Ex-USCCB film official reunites teacher with Tony-winning playwright

Published: 2005-06-13

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- When the Broadway drama "Doubt" racked up four Tony Awards, including statuettes for best play, best director, best actress and best featured actress, Gerri Pare beamed while watching the June 5 television broadcast of the awards. Pare, the retired director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Office for Film & Broadcasting, grew up down the street from the playwright of "Doubt," John Patrick Shanley. Although the two have an age difference of about three years, both Pare and Shanley attended St. Anthony School in the Stratton Park neighborhood of the Bronx in New York. And both knew very well the people behind the names Shanley used for his characters in "Doubt." One of them, Sister James -- as Sister Margaret McEntee was called then -- was not only still very much alive but also occasionally corresponded with Pare, who had been a seventh-grade student of the Sister of Charity, now 69. When Pare read a review of "Doubt," then being performed off-Broadway, and noted a character by the name of Sister James, she immediately called Sister Margaret's residence to jokingly warn her, "Your 15 minutes of fame are coming."

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