BY ERIKA ANDERSON

Staff Writer

ATLANTA--It was 1944. A young James Hartnett, not yet 18, received his diploma from Roman Catholic High School in Philadelphia, unsure of what direction his life would take.

The Japanese had made a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor three years earlier on Dec. 7, 1941. The United States was in the middle of World War II. The young graduate knew that his future included service to his country. Hartnett and a friend decided to join the Navy. Because they were not yet 18 and under the jurisdiction of the draft, they had their choice of armed forces.

“We figured if we were going to die, we would die in nice clean water rather than in a dirty trench,” he said.

After finishing bootcamp, Hartnett scored highly on a radio operation aptitude test, thanks to a class in Morse code he had taken his senior year of high school.

After training as a third class radioman, Hartnett and his fleet arrived in Calcutta, India, in 1945. Two weeks later the Japanese surrendered.

“They heard I was there,” he joked.

Though the surrender became part of world history, Hartnett’s military experience prompted a personal surrender that would change his history forever.

“I remember clearly, I was on a troop ship going across the Pacific,” he said. “That’s the day I said yes to God.”

There were three things Hartnett had always wanted to be--a sailor, a priest and a teacher.

Celebrating 50 years as a Marist, Father James Hartnett, SM, has experienced all three.

When asked when he first thought about becoming a priest, the president of the Marist School in Atlanta said that he couldn’t pinpoint the exact day. He “played church” as a young boy, he as the priest and one of his two brothers as the altar boy. Though he always felt “something brewing,” Father Hartnett said the thought of a vocation to the priesthood was something that came and went several times before that day on the ocean.

“My Navy experience made a vast difference in my life decision,” he said.

Fighting wars contrasted sharply with a priestly vocation. Father Hartnett noted that the war had a profound impact on the men who fought and that many of them experienced an extreme “spiritual hunger.”

“They saw a need for the presence of God in the world,” he said. “You don’t see the presence of God in war. War is about seeing the absence of God.”

Father Hartnett said he knew “little or nothing about religious orders” when he decided to become a priest. All he knew was that he wanted to become a priest and teach.

“There were 36 diocesan priests on the faculty at my high school and being associated with those men and seeing what they were doing had a big effect on me,” he said. “It got into my blood.”

When he talked to diocesan priests and realized that a position in teaching could not be guaranteed, Father Hartnett decided to become a Marist priest, the same order an older cousin had joined many years earlier. His reason for wanting to become a priest as well as a teacher was simple.

“I wanted people to know there was a God, a loving God. I especially wanted kids to know.”

Father Hartnett made his first profession of vows at Our Lady of the Elms in Staten Island, N.Y., at 6 a.m. on Sept. 8, 1949. He recalls the day well, remembering it was pouring rain when he professed his vows. Immediately after his profession, he and the other newly named Marists, left for seminary at Marist College in Washington, D.C., to make room for the next novitiate group that had arrived at Our Lady of the Elms the night before.

“I remember I was quite excited. It was the first time I was allowed to hang that ‘SM’ behind my name and that’s something that’s very important to me,” he said. “It meant that I was joining an interesting, dedicated group of men worldwide.”

Fifty years later, on Sept. 8, 1999, Father Hartnett renewed those vows of poverty, chastity and obedience at the first Mass of the year at the school which has been his home on and off for over 25 years.

At the Mass, students gave Father Hartnett a standing ovation as Michael Maher, headmaster of the school, expressed his gratitude for the priest’s many years of dedication to Marist.

“We have been blessed by virtually every day he has been here with us,” he told the students. “It is important to recognize the model we have standing before us.”

In reference to the closing song of the Mass, “Awesome God,” Maher said, “We know we have an awesome God and I think you agree that our Father Hartnett is awesome.”

Father Hartnett jokingly refers to his time at Marist as an “archeological dig site with four layers.” After his ordination to the priesthood in 1955, Father Hartnett was assigned as a teacher at Marist, then a widely recognized boys military academy. After several other assignments throughout the country, he returned to teach at the school and to serve as its business manager in 1965. He left the school in 1967 and returned again in 1971, this time as the principal of the school, a position he held until 1982. It was during this time that Father Hartnett made what he considers his two biggest accomplishments, the end of the school’s military program and the beginning of the alumni association.

Feeling that the military image was “hurting the growth of the school,” Father Hartnett ended the program.

“It was an excellent program, but if you put the kids in Air Force uniforms, that’s the dominating image,” he said. “The Marist image was much more in the background.”

Because of the program’s termination, Father Hartnett said, “the Marist facet came forth by leaps and bounds.”

It was also during this time, in 1976, that Marist began admitting female students.

When Father Hartnett came to serve as the principal of Marist in 1971 he was surprised to find that there was no alumni association. In 1974, he hired a full-time alumni director. The alumni association at Marist now numbers over 6,000 graduates, who attend class reunions and golf outings, participate in fund raising and serve on the school’s board of trustees.

“It’s been a great experience. They’ve contributed immeasurably to the school’s growth and development.”

In 1982, Father Hartnett took a year’s sabbatical in Rome. From 1983-84 he attended Duquesne University in Pittsburgh where he received his master’s degree in ongoing formation. He served as the vocations director for the Marists from 1984-88 when he returned to Atlanta to begin his “fourth and last layer” as the president of Marist School.

Father Hartnett has a special love for teenagers, whom he calls “precious unpolished stones.”

“They just need a little polishing to let their brilliance shine forth,” he said. “Initially they may be shy, but they are not unwilling to acknowledge that there is a God and that he cares for them.”

Reflecting on his career in teaching, Father Hartnett noted that it is an unusual profession.

“You do not get immediate feedback,” he said. “It is more of a delayed gratification. A person who has only been teaching a short time does not yet know the true delight of teaching.”

Father William Rowland, SM, Marist provincial, was a student of Father Hartnett’s while a junior in high school at St. Mary’s Manor, a minor seminary in Pennsylvania. He recalled Father Hartnett as well-respected and well-liked by the students and said that he “really taught from the heart.”

“It was obvious to me that he was very dedicated to teaching and to being a priest and to being a Marist,” he said. “I got the impression that he really enjoyed what he was doing and as a young person in seminary, you really need to see that.”

Father Hartnett is grateful for the feedback he has received from graduates, whether it’s taken two or 20 years for a former student to realize the importance of Marist in his or her life. Though there have been enormous changes in the school, the core of the Marist mission remains constant.

“We try to get kids to see that what they’re doing does mean a great deal, not only to themselves, but also to the people around them,” he said. “We try to give them the desire to serve their brothers and sisters in need.”

Father Hartnett now teaches many students whose parents he also taught and he said that has been fun.

“My greatest fear is that some kid’s going to come in and tell me I taught his grandfather,” he said. “It’s getting close.”

Though Father Hartnett’s fourth layer is still being laid at the school, he said he plans to be there for the duration. He joked that his next layer will be at Westview Cemetery, the burial place for many Marists.

Though 50 years is a long time, Father Hartnett insists it hasn’t felt that long.

“When you enjoy what you’re doing, you don’t look at the clock.”

BROTHER PRIESTS -- Father James Hartnett, SM, Marist School president, left, is congratulated on 50 years as a Marist by his brother priests Father Bill Rowland, SM, center, Marist provincial, and Father Paul Hachey, SM, judicial vicar of the Court of Appeals.
Photo by Michael Alexander