MANTUA – Working as a military chaplain and a parish priest isn’t all that different to Father Michael Garvey.
“Some of the discipline and focus in the military serves well in a parish,” says Father Garvey, who on July 1 will celebrate his first anniversary as pastor of Mantua St. Joseph Parish. Whereas the military approach to getting things done is very direct, in the private sector “you use a little more finesse,” he added.
Father Garvey returned to parish life a few years ago after serving 20 years as a chaplain with the Navy, Marines and Coast Guard. He was often assigned to points near the sea, which is something he has loved since childhood.
Father Garvey, 63, was born in Cleveland but raised in Ashtabula. His father was a Merchant Marine captain who sailed the Great Lakes. He and his siblings grew up with their mother and her family, who had emigrated from Scotland. As a boy, he remembers traveling with his father 10 to 15 times on iron ore boats, he said.
Father Garvey attended the school at Ashtabula Mother of Sorrows Parish and the former St. John High School, returning to both places as a young priest and administrator. He was assigned in 1981 to St. John High School, where he was administrative assistant for pastoral ministry. The high school had about 400 students when he arrived. As industries in Ashtabula declined, so did enrollment. The public didn’t acknowledge the association between jobs and private schooling; “People wanted to know what we were doing wrong,” he recalled. “I was ready for a change.”
With the support of the late Bishop James W. Malone, Father Garvey began to explore a career as a military chaplain. He attended chaplain school, where he learned about offering and receiving salutes, how to wear his uniform and how to minister in an ecumenical setting. There were 30 people in his class, including six other Catholic priests and a woman who was a Protestant minister, he recalled. His mission was to minister to Catholic young adults, but when someone came to his door, he said, “The question wasn’t ‘Are you Catholic?’ It was, “How can I help you?’”
Asked to name his favorite chaplain assignment, Father Garvey chose one based on his ability to connect with and assist military men and women. He spent three years at the Naval Training Center in Great Lakes, Ill., where thousands of recruits attended basic training. He was one of five chaplains at the time and the only Catholic chaplain. With hundreds of persons to minister to, he remained busy.
“The reason I liked Great Lakes is because you made a difference,” he said. As recruits experienced family crises from a distance, “you’d see them grow up before your eyes,” he added. “They would pour out their hearts” because chaplains offered confidentiality.
One of the hardest lessons for some recruits was the realization that quitting the military isn’t like quitting a summer job, Father Garvey said. They had signed contracts and were expected to live by the terms of those pacts. He did have conversations with a few conscientious objectors. “The chaplain is a screener,” he said. If he believed a recruit had moral objections to military service, his task was to send that person to the legal department for further evaluation. Those who were eventually discharged as conscientious objectors left the military without ramifications, he noted.
Father Garvey had many chaplain assignments throughout the world. He was assigned to permanent military stations in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; Okinawa, Japan; and Kodiak Island, Alaska. He completed three Mediterranean Sea cruises on the USS Forrestal. He also worked in New Orleans and North Carolina, among other places.
Father Garvey worked at Guantanamo Bay many years before it became a detention center for persons suspected of terrorist activity against the United States. While he was assigned there, from February 2000 to May 2001, Guantanamo Bay was a training base for the Navy’s Atlantic fleet, he said. It also was the place where Haitian citizens were held after being caught at sea while trying to enter the United States. The Haitians were returned to their native land, he noted.
His final chaplain assignment was his longest – four years with the Navy in Pensacola, Fla. He retired June 30, 2007, and returned to the Diocese of Youngstown, as he had promised Bishop Malone.
“Bishop Malone was my friend,” Father Garvey said. When Father Garvey came home on military leave, the bishop would invite him and other priests to have dinner at the Holiday Inn in Boardman so they could reconnect. “He was a dear friend.”
After his military retirement, Father Garvey took a sabbatical in Rome in late 2007, then was assigned to Girard St. Rose Parish as associate pastor. He was there for about six and a half months before he was assigned to Mantua St. Joseph.
The parish was established 86 years ago. About 620 families are registered, Father Garvey said. He “thoroughly enjoys” St. Joseph School, which has 106 students in grades K-8, a “delightful” faculty and parents who are actively involved in school life, he said. He also likes his hospital work and visiting the sick, he added.
Best of all to Father Garvey is the parish’s setting on 42 acres in Mantua, a quiet community in Portage County. “I enjoy living in the country,” he said.
Father Garvey said he receives strong support from his staff and committees. He appreciates the investment of time and money made by his predecessors at St. Joseph in getting parishioners trained in pastoral ministry. The worship committee and music ministries are especially active, he noted. The finance committee has been invaluable to him. Unlike the military, where he got his budget from central office personnel, planning the parish budget is a group effort. “We have good people on board for that,” he said.
One of his projects concerns the church itself, which was originally designed to be a gymnasium. “I’m trying to make it look more like a traditional Catholic Church,” he said.
Some people may remember Father Garvey as a teacher, wrestling coach and band chaplain at Ursuline High School, from 1972 (one year after his ordination) to 1981. What people may not realize is that Father Garvey did not have a wrestling background. Two Ursuline alums offered to be the coaches and asked him to be the team’s moderator, or official faculty representative. Eventually, coaching became Father Garvey’s responsibility. “I didn’t know anything,” he recalled. “I was young, so I could run up and down the steps with [students].” He began to study the sport and learn techniques.
Asked if he ever relied on his wrestling experience in other situations, “Well, it comes in handy,” Father Garvey said. While he was a chaplain, if any Marines lost control for some reason, “I could stop them and hold them down a bit.”
Father Garvey would like to be known as someone who is friendly and approachable, a good homilist because of his use of storytelling, and a fan of the school. Beth Frank, the school’s principal since 1997, believes he has earned that reputation.
“He’s very connected with the children at the school,” she said. He walks around the playground with students and joins her in monitoring the children during occasional extra recess periods, to give teachers more preparation time. When special events occur at the school, “he’s in the front row – clapping, showing support, talking to kids afterward,” she said. During Right to Read Week, he was one of the guest readers, sharing the story of “The Lion King.”
Father Garvey hopes to be more than a moral supporter of the parish’s annual Ox Roast, now in its 46th year. He arrived just a few weeks before last year’s three-day event. “I was amazed to see what was going on,” he said. This year’s festival dates are July 17-19 (see www.stjosephmantua.com for details).
On his days off, Father Garvey often can be found near Lake Erie. It’s a 35-minute drive to Fairport Harbor, where he says he enjoys walking the beach. “Yes, I miss the sea,” he said. “I miss the Gulf of Mexico and Kodiak Island,” the latter being a Coast Guard base about 200 miles south of Anchorage.
Father Garvey has an upcoming chance to reconnect with the sea. He will visit his brother, who lives in Michigan and is captain of a ship that sails the Great Lakes, he said. He also has a sister, who is a teacher in Dayton.
Debora Shaulis Flora is a veteran journalist working in Youngstown