Deacon Jerry Franzen ’64, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, taught decades of students in Thomas More’s chemistry department. He currently serves as the deacon for the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption in Covington, Kentucky and recently celebrated the 25^th anniversary of his ordination. Deacon Jerry reflects on his formative experiences at Thomas More University/Villa Madonna College, his vocation as a deacon, and advice to current students.

Kristen Gallagher (KG): Can you share with us one or two of your favorite memories from your time as a student here at Thomas More?

Deacon Jerry Franzen (JF): Thank you for inviting me, and yes, I can actually share three experiences I think were important in my time. First of all, I was not at Thomas More College. I was at Villa Madonna College in those days, in a very different atmosphere. The first thing happened to me, I think, when I was a sophomore, I was in an organic chemistry course. Now, I think everybody knows organic chemistry is a tough course. Back in those days, it was what you took, and that was it. There wasn’t this big hoopla going into the course. There were about 20 people in the first semester of the course, biology majors and chemistry majors. In the second semester of the course, there were only three people, because the biology majors didn’t, in those days, have to take the second semester. So, there were three of us and the professor. The professor was Dr. James Cantrell. He was new to the college, but he decided that he wasn’t going to teach us as three students sitting in chairs in the classroom. He taught us individually. So we met with him individually, and that was really a very good experience for me. It really turned me on to organic chemistry, it turns out. And when I was a junior, there was a separate professor who was teaching a quantitative analysis course in chemistry, and that had a lecture and lab. During the lab time, he had somehow managed to schedule himself for a lecture class, and so he couldn’t be present in the lab and also teach another lecture class. He asked me if I would be kind of like a student assistant and go in and watch over the students, some of whom were my own classmates in the organic chemistry course, and help them interpret procedures and do the various operations they had to do. That was an interesting experience. In my senior year, I had a course called physical chemistry, which really is the toughest course of all the chemistry courses, I think for people who take a full spectrum of courses. In that case, I had Sister Rita Marie Muller as the professor, and she decided she wasn’t going to teach the course for three people either – we were going to teach the course. So the three students rotated teaching the course to the other two, although she was always there in the background for support. From those experiences, I think it’s really no mystery that I became a teacher.

KG: Thank you for sharing that! How have you seen Thomas More change or evolve over the decades?

JF: Physically, it has changed a lot. When I was a student, all of the buildings were in downtown Covington, most of them near the corner of 12th and Scott Street. There are two of those buildings that still remain standing, but the majority of the buildings have been torn down. The chemistry labs were down there. The physics labs and the physics lecture rooms were in Mother of God School, which is near on Sixth Street, down in Covington. It was separated from what you might have called the main campus. Now, when I came here in 1973, we were on the campus here (Crestview Hills). But this campus changed a lot during my time as well. So physically, there has been a lot of change. As a college, and the educational program, and maybe the administration, I have seen it grow a lot. Many, many more staff people – and not that they aren’t needed, they are. More in the realm of maintenance – I think there were two guys that did all the maintenance work and all these buildings that were all over the place downtown. I’m sure the maintenance crew is bigger than just two people now, and certainly the business offices are much different than it was in the old days – the old days being the early days here on this campus. And of course, the campus has grown building-wise and physically as well, area-wise. This piece of property here (Centennial Hall) is new to the college. The [Five Seasons] property is new to the college. [There are] new buildings to the college. When I came here, there was no football stadium, there was no convocation center, there was no student center, there was no dormitory behind the student center. The baseball field was out where the new building is now, the new business administration building, I guess, is what I call it. Now, the baseball field is out in Florence. So, it’s changed a lot.

KG: You recently celebrated the 25^th anniversary of your ordination. What has been the most meaningful aspect to you about this vocation?

JF: I’ve given that some thought, and I think this might be the explanation. Before I was ordained a deacon, I was doing church work. I was doing what I thought was my share of being a good member of the Church – leading my family, I have two children, and helping out with various things at the parish level. I served on parish council, I helped out with festivals, I did a number of other things regarding worship, but I think now, looking back, I see that being ordained has provided me with a much deeper ability to serve the Church, as a deacon. There were people who were telling me to be a deacon, to become a deacon, and I would tell them, “No, I don’t think so. I think that I can do everything in the Church I want to do without becoming a deacon.” Now, the various things I can do as a deacon are the things I like to do the most, or I have liked to do the most. I’m getting now older in years and finding I’m not able to do everything that I used to do. So, it’s being able to do things for the Church, I think at a deeper level, is what I can see.

KG: What advice would you share with the students of Thomas More who are discerning their place in the world and their own vocation in life?

JF: I’ve thought about this one, too. First of all, I would hope that all students always are majoring in a subject, or subjects if they have more than one major, that they really liked. That from their high school experience or from other investigations, they have found that this is the subject I really want to learn more about, because I see college as a time for people to develop, to develop their knowledge, to develop their understanding, and hopefully their knowledge and their understanding will help them develop in the area of wisdom – making wise decisions about things. I also, and of course that would apply to freshmen, maybe sophomores, but by the time you become a junior, you’re pretty locked into what you might be majoring in. I would also tell people to work on becoming better listeners. These days, we are very poor listeners. I find myself as a poor listener. I find myself not even listening to myself. I will be reading something, and I’ll have to go back and reread it again because I wasn’t listening to what I was just reading, even though I wasn’t reading it out loud, so it came to my ear, so to speak. But listening is important. To listen to another person, also not just yourself, but listen to another person. Let them complete the whole story of what they want to tell you so you can understand the whole thing. I find people jumping in fast when you’re telling. Lots of times you’ll get advice, information from another person, that you won’t even recognize at the time as advice. You’ll just recognize it as something that they said, and you listened to it, and you retained it. Suddenly, years later, oh yes, yeah, that was important. I can’t hesitate to add – listen to that inner voice, which is in you, telling you what to do. It may be the Holy Spirit’s inner voice that’s talking to you, and not the devil’s voice that’s talking to you. This is where that wisdom comes in, where you can hopefully make the right decision about doing the right thing and make the right decision about not doing the wrong thing.

KG: Thank you so much for sharing that, and thank you so much for joining us, Deacon Jerry! Thank you for joining us, and you can find more of our Saints Spotlight videos on our YouTube channel, @ThomasMoreKY.