the College since its founding. Two of
his seven children have graduated from the College (Mary Bridget
in '86 and Jane in '98). His youngest, Anne, begins next fall.
Neumayr looks back on all these years with characteristic
humility. "When you consider the modest talents and efforts
we brought to bear in founding the College, you have to conclude
that this was God's project, not ours." Score another
win for him.
-- Qtrly Newsletter, Spring 2001
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