Seattle U's Father Frank Logan: An Institution Within An Institution -- Still Energetic At 93, He's A Walking History Book - Literally
Take a walk with the Rev. Frank Logan on his daily mile or so around the Seattle University campus.
He began right here at Seattle U., he'll tell you proudly, and right here is where he'll end.
He'll point up to the scrubbed red bricks of the Garrand Building, the oldest structure on campus, where he went to high school. And over there to the newer brick Jesuit residence, where he lives at age 93. He'll take you on a shortcut through the new education building and in an elevator to the upper level to a glassed-in mock-up of the new chapel that's going up mid-campus.
If no one's walking with him on any given day, Father Logan takes his rosary beads for company, praying as they trickle through his fingers like water drops. If there's an audience, the prayer turns to reminiscence, the drops to a torrent.
Father Logan was in his teens and so was the century when he came to this campus. When the university celebrated its centennial in 1991, he realized to his surprise he'd been right here for 75 of those 100 years, teaching French, Spanish, composition and theology and organizing, coaching and playing a whole Olympiad of sports, games and athletic ventures.
He was born not far from here, at Fifth and Seneca, and grew up No. 3 in a family of six boys and two girls. There was another child, little Bernard, who died in infancy, and Father Logan adds him to the list as a postscript. "I would think he'd count, too, don't you?"
Their father died when young Frank was 14, and the children who were old enough were expected to bring in the money. Marie, the eldest, went to work as a secretary. The older boys got up at dawn to deliver newspapers and sold popcorn and peanuts at the old Sick's Stadium. For a while, young Frank worked at a shipyard, handling bolts that had been heated to white-hot temperatures before being fastened into place. "They'd throw them back to you if they were only red hot. Red hot wouldn't do," he'll say. "I never once got burned."
Three of the Logan boys became priests; Kathleen, the youngest daughter and the only other Logan sibling still living, is a nun. Every other Sunday, Father Logan drives to Rosary Heights Dominican Convent in Woodway, where she lives, to say Mass.
Father Logan decided to become a Jesuit priest in high school, he'll tell you, here at Seattle U. when it was known as Seattle College High School and the Garrand Building was the only building on campus. It was still the only building when he came back in '39 to teach.
As a kid, he'd been an altar boy at Our Lady of Good Health, a church a few blocks west of here, gone now. He'll offer several stories of how he came to his decision.
One, delivered with a chuckle, is that a Jesuit once gave him a dollar to buy ice cream. "I said I'm going to be a Jesuit because that's where the money is." Another is that he was awestruck by the priesthood. "When I was 10 or 11, Father McHugh asked me if I'd ever thought of being a priest. The priests to me were all from distant planets - they were all from Ireland back then. When I was a little older, I so much admired those men. They were so manly and so good and so even-tempered. Their example was enough for me."
A third story is one he says he's never told. It seems when his mother was carrying him, she had some problems with her pregnancy. She thought she might lose this baby so she prayed to St. Anthony, the saint "who finds things we've lost." When Father Logan was two months in the novitiate, preparing to become a priest, she wrote him a letter, "I think you should know before you give yourself to God, I promised you to God before you were born."
"That's why on Nov. 2, 1902, they baptized me Francis Anthony," he'll tell you. "I never knew about it before. She knew all the time, but I didn't. And no one else ever mentioned that I should be a priest after Father McHugh."
His mother's promise to God is a nice story, he'll say, but he doesn't want it played up as some sort of miracle.
Becoming a priest was, however, an act of faith. One of the young men who went into the novitiate with him in Los Gatos, Calif., had bought a round-trip ticket - just in case. "I bought a one-way ticket," Father Logan says. "I had 35 cents in my pocket. I knew I would stay."
He was not quite 17 at the time.
The novitiate wasn't what he expected. "I thought they'd give me a lot of books to read. But they gave me a bunch of old clothes and told me to go out and pick grapes." In the vineyards their teachers would read spiritual books to the young priests-to-be while they picked in the hot sun. "And after the grapes, there were the olives, and then there were the prunes."
Only after he took his lifelong vows of chastity, poverty and obedience was there the study he'd expected - Latin, Greek and history. But there was also baseball, basketball and long walks.
During one of his walks these days, someone on campus may stop him to say, "Hey, Coach, how's it going?" That's because sports have been and are a huge part of Father Logan's life.
He was a gangly youth who was over 6 feet tall before he graduated from short pants to trousers. He's still a big man, 6 feet, 3 inches tall, with vestiges of athleticism still in his bearing.
He excelled in handball - he was a Pacific Northwest doubles champion in 1950 and 1951. "All you need for handball is a ball and a wall," he's fond of saying. A few years ago, the Washington Athletic Club inducted him in its Handball Hall of Fame.
He played softball under an alias because his superiors didn't think it seemly to compete like that, particularly since results were printed in the Seattle U. student newspaper. He still has clippings recounting the plays of Ed Beasley, his alter ego.
He organized a hiking club that lasted 50 years and a bowling league they called the "Holy Rollers."
They named the hiking club the HiYu Coulees; that's Siwash for "much walking," Father Logan will tell you. Their first hike was from West Seattle to Three-Tree Point; another time they took a ferry across Lake Washington from Leschi to what is now Bellevue. "And do you know, we didn't see one house. Not one!"
As many as 100 HiYu Coulees made those weekend hikes. "They'd sing for hours and they'd never repeat a song. All the old songs, the songs of that day. It was wonderful."
He walked to Discovery Park for a picnic "only a few years ago," he'll tell you. "They weren't ready for lunch yet, so I walked three miles around the park."
He won't tell you if he's joking. You'll have to ask.
He misses teaching. He'd still be doing it if Seattle U. didn't have a rule about retiring at 70. "I had a letter of thanks a few years ago from a lady in California. She said, `You gave me the only D I've ever gotten and I thank you for it because it woke me up.' She became a lifelong student. I think that's wonderful."
Since he's retired, he rises when he's ready and says Mass - the other Jesuits are up at 5. For years he served as vacation relief for priests from Vancouver to Lynden. Several times he signed on as chaplain for cruise ships going to Alaska.
His health is good, Father Logan will reassure you, except for "a little back trouble, a little stiffness." And those little dizzy spells he's had lately. He was out the day after having one of them, taking his walk as if nothing had happened.
"I'm fine," he'll tell you. "The doctor tells me the best thing you can do is walk. He says forget about it. Don't think about it. Take an aspirin every day. I'll be fine."