May 15, 2023 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Father Stu is a motion picture starring Mark Wahlberg (who plays Father Stu) and Mel Gibson. It is based on the true life story of Father Stuart Long, the Golden Gloves Heavyweight Boxing Champion turned Catholic priest. We’d like to thank the Diocese of Helena, MT, for providing the footage you are about to hear of Father Stuart Long, who will be sharing his story with us.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Father Stu is
a motion picture starring Mark Wahlberg, who plays Father Stu,
and Mel Gibson. It's based on the true life story
of Father Stuart Long, the Golden Gloves heavyweight boxing champion
turned Catholic priest. Wahburg first heard about Father Stu's story
(00:31):
while out to dinner with two priests, and he, a
devout Catholic, put his own money into financing this film.
Wahburg intentionally gained thirty pounds in six weeks to portray
Long in the film. Eating up to seven thousand calories
a day sounds like fun. We'd like to thank the
Dioces of Helena, Montana for providing the footage you are
(00:51):
about to hear of Father Stuart Long himself sharing his
story with us.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Let's take a listen. I was born out in Harvard
View Hospital in Seattle, and then my dad was discharged
for the Navy, so they came back to Helena and
I grew up there and we used to go and
hike around in the hills and there are all kinds
of abandoned mine shafts, and you you're not sure what's
it going there, but we sneak around the Oh. It
was just an adventure, and I really enjoyed that. When
(01:19):
I was a young man and we used to get
in trouble, we'd uh. We had apple trees in our
yard and we'd sit up on our on on the
rop of our house when the tour training come, when
we'd throw apples at the people on the tours. They
didn't like that so much. When you're a kid, it's
funny what you think. But I went to I attended
Central School. We lived up in the South end Helena,
and I looked at the kids throying. Man, the building
(01:41):
is so big, it's got to be shorter to cut
through the middle of then to walk around it. So
I'd walk through there and Uh, there's this grumpy old guy,
and you always see me there. He'd start chasing you,
damn kids, and he'd come running after us, you know,
like it was like a game. You know, we'd run
off you. And I did it probably, but now times
in my life and sometimes you come up and open
(02:02):
the door and he'd be standing there with his arms
folded across the chest. You say out, he wouldn't let
us in there. Sometimes you get in there and need
chase you. Other times he'd be busy talking to people
and he'd just kind of shake his head at us,
And then I guess I can agree with that.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
I did get him on the graduating class of nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
One, and my first year of college, I attended Western
Montana down to Dylan. You know, it was Western then
guess the University of Dylan or something. But I didn't
really I didn't care for it, so I transferred back
to Carrol and and I went back to Helen and
I went to Carrol And I played football there for
(02:43):
two years under coach Bob Attrino, and I also boxed
each of the years I was there. I really enjoyed
the box. The individual sports seemed to fit my personality
a little better than the team short. I was kind
of a little rambunctious back in the day, but it
was it was a curious experience for me because I
wasn't Catholic and Carroll, as you know, it was a
(03:03):
Catholic school, so I was always felt kind of like
an outsider. I remember we had to attend mass there
as part of the part of the football preparation. Coach
Rictuna came out of his officer one of one of
the young men in our team could do an excellent
impersonation of him. But I'll do my best here, he said.
Tomorrow's our first game. Today mass in the chapel five
(03:25):
o'clock attendance is mandatory. So I looked at the kid
that was dressed across the little the little walk away
from me, ask what's a chapel? And I didn't even
know what it was. He's like, yeah, yeah. He walked off,
and one of the other guys took me up there
and showed me, and we're sitting in there for masks.
And the windows there were like stained glass windows about
eight feet up along each of the long walls of
(03:46):
this chapel's rectangular shape, and there were I had no
idea what was going I looked at the window on
this wall and there was a man who had wings
with a flaming sword who was going to get another
man who was laying at his feet, who had horns
and a tale. I'm like, okay, and I didn't know
who it was. And then there was another man on
this side, a great big guy had a little boy
(04:08):
tied to a rock, and he's gonna get in with
a knife and it was a story of Abraham and Isaac.
I had no idea at the times. I'm just like, oh,
what's going on here? And then a man like dressed
like Johnny Cash came and everybody stood up and sat down,
and I had no idea what was going on? Yeah,
I had no idea. That was my first Mass. I
was not Catholic, and I didn't you know, I had
(04:29):
no understanding, no education. They had us take a couple
of religion classes there when we attended the school, and
I used to argue with the teachers all the time.
One of the history professors was father Jeremiah Sullivan, and
I just really enjoyed this mass class. He was so
well educated and very knowledgeable, and he would teach his
(04:49):
like history of the civilization, or Italian history or all
these different kinds of history. And I kept interrupting this
class and asking very ignorant questions that did he were laid?
But you know, I didn't have the background that a
lot of the people there had. And he would say,
mister Long, one day, tells me after you cause he
said do you enjoy boxing? And I said no, And
(05:12):
he said, well, why don't you meet me down at
the gym today at four o'clock. So I said, okay,
So I went down there and he took me into
the little boxing room. And at the time, father selid
One was probably five ten, maybe about three hundred and
fifty pounds, pretty portly. But since I've seen both Sugar
Ray Leonard and Mike Tyson hit the speedbag, and his father, Jeremiah,
(05:36):
could hit the speedbag better than either of those guys,
I was just amazed how fast he was moving and
I was like wow. And then he showed me how
you know certain basic techniques and boxing. And when the
coach came in, it was Walt Chauncey, my football coach
from Capitol He said, this is your coach, and he
said just do what he told me to do. And
(05:56):
I just fell in love with the I really like
that boxing. My goal after after graduating from KARA was
to get into professional boxing. And I knew, you know,
you know a man who knows a man who knows
a man, and I knew a friend there. There's the
old judge Mills Lane. He was a district attorney in
Nevada and he was also one of the main boxing
(06:19):
referees of his day, and he was also involved with
Top Rank Boxing on ESPN, where they take younger fighters
and give them a fighter on TV to kind of
make a name and see if they would make a
splash in the boxing industry. And I had this this
in with my friend's dad, who used to train horses
with Mills Lane, and so I thought, you know, there's
(06:39):
there's an opportunity for this. But I had some dental
work done on my jaw and on my teeth are false.
They had they had remove a large portion of my
upper jaw and put in a bridge and I tried
to fight one more time again after that, it just
wasn't the same. Yeah, so I had to I had
to give that up. And I'm up around the house
for I don't know, probably six months. I was working,
(07:01):
but I just kind of, you know, I didn't really
have anything to have a degree in English letterature and writing,
and I didn't really know what to do with it.
And uh my mom came to me one day and
she said, said, you always like movies. I said, yeah,
I like movies. She said, why don't you go to
LA and get in the movie business. I thought it
was that's a good idea. I didn't really have too
(07:21):
much other. I had a friend that just had just
moved down to Los Angeles, so we did that. I
went down there and uh to get near to get
in the movie business, and I did. I did some.
I did a couple of commercials. I was, I was
an extra and a bunch and we see always seemed
to like walk around the background. You know, you work
long hours and the money is just terrible. I did.
(07:43):
I was in a CBS Movie of the Week, so
and I got typecast pretty early as a bad guy,
like a hit man, the kind of thing. And I
was ahead of the uh the neo Nazi skinhead gang
in Los Angeles. Yeah, yeah, something he said, Oh, I'd
like to see that movie, Like, man, I don't think so.
I'm not gonna drag it out so you can to
watch that. Kind of embarrassed with some of the things
(08:03):
I used to do, and I had some I had
some trouble kind of it didn't really work out the
way I thought it would. And I had a lot
of a lot of real unpleasant experiences with some of
the people who are involved in casting in uh, you know,
becoming you know, acquiring new talent. And they were talent
(08:25):
agents and directors and stuff, and it was it was
a real, a real CD CD business. And I just
decided that I didn't really want to do that anymore.
And I used to work at at a night club.
I worked at a comedy club and a bar in
the evening. Then in the daytime I could drive around
and do auditions and things. And finally I said, well,
I'm going to let that go and I'll go get
another job, you know, during the daytime. And I started
(08:47):
working at a museum and I really enjoyed it, and
I ended up managing that museum for seven years. It's
the Norton Simon Museum down in Pasadena. And what a
nice job. Nice job, and I supervised about anywhere from
between fifty five and sixty people on a daily basis. Yeah,
I really enjoyed it. And how we grow a lot,
and I learned a lot about relating with people.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
And you've been listening to Father Stuart Long tell his story.
There's the movie Father Stu with Mark Wahlberg and Mel Gibson.
This is the real Father Steu. When we come back
more of his story here on our American Story and
(09:40):
we continue with our American stories and the story of
Father Stu, as told by Father Stuart Long himself. Let's
pick up now where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
I used to ride a motorcycle in my attempt to
get in the movie industries. I thought it would give
me a better chance to get apart, so I've read.
We had a uniform at work, so I'd ride my
motorcycle from my apartment over to work. And one day
I was riding home after work and I got hit
by a car and I smashed into a car in
the next line with my head. I was immediate line conscious.
(10:15):
I have no idea what happened. And the witnesses told
reported to the ships that I was rolling down the
road and another car ran over the top of me,
and I thought I would die. That night, my dad
and the girlfriend that I had, a girlfriend that I
lived with at that time, they were both in the
hospital there and I had some really really interesting religious
(10:37):
experiences that proved to be, you know what I perceived
to be a call of God, and it brought me
into the Catholic church. This girlfriend, she was a beautiful woman.
She was the Mexican girls, had dark hair, dark skin,
dark eyes. She was really nice, scown and she came
in one day and she had a little chip on
(10:59):
her shoulder and big chip on my shoulder, and I
think that's what kind of drew us together. But she
came in one day and you know, she had dark hair,
dark skinned, dark eyes. She was her hair looked blonde,
and it looked like there was light coming from her face.
And she was vacuuming the carpet of this apartment we shared.
And I looked at her and I said, what that
(11:19):
cappin to you? And she says, I'm Catholic. I've been
away from the church for thirteen years, and I just
saw I just went to confession. Now, I attended Carol
and I had some exposure to the Catholic church, and
I didn't really understand anything about it. But when I
saw this change in her, I knew there was something
to it. And she said, we were talking about getting
(11:41):
married at the time. I said, if we're going to
get married, we'll get married in the church. And you know,
here's a class you can take. She had a bulletin,
here's a class you can take that will allow you
to get baptized and confirmed in the church, and then
we'll be able to set a date for our marriage
sometime after that, and I said okay. And I went
through this this about a year and a half of
(12:01):
this RCI class. And then I was when I was baptized.
At the very moment the priest is pouring the water
over my head. I didn't hear the voice of God
or see a big banner come down from the sky
or anything. I just knew that I was going to
be a priest right at that moment. And I'm like,
I didn't want to be a priest. I want to
get married. And I didn't really know what a priest did.
(12:24):
So I went on for about three days later. I
told the priest of baptizing message the other night when
he baptized me, I thought, I had this feeling that
I'm going to be a priest. He said, don't worry
about it. Every man who's baptized as an adult has
that same feeling. Waite a few days. It'll go away.
And I went and I went away, thank you, but
it came back, went away, he came back. I played
(12:47):
ping pong with us for about seven years, and then
I was going to go into a religious order in
New York City, and I went there and spent some
time on and out for a couple of years. They
sent me to school in Ohio to do what they
call pre theology studies. You learned some philosophy. And then
after that we discerned this religious order, and I discerned
(13:07):
that I was better suited for a parish work. So
they sent me back home to the Diocese of Helena,
and in two thousand and three they sent me to
the seminary in Mount Angel, Oregon, and I was ordained
priest in two thousand and seven, in December. It's funny,
because I lived a very fast life. I was involved
(13:28):
in trouble making. I used to get in street fights
a lot. I was very involved, and you know, I
used to drink and and I mean I had a
lot of problemt I had several accidents, both on my
motorcycle and cars. I had some falls. I hurt myself,
you know, fighting, And about fifteen years ago, I just
(13:50):
started weakening. And I thought maybe because I had such
a fast life, I was just aging a little more
rapidly than, you know, than people my age. When I
was in the seminary, I had hip surgery. My left
knee just kept it was really causing me a great
deal of pain. So I went in. They did an
extra the knee. No, knee is fine, They didn't, mr, No,
your knee is fine. And finally they did an X
(14:13):
ray in my back and they noticed something on my hip,
and they did an MRI and they they found that
I had a large tumor about the size of you
if I can't close my fist anymore, or about the
size of your fist, that was growing right at the
insertion point of your groin muscle in my femur, and
that's what was causing it was putting stress on the muscle.
That's why my knee was hurting. So they removed that tumor,
(14:35):
and uh, just a couple of months after they did that,
I remember sitting at the seminary one day on the
edge of my bed and I could just feel the
strength flowing out of my body. It was the most
uncanny experience that I've ever had in my life. It's
like a ball rolling across the table and then when
I forgets the edge, it just drops. That's where my
strength is. And I was diagnosed very soon after with
(14:59):
a disease called in cclue in bodying. My asside is
such what I have. It's a different disease, but it
mimics als, so the progression looks very similar to somebody
who suffers with lou Garrig's disease. And there's no care
for this one either. It will claim my life. But
it's a very curious experience because through the difficulties and
(15:20):
the struggles that I've been through, the problems that have
arisen from this, and the people, especially my dad, who
have come to my side to support me and aid me,
you know, and assist me through this life. Since I've
been diagnosed with this, it's the probably the best thing
that's ever happened in me. It's a profound experience suffering,
(15:42):
and every person in the planet suffers, and the more
you try and deny it and move it, the more
you suffer. It is a truly profound mystery. And what
I've noticed in my life the good things that are
coming from this. It's helped me overcome some of my
prideful ways which were with a big cross for me
(16:02):
for many years. It's taught me a little humility. It's
taught me dignity and respect for others, especially for those
who share the condition that I'm in. I live in
a nursing home now I live in the Big Sky
Care center just south of Saint Peter's. And you know
I've entered. When I became Catholic, I used to go
(16:24):
and volunteer at a convalescent home every week. And sometimes
you go into this place and it was like I
entered the first circle of Dante's Hell. It would smell
the feces and urine, and people are screaming, and you wonder,
you know why you go there, But when you left,
every time you left, you felt a little better about
being able to participate in assisting others with their suffering,
(16:49):
in helping them struggle with their burdens through life. And
you know, it's a powerful, powerful reality. For myself, I
have been very healthy and active my entire life up
until about five years ago. And at the end of
my ordination, I said, I sit before you a broken man.
(17:11):
My disease is disabling and it will continue to progress
in barring a miracle of Christ, it will claim my life.
But like I said, the the struggles of this disease
helped me and help others to learn the way that
(17:31):
we should have been living all along. And sometimes people
like me there's an extreme example. We need things like
this to be able to make those changes and decisions
in our life that are going to help us become
better people, to become the people that God has created
us to be when he sent us to this clianet.
(17:52):
There's there's a really interesting movie. It's called Gladiator, and
there was one line in that I really enjoyed. There
was the man played by Oliver Reed who was not deceased,
and he was the owner and trainer of the gladiators,
saying which proximout in the movie. And he was given
these gladiators a little pep talk before they went out
(18:12):
in the into the arena to fight, and he said,
he said, Ultimately, he said, we're all dead men. He said, sadly,
we cannot choose how, but we can choose how we
face that end in order that we were remembered as men.
And I think this is this is a message for
(18:32):
all of us. We don't get to choose what happens,
only how we respond to it and how we're going
to cooperate with God to overcome the difficulties and challenges
that exist in our world.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
And a terrific job on the production by Greg Hengler
and a special thanks to the Diocese of Helena, Montana
for providing this footage. This audio with Father Stuart Long
telling his own story with his mother and father at
his all. Father Stuart Long, at fifty years of age,
passed away in the early morning hours on June ninth,
(19:06):
twenty fourteen, in Helena, Montana, where he resided and ministered
since twenty ten. You know, so much is written about
happiness and chasing happiness, and John Stuart Mill wrote about
this and said, people who chase happiness end up being unhappy.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
It's the people who.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Step into others suffering that understand happiness. And my goodness,
did Father Steu do that? And did people do that
for Father Steu? And always understanding who is in charge?
For Father Steu? That was Jesus Christ. The story of
Father Stuart Long here on our American Stories. Buck at
And we continue with our American stories. Father Stu is
a motion picture starring Mark Wahlberg, who plays Father Stu,
and Mel Gibson. It's based on the true life story
of Father Stuart Long, the Golden Gloves heavyweight boxing champion
turned Catholic priest. Wahburg first heard about Father Stu's story
(00:31):
while out to dinner with two priests, and he, a
devout Catholic, put his own money into financing this film.
Wahburg intentionally gained thirty pounds in six weeks to portray
Long in the film. Eating up to seven thousand calories
a day sounds like fun. We'd like to thank the
Dioces of Helena, Montana for providing the footage you are
(00:51):
about to hear of Father Stuart Long himself sharing his
story with us.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Let's take a listen. I was born out in Harvard
View Hospital in Seattle, and then my dad was discharged
for the Navy, so they came back to Helena and
I grew up there and we used to go and
hike around in the hills and there are all kinds
of abandoned mine shafts, and you you're not sure what's
it going there, but we sneak around the Oh. It
was just an adventure, and I really enjoyed that. When
(01:19):
I was a young man and we used to get
in trouble, we'd uh. We had apple trees in our
yard and we'd sit up on our on on the
rop of our house when the tour training come, when
we'd throw apples at the people on the tours. They
didn't like that so much. When you're a kid, it's
funny what you think. But I went to I attended
Central School. We lived up in the South end Helena,
and I looked at the kids throying. Man, the building
(01:41):
is so big, it's got to be shorter to cut
through the middle of then to walk around it. So
I'd walk through there and Uh, there's this grumpy old guy,
and you always see me there. He'd start chasing you,
damn kids, and he'd come running after us, you know,
like it was like a game. You know, we'd run
off you. And I did it probably, but now times
in my life and sometimes you come up and open
(02:02):
the door and he'd be standing there with his arms
folded across the chest. You say out, he wouldn't let
us in there. Sometimes you get in there and need
chase you. Other times he'd be busy talking to people
and he'd just kind of shake his head at us,
And then I guess I can agree with that.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
I did get him on the graduating class of nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
One, and my first year of college, I attended Western
Montana down to Dylan. You know, it was Western then
guess the University of Dylan or something. But I didn't
really I didn't care for it, so I transferred back
to Carrol and and I went back to Helen and
I went to Carrol And I played football there for
(02:43):
two years under coach Bob Attrino, and I also boxed
each of the years I was there. I really enjoyed
the box. The individual sports seemed to fit my personality
a little better than the team short. I was kind
of a little rambunctious back in the day, but it
was it was a curious experience for me because I
wasn't Catholic and Carroll, as you know, it was a
(03:03):
Catholic school, so I was always felt kind of like
an outsider. I remember we had to attend mass there
as part of the part of the football preparation. Coach
Rictuna came out of his officer one of one of
the young men in our team could do an excellent
impersonation of him. But I'll do my best here, he said.
Tomorrow's our first game. Today mass in the chapel five
(03:25):
o'clock attendance is mandatory. So I looked at the kid
that was dressed across the little the little walk away
from me, ask what's a chapel? And I didn't even
know what it was. He's like, yeah, yeah. He walked off,
and one of the other guys took me up there
and showed me, and we're sitting in there for masks.
And the windows there were like stained glass windows about
eight feet up along each of the long walls of
(03:46):
this chapel's rectangular shape, and there were I had no
idea what was going I looked at the window on
this wall and there was a man who had wings
with a flaming sword who was going to get another
man who was laying at his feet, who had horns
and a tale. I'm like, okay, and I didn't know
who it was. And then there was another man on
this side, a great big guy had a little boy
(04:08):
tied to a rock, and he's gonna get in with
a knife and it was a story of Abraham and Isaac.
I had no idea at the times. I'm just like, oh,
what's going on here? And then a man like dressed
like Johnny Cash came and everybody stood up and sat down,
and I had no idea what was going on? Yeah,
I had no idea. That was my first Mass. I
was not Catholic, and I didn't you know, I had
(04:29):
no understanding, no education. They had us take a couple
of religion classes there when we attended the school, and
I used to argue with the teachers all the time.
One of the history professors was father Jeremiah Sullivan, and
I just really enjoyed this mass class. He was so
well educated and very knowledgeable, and he would teach his
(04:49):
like history of the civilization, or Italian history or all
these different kinds of history. And I kept interrupting this
class and asking very ignorant questions that did he were laid?
But you know, I didn't have the background that a
lot of the people there had. And he would say,
mister Long, one day, tells me after you cause he
said do you enjoy boxing? And I said no, And
(05:12):
he said, well, why don't you meet me down at
the gym today at four o'clock. So I said, okay,
So I went down there and he took me into
the little boxing room. And at the time, father selid
One was probably five ten, maybe about three hundred and
fifty pounds, pretty portly. But since I've seen both Sugar
Ray Leonard and Mike Tyson hit the speedbag, and his father, Jeremiah,
(05:36):
could hit the speedbag better than either of those guys,
I was just amazed how fast he was moving and
I was like wow. And then he showed me how
you know certain basic techniques and boxing. And when the
coach came in, it was Walt Chauncey, my football coach
from Capitol He said, this is your coach, and he
said just do what he told me to do. And
(05:56):
I just fell in love with the I really like
that boxing. My goal after after graduating from KARA was
to get into professional boxing. And I knew, you know,
you know a man who knows a man who knows
a man, and I knew a friend there. There's the
old judge Mills Lane. He was a district attorney in
Nevada and he was also one of the main boxing
(06:19):
referees of his day, and he was also involved with
Top Rank Boxing on ESPN, where they take younger fighters
and give them a fighter on TV to kind of
make a name and see if they would make a
splash in the boxing industry. And I had this this
in with my friend's dad, who used to train horses
with Mills Lane, and so I thought, you know, there's
(06:39):
there's an opportunity for this. But I had some dental
work done on my jaw and on my teeth are false.
They had they had remove a large portion of my
upper jaw and put in a bridge and I tried
to fight one more time again after that, it just
wasn't the same. Yeah, so I had to I had
to give that up. And I'm up around the house
for I don't know, probably six months. I was working,
(07:01):
but I just kind of, you know, I didn't really
have anything to have a degree in English letterature and writing,
and I didn't really know what to do with it.
And uh my mom came to me one day and
she said, said, you always like movies. I said, yeah,
I like movies. She said, why don't you go to
LA and get in the movie business. I thought it
was that's a good idea. I didn't really have too
(07:21):
much other. I had a friend that just had just
moved down to Los Angeles, so we did that. I
went down there and uh to get near to get
in the movie business, and I did. I did some.
I did a couple of commercials. I was, I was
an extra and a bunch and we see always seemed
to like walk around the background. You know, you work
long hours and the money is just terrible. I did.
(07:43):
I was in a CBS Movie of the Week, so
and I got typecast pretty early as a bad guy,
like a hit man, the kind of thing. And I
was ahead of the uh the neo Nazi skinhead gang
in Los Angeles. Yeah, yeah, something he said, Oh, I'd
like to see that movie, Like, man, I don't think so.
I'm not gonna drag it out so you can to
watch that. Kind of embarrassed with some of the things
(08:03):
I used to do, and I had some I had
some trouble kind of it didn't really work out the
way I thought it would. And I had a lot
of a lot of real unpleasant experiences with some of
the people who are involved in casting in uh, you know,
becoming you know, acquiring new talent. And they were talent
(08:25):
agents and directors and stuff, and it was it was
a real, a real CD CD business. And I just
decided that I didn't really want to do that anymore.
And I used to work at at a night club.
I worked at a comedy club and a bar in
the evening. Then in the daytime I could drive around
and do auditions and things. And finally I said, well,
I'm going to let that go and I'll go get
another job, you know, during the daytime. And I started
(08:47):
working at a museum and I really enjoyed it, and
I ended up managing that museum for seven years. It's
the Norton Simon Museum down in Pasadena. And what a
nice job. Nice job, and I supervised about anywhere from
between fifty five and sixty people on a daily basis. Yeah,
I really enjoyed it. And how we grow a lot,
and I learned a lot about relating with people.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
And you've been listening to Father Stuart Long tell his story.
There's the movie Father Stu with Mark Wahlberg and Mel Gibson.
This is the real Father Steu. When we come back
more of his story here on our American Story and
(09:40):
we continue with our American stories and the story of
Father Stu, as told by Father Stuart Long himself. Let's
pick up now where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
I used to ride a motorcycle in my attempt to
get in the movie industries. I thought it would give
me a better chance to get apart, so I've read.
We had a uniform at work, so I'd ride my
motorcycle from my apartment over to work. And one day
I was riding home after work and I got hit
by a car and I smashed into a car in
the next line with my head. I was immediate line conscious.
(10:15):
I have no idea what happened. And the witnesses told
reported to the ships that I was rolling down the
road and another car ran over the top of me,
and I thought I would die. That night, my dad
and the girlfriend that I had, a girlfriend that I
lived with at that time, they were both in the
hospital there and I had some really really interesting religious
(10:37):
experiences that proved to be, you know what I perceived
to be a call of God, and it brought me
into the Catholic church. This girlfriend, she was a beautiful woman.
She was the Mexican girls, had dark hair, dark skin,
dark eyes. She was really nice, scown and she came
in one day and she had a little chip on
(10:59):
her shoulder and big chip on my shoulder, and I
think that's what kind of drew us together. But she
came in one day and you know, she had dark hair,
dark skinned, dark eyes. She was her hair looked blonde,
and it looked like there was light coming from her face.
And she was vacuuming the carpet of this apartment we shared.
And I looked at her and I said, what that
(11:19):
cappin to you? And she says, I'm Catholic. I've been
away from the church for thirteen years, and I just
saw I just went to confession. Now, I attended Carol
and I had some exposure to the Catholic church, and
I didn't really understand anything about it. But when I
saw this change in her, I knew there was something
to it. And she said, we were talking about getting
(11:41):
married at the time. I said, if we're going to
get married, we'll get married in the church. And you know,
here's a class you can take. She had a bulletin,
here's a class you can take that will allow you
to get baptized and confirmed in the church, and then
we'll be able to set a date for our marriage
sometime after that, and I said okay. And I went
through this this about a year and a half of
(12:01):
this RCI class. And then I was when I was baptized.
At the very moment the priest is pouring the water
over my head. I didn't hear the voice of God
or see a big banner come down from the sky
or anything. I just knew that I was going to
be a priest right at that moment. And I'm like,
I didn't want to be a priest. I want to
get married. And I didn't really know what a priest did.
(12:24):
So I went on for about three days later. I
told the priest of baptizing message the other night when
he baptized me, I thought, I had this feeling that
I'm going to be a priest. He said, don't worry
about it. Every man who's baptized as an adult has
that same feeling. Waite a few days. It'll go away.
And I went and I went away, thank you, but
it came back, went away, he came back. I played
(12:47):
ping pong with us for about seven years, and then
I was going to go into a religious order in
New York City, and I went there and spent some
time on and out for a couple of years. They
sent me to school in Ohio to do what they
call pre theology studies. You learned some philosophy. And then
after that we discerned this religious order, and I discerned
(13:07):
that I was better suited for a parish work. So
they sent me back home to the Diocese of Helena,
and in two thousand and three they sent me to
the seminary in Mount Angel, Oregon, and I was ordained
priest in two thousand and seven, in December. It's funny,
because I lived a very fast life. I was involved
(13:28):
in trouble making. I used to get in street fights
a lot. I was very involved, and you know, I
used to drink and and I mean I had a
lot of problemt I had several accidents, both on my
motorcycle and cars. I had some falls. I hurt myself,
you know, fighting, And about fifteen years ago, I just
(13:50):
started weakening. And I thought maybe because I had such
a fast life, I was just aging a little more
rapidly than, you know, than people my age. When I
was in the seminary, I had hip surgery. My left
knee just kept it was really causing me a great
deal of pain. So I went in. They did an
extra the knee. No, knee is fine, They didn't, mr, No,
your knee is fine. And finally they did an X
(14:13):
ray in my back and they noticed something on my hip,
and they did an MRI and they they found that
I had a large tumor about the size of you
if I can't close my fist anymore, or about the
size of your fist, that was growing right at the
insertion point of your groin muscle in my femur, and
that's what was causing it was putting stress on the muscle.
That's why my knee was hurting. So they removed that tumor,
(14:35):
and uh, just a couple of months after they did that,
I remember sitting at the seminary one day on the
edge of my bed and I could just feel the
strength flowing out of my body. It was the most
uncanny experience that I've ever had in my life. It's
like a ball rolling across the table and then when
I forgets the edge, it just drops. That's where my
strength is. And I was diagnosed very soon after with
(14:59):
a disease called in cclue in bodying. My asside is
such what I have. It's a different disease, but it
mimics als, so the progression looks very similar to somebody
who suffers with lou Garrig's disease. And there's no care
for this one either. It will claim my life. But
it's a very curious experience because through the difficulties and
(15:20):
the struggles that I've been through, the problems that have
arisen from this, and the people, especially my dad, who
have come to my side to support me and aid me,
you know, and assist me through this life. Since I've
been diagnosed with this, it's the probably the best thing
that's ever happened in me. It's a profound experience suffering,
(15:42):
and every person in the planet suffers, and the more
you try and deny it and move it, the more
you suffer. It is a truly profound mystery. And what
I've noticed in my life the good things that are
coming from this. It's helped me overcome some of my
prideful ways which were with a big cross for me
(16:02):
for many years. It's taught me a little humility. It's
taught me dignity and respect for others, especially for those
who share the condition that I'm in. I live in
a nursing home now I live in the Big Sky
Care center just south of Saint Peter's. And you know
I've entered. When I became Catholic, I used to go
(16:24):
and volunteer at a convalescent home every week. And sometimes
you go into this place and it was like I
entered the first circle of Dante's Hell. It would smell
the feces and urine, and people are screaming, and you wonder,
you know why you go there, But when you left,
every time you left, you felt a little better about
being able to participate in assisting others with their suffering,
(16:49):
in helping them struggle with their burdens through life. And
you know, it's a powerful, powerful reality. For myself, I
have been very healthy and active my entire life up
until about five years ago. And at the end of
my ordination, I said, I sit before you a broken man.
(17:11):
My disease is disabling and it will continue to progress
in barring a miracle of Christ, it will claim my life.
But like I said, the the struggles of this disease
helped me and help others to learn the way that
(17:31):
we should have been living all along. And sometimes people
like me there's an extreme example. We need things like
this to be able to make those changes and decisions
in our life that are going to help us become
better people, to become the people that God has created
us to be when he sent us to this clianet.
(17:52):
There's there's a really interesting movie. It's called Gladiator, and
there was one line in that I really enjoyed. There
was the man played by Oliver Reed who was not deceased,
and he was the owner and trainer of the gladiators,
saying which proximout in the movie. And he was given
these gladiators a little pep talk before they went out
(18:12):
in the into the arena to fight, and he said,
he said, Ultimately, he said, we're all dead men. He said, sadly,
we cannot choose how, but we can choose how we
face that end in order that we were remembered as men.
And I think this is this is a message for
(18:32):
all of us. We don't get to choose what happens,
only how we respond to it and how we're going
to cooperate with God to overcome the difficulties and challenges
that exist in our world.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
And a terrific job on the production by Greg Hengler
and a special thanks to the Diocese of Helena, Montana
for providing this footage. This audio with Father Stuart Long
telling his own story with his mother and father at
his all. Father Stuart Long, at fifty years of age,
passed away in the early morning hours on June ninth,
(19:06):
twenty fourteen, in Helena, Montana, where he resided and ministered
since twenty ten. You know, so much is written about
happiness and chasing happiness, and John Stuart Mill wrote about
this and said, people who chase happiness end up being unhappy.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
It's the people who.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Step into others suffering that understand happiness. And my goodness,
did Father Steu do that? And did people do that
for Father Steu? And always understanding who is in charge?
For Father Steu? That was Jesus Christ. The story of
Father Stuart Long here on our American Stories. Buck at
Host
Lee Habeeb
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