Note: My mother, Katharine Sprague Weber, retired from the tribunal of the Archdiocese of Mobile on June 6, 2019 after twenty years of service. This is the text of a toast I made her on that occasion.
On behalf of my mother and family, thank you for celebrating Mom’s retirement with us.
I want to take the liberty to toast my mother on this occasion, but also tell you a little bit about her, some of which she would be too modest to tell you herself. I, on the other hand, have no problem sharing all this with you because I am her proud son!
Mom is the daughter of Marie and Albert Sprague, who were both interesting people in their own right.
Prior to her marriage to my grandfather, Marie’s professional career was quite progressive for her day. Living in Washington, D.C. in the 1920's, she earned a law degree, and later, for a hobby, a private pilot’s license. Because she had an exceptional memory for names, dates and places, she became the personal secretary for Frances Perkins, who was the first female Cabinet member in the history of the U.S.—Secretary of Labor to inarguably the most socially progressive president of the 20th century, FDR, which meant, for Perkins, she was the point person for most of the New Deal initiatives. Grandma knew, because of her close connection to Perkins, most of the power players in Washington at the time, and frequently had occasion to meet Eleanor Roosevelt, who was a close friend of Perkins.
Grandma lived this life for quite some time, but gave it all up when she married my grandfather at the age of 38. Albert T. Sprague was a Navy man, a graduate of Annapolis, and came from a long line of ship captains and navy men, dating back 5 generations. Previous to his marriage to Marie, he'd married another woman and had three children with her, but she died of a long illness, and he married Marie a few years later. Shortly after their marriage, they conceived my mother. Mom was born in August, 1941, just four months before Pearl Harbor. She didn't see much of her father in her first four years!
My grandfather distinguished himself during WWII, as captain of a Navy cruiser. Being captain of a warship during war time, with 700 men under your command, is the closest thing our country has to a monarch, and he fought in several of the brutal Naval battles in the Pacific and the Philippine Islands. He even became fleet commander of a successful invasion of Cebu and its capital Cebu City, the 2nd largest city in the Philippines. My grandfather, as they say, is "in the history books."
But those early years were tough for my grandmother, mother and their family. As my grandfather fought at sea, the family moved to naval bases on the east and west coast, and my grandmother was thrust into raising 3 teenage step children and an infant on her own. We celebrate D-Day today and we give rightful honor to our war heroes. But we’re well to also remember the heroic sacrifices of their spouses, like my grandmother, who gave up her career to totally dedicate herself to raising these children to support her husband at war--no small thing!
Finally, the war was over, and my grandfather returned home. He served out the remainder of his military career in command post positions on the east coast, before retiring with the rank of Admiral. It is then that they moved south—he was offered a teaching position at Auburn University in the Engineering department. Mom was now 8, having grown up on the east and west coast, but now entering the south for the first time, and she tells a funny story about her first day of school as a third grader:
Auburn public schools in the 1950’s were an interesting mix of professor's children--middle class, well educated—and Lee County kids, who worked on the farms, were bussed to school, and usually came to school barefoot. On that first day, Mom remembers she had a large, fearsome teacher, who asked one of the Lee County boys a question, which he answered correctly. But the teacher became angry, told the boy to come to the front of the room, and gave him a good spanking with the proverbial “Board of Education.” My mother has always been very conscientious about following the rules, so she was TERRIFIED: she had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what the boy had done wrong! At recess, she anxiously asked one of the university children “What did he do? He gave the right answer.” The girl sniffed, “He didn’t say M’am!” Thus was Mom’s introduction to the deep south.
Mom went on to distinguish herself in school. Again, she’d be embarrassed I am telling you this, but she graduated as a National Merit Scholar (a rare achievement even today, but even rarer for women in her day) and as an all-state flutist. She was one of only two people in her entire class to “go away” to college, and she decided to go to Spring Hill College to major in Chemistry ( her father insisted since she didn’t know what she wanted to do, it would be easier to change out of science to a liberal arts major than vice versa). That’s right—Chemistry! She now also has a graduate degree in Theology and a second degree in Canon Law, if that gives you some indication of her intellect. In fact, she’s one of only 2 people I’ve ever met that LIKED Organic Chemistry in college—the other being her granddaughter Claire, Kathy’s child. Her comment about Organic? “You get to play with 3D models and turn them around like puzzles in your mind.”
When Mom enrolled as a freshman at SHC, she immersed herself in music and chemistry, but soon met an a Physics major and Army ROTC, a senior from Memphis, TN: Neff Weber, my future father. They fell in love. As graduation neared for my father, and so too his commissioning as 2nd LT in the army, he asked permission to marry my mom that same summer, but Grandpa said no—Mom was “too young,” just 19 at the time, and “she had to be at least twenty before marriage.” So Dad left for graduate school to pursue a Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, and Mom continued a sophomore at Spring Hill—but they continued their relationship via correspondence. And—follow this timetable—my mother turned 20 on August 1, 1961, they were married on August 26, 1961 in Auburn, AL. Nine months later, in June, 1962, they had their first child, me.
It wasn’t an easy couple of years—they lived in a small trailer, with their only income being my father’s ROTC check for $167/month. Mom took a few classes at UVA to try and continue her Chemistry major, but soon became pregnant with my sister, Kathy, and it became impossible. When Dad finished with his Ph.D. at Virginia, they moved to Aberdeen Proving Grounds, an army base just outside of Baltimore MD, so Dad could finish out his military commitment, eventually achieving the rank of "captain." Fortunately, he was not sent to the Vietnam war, raging at the time; he was too valuable to the army with a doctorate in Physics, designing weapons systems.
It was actually coincidence that they ended up back in Mobile. I was just 5, but the University of South Alabama was just getting established. As part of that, they were beginning a Physics program, and my father applied for that position, in 1967. My parents have lived here ever since.
(I ask Mom recently if being a resident of Mobile for 52 years qualifies her as a “Mobilian” in social circles around town. She laughed and said “almost, but no.” )
But it has been a wonderful life here. Mom and Dad went on to have 5 children—myself (a high school principal, and father of 4), Kathy (a lawyer and mother of 2 in Birmingham, who is with us with her daughter Ellie), Jennifer (director of a woman’s pro-life clinic in northern Indiana, mother of four, who is with us this morning, having flown in from northern Indiana for this occasion), Caroline (a middle school teacher here at St. Ignatius, mother of 5, with the three oldest here today), and my brother John Mark (an engineer from Huntsville, father of 3). They sent us all to Catholic schools, all the way through McGill (in fact, as I talk with you, I am standing here in my kindergarten classroom at St. Ignatius from 1967).
A very significant thing happened to my parents in the early 1970’s that changed our family’s life and has defined it ever since. Friends of theirs in Maryland—my dad did contract work with the government in the summers to make ends meet, so we returned to Maryland twice I think for the summer)— invited them to a Catholic Charismatic prayer meeting, and they found it compelling and began going back, and were soon “baptized in the Holy Spirit” as the charismatic community called it. In layman’s terms, they experienced an intense re-awakening and renewal of their faith, a kind of burning zeal to serve the Lord in a more direct and powerful way. So they came back to Mobile, connected with a fledgling charismatic community developing here, and within 3 or 4 years, became one of the active leaders of the movement in Mobile.
In 1974, they decided to take this new desire to serve the Lord and grow in holiness even further by joining with two other families to form a “covenant Christian community” together. As I was finishing 6th grade at St. Ignatius, they called a family meeting to tell me and my sisters we were moving to downtown Mobile to join up with these families, changing parishes to Most Pure Heart of Mary School, changing us from St. Ignatius to Heart of Mary—which until that moment had been a 100% African American Catholic school—and pledge their lives and fortunes to one another to grow in holiness.
Everything changed for us. But because Mom and Dad loved each other so constantly, it was all change for the good. From that point forward, it was very common for us to have a recovering alcoholic at the head seat of our dinner table for Thanksgiving or Christmas meals, or a recovering drug addict living with us for months at a time out of our garage, which dad converted to another bedroom, or an unwed mother, helping her bring her child to term. My parents took seriously the gospel—“what you do to the least of these, you do to me”. We grew up in prayer meetings in people’s homes, including a regular Friday night prayer meeting. They led the meetings. They taught. They conducted Life in the Spirit seminars, trying to help others intensify their relationship with the Lord. People in need visited us constantly. I think Mom’s only real worry through all that was that some how this was undercutting her time with us—but I can say, and in fact I’ve talked to my brother and sisters about this—we never felt that way. We were included in it. It was just the way our family was. And I think all of us were blessed from it.
They had a great marriage. My dad was a great guy, and Mom is a great woman, and they loved each other deeply. Dad had a great sense of humor, Mom has a great laugh, and much of my memory of Mom with Dad is both of them laughing together and smiling.
Mom dedicated herself completely to us and to the community when we were younger, but as we aged and began attending school, Mom went back and finished out that Chemistry degree at South AL, then later went back and got an M.A. in Theology from Spring Hill.
After that, she started looking for a place to serve the Church in a professional manner, and tried several things which weren’t quite the right fit. She taught theology at McGill, but it wasn't a good fit. She was the assistant to the Youth Minister for the Archdiocese here for a year. She served as an assistant to Campus Ministry at SHC for a year. None of those things were quite right, until someone suggested she get a canon law degree to help with the marriage tribunal.
It was a beautiful combination right from the beginning for her: First, Mom has always loved learning, truly, so she got to do more of that. Second, as mother of 5 and now grandmother of 17, she brought very practical wisdom to the annulment process. Third, it was a way for her to serve the Church that she loved. So she earned that degree by going to Catholic University in Washington for five consecutive summers, starting at age 58. I admire both my father, for blessing that commitment (it was hard for him), and my mother, for having the courage and drive to do it later in her life. She's served in the Tribunal ever since. Though dealing with the tragedy of broken marriages is tough, Mom always understood her work as a "ministry," and I know she was an instrument of a lot of healing for countless couples.
So it is fitting that we honor her at her retirement. I want to toast my mother—a great daughter, a wonderful wife, a fantastic mother and grandmother, a woman of steadfast faith, a person of profound learning and wisdom, whose life has exemplified how St. Anselm describes a “theologian" -- one whose life is about "faith seeking understanding.”
To my mother!
