By Father Bill Hoffman

(Father Bill Hoffman, director of the Hispanics Apostolate, grew up in Gainesville, Georgia where Monsignor Manning served as pastor for many years.)

The priests who have been stationed in Gainesville have, all of them, had difficulties in leaving. Not one wanted to leave, and Monsignor Michael Manning was no exception.

He spent 14 years there, beginning in 1945. Before that he was in Thomasville, and afterward in Decatur.

My family moved to Gainesville from Tallahassee in 1950, and remained there during the rest of Father Manning’s tour. I would like to share some memories of those years.

There were the Saturday night confessions that my family went to every month or so. He was always there, listening, keeping up with us as individuals and ever so gently encouraging us. He was there – always there.

My mother died in 1952 and he became a constant visitor, especially after my father married a widow from the parish in 1953. He was the one, I believe, who introduced them and saw things to a happy conclusion.

Those home visits occurred usually at the hour of the evening meal. Meals at our home bordered on a circus. Someone was always getting ribbed about something or the other, and he enjoyed it all. He had a quiet wit and loved the banter that went on.

I still remember a pewter water pitcher that made frequent trips around the table, and somehow Father Manning was always in the center of the traffic. He could hardly eat for all of the passing of plates and the water pitcher.

His favorite foods were, as I recall, limited to meat and potatoes, but he accommodated himself easily to our fare.

Father Manning’s brogue delighted the people of Gainesville. Many of us were more fascinated by how he said it than by what he said.

While a co-op student at Tech, I worked for a quarter at the Atlantic Steel Company, doing swing shift work in the lab. To help pass the time on the midnight shift, Father Manning allowed me to borrow some of his books. They got me thinking more about religion, and, with the help of two seminarians who had just moved to Gainesville, the brothers Beltran, led to my entering the seminary. The only priest I knew at that time was Father Manning and I wanted to be a priest like him.

For six months after I decided to study for the priesthood, Father Manning met with me a couple of times a week to work through Latin grammar. On my vacations from St. Bernard, he would always ask how it was going.

Once I wanted to kid him a bit, and told him that some Jesuits had been by the seminary trying to recruit members with the slogan, “Join the Jesuits and see the world.” He believed me and became very agitated that such a thing should be permitted, but relaxed when I told him that I was just joking.

In those days, a priest had to fast until he had celebrated the last of the day’s Masses. During the summer, he would begin in Gainesville with an early Mass, then go to Toccoa and eventually to Lakemont. Once I drove a visiting priest around on Sunday, and believe me, it is hard to maintain a pleasant disposition under those circumstances. But he always seemed to manage it. He was always a gentleman.

Father Manning was the only priest I have ever seen wearing a white suit, and, even at that, I saw it only once. It was my high school graduation, in the gymnasium, at 8 p.m. It was in the low 90s outside, closer to 95 degrees inside. There he was, dressed in a white suit! Since I have not seen another priest dressed that way, Father Manning will always occupy a singular spot in my visual memory.

All of us who knew him have our favorite memories of him. We were all blessed by his presence. May he rest in peace.