Dr. Kaiser on TAC’s First 50th Reunion Class

 

The Golden Years

by Thomas J. Kaiser, Ph.D. (’75)
Tutor
Alumni Dinner
Thomas Aquinas College, California
June 22, 2025

 

I want to welcome all of you to the Alumni Dinner. It is so good to see you all. I want to give a special welcome to the classes of 2020, 2015, 2005, and especially my own class of 1975. We are celebrating our 50^th anniversary. I never thought I would live this long.

I have always considered it to be a great honor to be a member of the first graduating class of Thomas Aquinas College. How many people have the opportunity to be in the first graduating class of a college? On the other hand, it is not normally one of the features you look for in choosing a college. It might even seem a bit foolish to commit to a new college given the many risks involved. You have no guarantee that it will survive until graduation. However, it has been a privilege to be part of the startup of a college that has been extremely successful. It has not only survived for more than 50 years; it has expanded to another campus and is more than halfway to reaching maximum capacity there. I don’t think the founders even considered that possibility in the beginning. Furthermore, the College is the gold standard for Catholic liberal education. 

I was recently out for the fourth graduation at the New England campus. The enthusiasm of the graduates was amazing. They became freshmen while the first class became seniors. So, they consider themselves to be one of the four pioneer classes, and they rejoice in that fact. A fortiori, our first class were pioneers. There was no one before us. We had no graduates of the program to talk to; we could not sit in on classes to see how they go; there was no High School Summer Program by which we could determine whether or not we were a good fit for the program. We had to commit largely in ignorance of what we were about to do.

At a dinner honoring Dr. Neumayr on his retirement, he said that the first class of the College ought to be considered founders. I don’t know if I would go that far, but it is certainly true that had we not come, the founders would have had a hard time convincing donors to keep supporting their efforts. The year before the College opened, they had to move their operation from Dominican College in northern California to Claretville in Malibu Canyon. They did not solicit applications until the mid-spring of 1971, which left little time to fill a class. Dr. McArthur told me that they were uncertain whether anyone would come, which was a very reasonable concern.

 

So, Why Did We Come?

Speaking for myself, and I think for most of us, there were many reasons. 

1. Catholic colleges, for the most part, had surrendered their Catholic identity to follow the secular universities. The Land O’Lakes Statement, signed in 1967 by the presidents of many of the most prestigious Catholic colleges and universities, declared that they would no longer be subject to the teaching authority of the Church; instead, they were going to promote “academic freedom.” The decline in orthodoxy had been going on for a long time. By the time I was thinking about college, many parents were well aware of the fact that if they sent their child to a Catholic college, he was likely to lose his faith.
2. The Sexual Revolution was taking place and, along with it, there was rampant drug abuse. I witnessed these changes taking place while I was in high school. The moral atmosphere on high school and college campuses had declined significantly.
3. Much like today, there were riots on college campuses. Instead of pro-Hamas demonstrations of today, they were protesting the Vietnam War. Along with these protests was an explicit push against Western civilization, which is really a push against Christian civilization. The mantra was, “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Western civ has to go.” 
4. In addition, Vatican II recently had come to a close and the liturgical revolution was well under way. Speaking of which, I recall a joke Peter DeLuca used to tell in those days: “What is the difference between a liturgist and a terrorist? You can negotiate with a terrorist!” The Church itself was in a state of turmoil. Humanae Vitae was published in 1968. Many Catholics, including the clergy, refused to submit to its teaching. To be a dissenting theologian at that time became very popular; it was a great way to gain the attention of the media.

So, the question in my mind was whether to go to college at all. There were other things I could do. 

Fortunately, I heard about the College through the Sampson family. Ed and Marian invited Dr. Neumayr to give a talk in Bakersfield to group of Catholic families. I was very impressed with Dr. Neumayr. He not only diagnosed what was happening in higher education, he gave a clear picture of what true Catholic liberal education is and how it is necessary for the good of the Church and for the good of society.

I decided to visit the campus in the summer of 1971 and met Dr. McArthur. Both he and Dr. Neumayr were two of the most impressive men I had ever met. Dr. McArthur said something that really stuck with me, he said that they were not inventing a new program of studies, they were going back to a long-standing tradition in Catholic education. It is tried and true. The teachers, authors of the Great Books, were some of the most brilliant minds that have ever lived. So, these men and their Proposal for the Fulfillment of Catholic Liberal Education  gave me the confidence I needed to put my trust in them. I was also convinced, as I think most of my classmates were, that this education was something that I was doing not only for myself, but also for the good of the country and the good of the Church. 

 

Our Classmates 

By the way, there were six students from Bakersfield who joined the first class besides myself: Gabrielle Antongiovanni, Tony Lobre, Mike Quick, Scott and Lindsay Sampson. So, that visit by Dr. Neumayr proved very successful! I must say that the first class was an odd collection of students. We had two veterans of the Vietnam War, Bill Sockey and David Rioux. David was disabled in the war and is the only blind student to graduate from the College. Some students had previous college experience, but many came directly after graduating from high school. Not all were Catholic. Doug Gilles claimed to be Hindu. I should mention that Norman DeSilva, the father of tutor John Finley, was the only student to enter the College as a sophomore; he had studied under the founders in the Integral Program at St. Mary’s. He was also the first alum to come back to teach at the College. Unfortunately, he passed away in the summer of 1985. Rick Cross was our class photographer and auto mechanic. Many of the photos of the first years of the College were taken by him, including the one that was recently sent out to advertise Alumni Day of Giving. 

The College also had the good fortune of being discovered by Bill Grimm, who tried to get four of his children into the first class. Three were accepted that year, Marya, Paula and Stephen, and the Grimm clan continues to contribute significant numbers to the student body every year. Perhaps more significantly, they began a musical tradition that has been a blessing to the College ever since.

 

The First Years

When I look back on the first years of the College, one of the most striking things was the enthusiasm of the founders. First, it was clear that they were very appreciative of the fact that we had come. I will never forget that, and I think we, as tutors, ought to have the same appreciation for the students who come to the College now. What we do here is so countercultural that it is still heartening to see how many young people are willing to come. 

The founders were also very enthusiastic about doing the program with us. When Dr. Neumayr gave his talk in Bakersfield, he made it clear that the founders were so enthusiastic about the readings and discussions that they considered having the seminars classes on Saturday! (I think that would have been a dealbreaker for me.) Moreover, while I was a student, it became clear that the idea of taking a day off or going on vacation was almost unthinkable. Why, when you are doing such great and wonderful things, would you want a break? Time off was for more reading and writing. I’m not sure they realized that it takes time to achieve that kind of stamina. The program is a very demanding and students do get tired.

Another thing that was a source of joy and enthusiasm was that the students were able to do the program well. As many of you know, Dr. McArthur was a good friend of John Senior, who thought that, because modern students were so poorly educated in poetry and had so little experience of nature, the kind of education our founders were proposing was impossible. Remedial work had to be done at the college level before you could do a program such as ours. But we were able to do it and do it well. I had the pleasure of having Dr. McArthur for Euclid and for philosophy Freshman Year. He was impressed with how well we could do Euclid. He would talk to us after class about how great Euclid was and tell us that we should really be looking forward to Newton. He had great confidence that we were up to the task. 

I do think that they may have overestimated our abilities at times. After reading a few Platonic dialogues at the beginning of the Freshman Year, our first paper topic was, “What is Socrates’ Method?” When I heard that prompt, I was shocked. I had enough trouble trying to follow a dialogue. The idea that Socrates had a method did not even occur to me. I wasn’t ready for that kind of analysis. I had not even heard of the word ‘dialectic.’ We would have to read The Republic before we could reasonably tackle a question like that.

 

 

The Guinea Pig Class

When the founders wrote the Proposal for the Fulfillment of a Catholic Education, they had an outline of the program, but the details still needed to be worked out. We were the class they experimented with. Here are a few examples of things tried and changed: 

We had a Euclid exam the first semester. We suggested that, since we go to the board so often in class, a Euclid exam wasn’t necessary, especially given the fact that much of the exam was doing Euclid props we had already demonstrated in class. 

We had the Music Tutorial Sophomore Year on top of second-year Latin. We suggested moving Music to the Junior Year, after we have finished the two years of Latin.

Senior Seminar had all the long novels we still read today. Second semester included Bothers Karamazov, Moby-Dick and, to top it off, we were supposed to read Emma and Madam Bovary for one seminar. How were we supposed to do all that? Vacation time!

One of the things I most appreciated about being in the first class was the close relationship we had with the first tutors. As Dr. McArthur and I were strolling the campus early in the first semester, he told me that the College wanted to treat us like adults and have as few rules as possible. We were going to have student prefects keep order on campus to diminish the possibility of an adversarial relationship between the faculty and students. We had two older classmates that were perfect for the job: Bill Sockey, who had been a Lieutenant in the Navy, and Tina Langone, who was also an older student and had spent some time in religious life.

Some of the rules of residence were very clear from the outset and some had to be worked out. 

It was very clear from the beginning that there would be no visiting dorms of the opposite sex, except to help someone move in or out. There was a curfew at 11:00 p.m. on school nights and 1:00 a.m. other nights. What you may not know is the curfew was primarily to secure the campus and to make sure everyone was safely in the dorms at night. We were on a 200-acre ranch bounded on two sides by busy thoroughfares, Mulholland Highway and Las Virgenes Canyon Road; we had no hired campus security. The only people living on campus besides the students were Fr. Marchowski and Fr. McGovern. The prefects were campus security. They locked the front gate after curfew and locked all the buildings on campus. Curfew was chosen as a reasonable time for the prefects to lock up and be able to go to bed. 

It might surprise you to know that students were allowed to keep guns in their dorm rooms. I had a Winchester 30-30, a Ruger 10/.22, and a 12 ga. shotgun. Given the isolation of the campus and the lack of professional security, it gave the administration some comfort to know that we had some protection on campus. 

One rule that was not perfectly clear in the beginning was the use of alcohol on campus. I remember Mike Fox’s dad pulling up to the men’s dorm and dropping off a 12-pack of beer for Mike and his buddies. We were college boys now! Soon after, Dr. McArthur made it clear that there will be no alcohol in the dorms and no drinking on campus. He had taught at other institutions where those things were allowed, and it was not the kind of environment that was conducive to serious study. 

And, in order to foster an environment conducive to study, no phones or TVs were allowed in the dorm rooms. There was only one television on campus in the Carriage House, and it only had reception via an antenna. Each floor of the dorm had a payphone in the hallway. The founders intentionally wanted a campus away from the distractions of the city and, for the same reason, they did not want electronic devices in the dorms distracting students from their studies. It was very easy to enforce these rules at the time. You needed an active phone jack for a phone and an antenna for TV. The advent of smartphones has really created a problem in this respect, and it is something that needs to be addressed. You parents need to help us out with this. Smartphones (phones with internet access) are not only unnecessary, they are a constant distraction, and the access to the internet is impossible to regulate. So, they are not only a distraction, they can make for an unwholesome environment. But this is a topic for another discussion. 

Members of the first few classes will remember another issue that came up in the early years. The Student Handbook said that women are to wear dresses of a “modest length.” That’s all it said. Miniskirts were in fashion at the time, and girls were wearing them. It was particularly distracting during Mass. I asked Dr. McArthur whether he thought miniskirts were of “modest length.” He said he didn’t want to deal with that issue; he would prefer that we settle it amongst ourselves. I was certainly surprised by this response. I’m sure it would have been awkward for him to just make a pronouncement.

Looking back on it, I think this was an occasion where Dr. McArthur thought that we, as young adults, could work it out ourselves. Some people here might have better recollection than I do about how the topic was first broached with the women on campus. I’m sure it was done with all the appropriate prudence and tact. Honestly, I do remember the conversations being frank and friendly. 

At some point, someone discovered Pope Pius XI’s Papal Decree Concerning Modesty (Jan. 12, 1930). Most of us were unaware of this document, and we were surprised by its strictness. Nevertheless, students agreed to use it as a starting point for setting some standards. I remember Anne Wynne getting a kick out the Decree’s description for necklines: “two inches below the pit of the throat.” It did not take long for the women to come to agreement on standards for classroom and chapel. They were not added to the Student Handbook at the time because we thought it best to pass them on by custom and word of mouth. Women prefects would do this every year during Freshman Orientation. It wasn’t until many years later that the Admissions Department requested a written, detailed dress code so that women would not come to the College Freshman Year having spent money on clothes that didn’t meet the dress code. 

As time passes, the number of rules tends to proliferate. This happens in part because people do stupid things, and the response is to make more rules. Here is an example of an unwritten rule that was established early on. One day some guy was shooting his .22 rifle out his dorm room window at rodents in the field east of the dorm. There happened to be a class in session on the next floor down, which found the sound of gunfire quite distracting. So, from then on there was to be no more shooting from the dormitory. The thought never crossed my mind that I would be disturbing a class.

 

After Graduation

Let me say just a few words about what we did after graduation to pave the way for future classes. The College was not accredited when we graduated, nevertheless, many of us went on to graduate school. Norman DeSilva, Mike Fox, and David Rioux went to Laval and received their doctorates. Bill Sockey also went to Laval and got his master’s degree in philosophy and became head of Catholics United for the Faith. Francis Poon, Rick Russnak, Kim Walsh and I entered a master’s program in philosophy at Niagara University. Rick Cross got his Ph.D. in Psychology at Indiana University, where he met Richard Ferrier and Carol Day and got them interested in our College. He has been the counselor at the New England campus from the beginning. Laura Steichen married Marc Berquist the summer after her graduation. She is the only student so far to marry a tutor. She later founded Mother of Divine Grace and, as Marc put it, she became his claim to fame. Anne Wynne worked for the College after graduation and became the first Resident Assistant. She later worked for Phyllis Schlafly in D.C. before getting married. Robin Tucker married Kim Walsh and raised a beautiful family. Tina Langone entered the religious life. Most of the class married and became parents of large families. Many of their children have graduated from the College, and now their children’s children are graduating. Keep them coming!

In Conclusion, I want to say a few words about the Golden Years of the College.

As the decades went by, there may have been some sentiment among the founders to look back with great fondness on the first few years of the College as the “Golden Years.” There were some extraordinary students, and I was not one of them. I think their fondness for the early years was the newness of the program and the signs that it was going to be successful. There were tremendous struggles to raise sufficient funds to keep the program going, but it was through the struggles and obstacles that they became aware that their efforts both as teachers and fundraisers were being supported by Divine Providence. There were times when things seemed hopeless; times when they did not think they were going to make payroll. But then, from out of the blue, a check would arrive in the mail and their needs would be met — at least for the moment. The founders became fully convinced that God was looking out for the College, and it strengthened their conviction that they were doing His will. 

Since the founding of the College, many other conservative Catholic college have come into existence: Christendom, Thomas More, Wyoming Catholic, Ave Maria, just to mention a few. Other colleges have improved their programs, such as Franciscan University, Benedictine, University of Dallas, Belmont Abbey, and University of Mary. However, Thomas Aquinas College is still unique among all these colleges. As Dr. McArthur used to say, Thomas Aquinas College is the only liberal arts college in the country that is formally Catholic. What he meant by this is that Catholicism is not something just tacked on to a program of majors and minors that you could find anywhere else. All the parts of the program are ordered to and ordered by the study Sacred Theology. Theology does not replace the principle and methods of the inferior sciences, but it judges them. 

We do this with the certitude of faith that comes from the teaching authority of the Church and by the guidance of the Common Doctor of the Church, our patron, St. Thomas Aquinas. Hence, insofar as Sacred Theology and the teaching authority of the Church are the lights by which the lower disciplines are ordered and judged, they determine the formal aspect of the whole program. 

St. John Paul II, in his encyclical on Catholic higher education, Ex Corde Ecclesia, said: 

An area that particularly interests a Catholic University is the dialogue between Christian thought and the modern sciences. This task requires persons particularly well versed in the individual disciplines and who are at the same time adequately prepared theologically, and who are capable of confronting epistemological questions at the level of the relationship between faith and reason [46]. 

No other undergraduate program in the world does this better than we do. This is why we have four years of math and science. In the science courses, we use philosophy to assist us in seeing how natural science and divine revelation are compatible. This is most notable in our course on evolution last semester Senior Year. This course could not be taught anywhere else. Without going into detail, prerequisites for this class include many classes from all four years of the program, particularly the math, science, philosophy, and theology courses. Not only are our students best prepared to do this course, so are the tutors themselves. This is another unique feature of Thomas Aquinas College, the tutors teach the whole program; there is no other way to have a fully integrated curriculum. The tutors need to know what the students have learned and must help them bring those things together. 

The program has developed since my student days, particularly in the math and science tutorials, where tutors have an expertise now that they did not have in the beginning. More and more tutors have taught the whole program. This adds real strength to our ability to teach. 

Another strength is the fact that classical homeschooling programs, such as Mother of Divine Grace and the charter schools with classical curricula, have produced students that are much better prepared to do our program than I was when I came out of the public school system. I could do math, but I did not know how to discuss a book. I was lost in the first readings of the Platonic Dialogues.

With the strengths I have mentioned and with our growth to a new campus in New England, I can safely say that we are in the Golden Years of the College, and we look forward to them continuing. 

Thank you for your love and support of the College. Keep sending your children and their friends our way.

God bless!