“ ‘WHAT?’ ”
He was talking about Rich Schuckman, whom he described as “just a rough, tough guy” on the football field, a defensive tackle for UD who won first team All-Pioneer Football League honors in 1996.
That year the Flyers went 11-0 and won the league. They remain the last UD team to go unbeaten.
Today Schuckman and Zack Cline, an offensive lineman from the 1996 team and an all-conference player the year before, with serve as honorary coaches at UD’s annual Red and White Spring Game at 1 p.m.
A guy who then-head coach Mike Kelly said played “full bore” on the field, Schuckman had a reputation for embracing life just as fully off the field, be it the classroom or hanging out with friends.
After living in the dormitories two years, he said he lived on Firwood Drive “next to Kramer’s,” then in an eight-man house on L Street and finally on the 200 block of Kiefaber, in the heart of the Student Ghetto, “right up the alley from Tim’s.”
Using those watering hole reference points, Kramer’s and Tim’s, and throwing in The Fieldhouse the other day, he laughed and called it “The Bermuda Triangle of the Ghetto.”
But midway through his junior football season, he momentarily got lost in that triangle when he uncharacteristically got caught up in a scrap that several football players had with a local fraternity.
He was not the perpetrator — he was defending a teammate — and charges against him were dropped, but like the others, he still experienced the verbal wrath of the school’s dean of discipline and was suspended the last three games of the 1995 season by Kelly.
Like some of the UD brass, his folks weren’t too happy with him either — “for making a boneheaded decision not consistent with the Schuckman family name,” he said — and he vowed to make amends.
“The best way to put it is that I let my teammates down,” he recalled. “I should have been a leader and I wasn’t. I was a follower. So after that I was driven to prove myself.”
And if you think he did a good job of that the next season, when he was an all-league defender, you should see him now.
The 40-year-old Schuckman — following nine years working at Convergis Corp. in Cincinnati where he was a systems analyst and then more recently doing drywall, plumbing and electrical work for a friend who was flipping houses — is now six years into the process required to become a Jesuit priest.
This year he’s teaching algebra and scripture — Friday he gave a test on the gospels of Mark — at St. Xavier High School in Cincinnati, which also happens to be his alma matter. This past fall he was also an assistant coach of the Bombers unbeaten JV football team.
He wears a white Roman collar in the classroom, lives in the Jesuit residence house next to the school and on occasion has given homilies at functions there or at special masses.
Yet, this is only part of the 10 to 12 years of preparation he must put in to become a priest.
Initially he was classified a novice and went through a 30-day period of silent reflection, taught in Minneapolis, served the elderly in a Detroit hospital, went through language immersion in Lima, Peru and — travelling with only the requisite $35 and a bus ticket — showed up as a pilgrim at the Shrine of St. Joseph Guardian of the Redeemer in Santa Cruz, Calif., where he ended up working on the grounds, serving in a soup kitchen and ministering to the poor.
He’s also studied philosophy and theology at Loyola University in Chicago and following the three years of work experience he began this past fall, he’ll return to more theological studies at the University of California-Berkley or Boston College.
“When he played for us I didn’t know how godly he was,” Chamberlin said.
Schuckman said he didn’t either.
Back when he was a youngster he said his dream was “to play pro football.”
And when he was in high school, he said he would have soundly dismissed the suggestion that he would end up a priest: “I’d have said something nasty and kept on walking.”
But on the flip side, he was what he calls “a cradle Catholic” who was born into the faith. He has an aunt who is a Franciscan nun and through grade school and high school he was an altar boy, who “always did like the smells and bells” that came with the assignment.
And then there was that day — when he was a 10-year-old acolyte at an early-morning mass at the Church of the Nativity of Our Lord in the Pleasant Ridge section of Cincinnati — when he saw something special.
It was during the consecration, the holiest part of the Catholic mass.
“I was kneeling up there by the altar and there were just three or four old people out in the church,” he said. “I happened to notice the priest’s face and I saw this tear coming down his cheek.
“I realized something special was happening — something more than I realized — but I was just a kid and I guess I filed it away somewhere
“And now, 30 years later, here I am pulling out that file cabinet and thinking about it all again.”
A new challenge
It was well into his career as a systems analyst that Schuckman found himself slipping out of his downtown Cincinnati office once or twice a day for a few minutes of respite.
It was while sitting on a bench at Seventh and Elm one day that he had a surprise thought:
“I’d found my work wasn’t hitting my gut right — something had to change, I didn’t want to work in an office anymore — and that day I remember a slight spring breeze blowing and all of a sudden I thought: ‘Maybe I should be a priest!’
“I said it out loud and when you do that it takes on a little extra (weight). But even so, I started to laugh and laugh at that thought.
“But when I went back into work, the thought didn’t leave me. Eventually I went to one of my old (St. X) teachers and explained what I was thinking and feeling and asked: ‘Does this sound like anything?’
“I wanted anyone to say, ‘Yeah, that’s fine Rich, but just go about your life. That isn’t for you.’
“But nobody did. And after that it was one small step after another and for the next four years I weighed it and prayed with it so I could make a decision.”
He began to go to mass daily and though he called himself “the beloved sinner,” his faith deepened and eventually he decided to become a priest.
Soon he brought the idea to his parents. He said his dad, a high school math teacher, embraced the idea. His mother — who had gone back to college after she and Rich’s dad divorced, got her undergrad and master’s degrees and worked in human resources at Coca Cola while raising her kids — initially had doubts, he said:
“She said, ‘You’re never going to have children. I won’t have any grandchildren from you.’ Right off, I had an immediate understanding of what celibacy meant and I certainly thought of all that.”
When other people learned of his decision, many had the same reaction, he said:
“Because it’s so insistent and visceral, it was the sex thing. It’s just so pervasive in our society. But it’s not like all married couples are sex-crazed maniacs. And it’s not like you’re a teenager. You have a better understanding of it as you get older. But it’s still something you wrestle with. But you pray with it and you begin to understand.”
As you listen to him, you can see why his background could make for a better priest than some kid who heads straight into religious life during his mid-teens.
A couple of generations past, big families of Catholics often designated one of the sons for the priesthood as a way of giving back.
“It was a family offering to God — Old Testament style almost — but I don’t know if that’s always the best way to do it,” Schuckman said. “Some of the guys should never have been priests and the stings of that have been felt by the church for some time afterwards.”
Schuckman, though, has been educated, been a college athlete, been in the work force, had relationships, contemplated marriage and, through it all, faced many of life’s challenges.
Now he’s set his sights on a new challenge.
“He was always full bore on whatever he was going to do,” Kelly said. “If it was to be a great football player, there was no give and take in between. He went at it 100 miles an hour, every day, all 365.
“If it was get an A in a class and it was something he believed in, that’s just what he did. If it was to be a best friend, he did that to the hilt.
“So now, when everybody says, ‘Can you believe Schuckman’s gonna be a priest,’ I say ‘no’ and then again I have to say ‘yes.’
“When he sets his mind to something, don’t get in his way. Just step back and watch him do it.”
‘Dayton shaped me’
Classes for the day had just let out at St. X the other day and Schuckman had traded his clerical white collar for a polo shirt before sitting down in a school office to share a little bit of what Kelly called “just a great story.”
Schuckman is cognitive about his image in public and doesn’t want people thinking he’s already a priest: “A lot of people think priests just happen, but no, they’re formed and right now I’m in the formation process.”
He won’t wear his white collar today either when he coaches the Flyers red team, opting instead for a shirt and cap he said Chamberlin will provide.
When asked to take part in the spring game, Schuckman gladly accepted, in part because of his thoughts about Chamberlin, who, in ’96, was his defensive coordinator — “I have nothing but respect for Rick Chamberlin” — and partly because of the lessons he learned at UD.
“Dayton shaped me,” he said. “I love the place.”
In fact, he so embraced the school that after his playing days, he still had some course work to finish. Unfortunately, he ran out of money, so he left school, went to work in an entry position at Convergis and made enough to come back to UD and get his degree in 1998.
Sunday, though, he’ll have more work to do.
“I told them, ‘This isn’t a free day for you. You don’t get to be slapped on the back all day,’ ” Chamberlin laughed. “They’ll each give their teams a pregame talk and lead them onto the field and then during the game they’ll be on the sideline making decisions, doing everything they can.”
Almost everything.
“The one thing I don’t want is anybody to have the misconception that I’m already a priest,” Schuckman said again. “I’ve still got a few years to go. It would break my heart if someone wanted me to do some duty that I can’t do yet.
“It would be crushing if someone said, ‘Can you hear my confession?’ and I had to turn them down.”
And yet Rick Chamberlin did make a confession the other day:
“While I’m surprised about Rich, I’m also just so proud of him. Not many young men go into the priesthood or other service of the Lord. I’m just really happy for him.
“I’ve always believed that for anybody who goes into that type of work, it’s not an occupation, it’s a passion. It’s truly a calling.”
And that does make it kind of miraculous.
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