Father Stu: In His Own Words

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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Episode Transcript

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.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Long in the film.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
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 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
with 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 were all kinds
of abandoned mine shafts and 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 I

(01:19):
was a young man and we used to get in trouble,
we'd uh, we had apple trees in our yard. We'd
sit up on our on on the rop of our
house when the tour training to 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

(01:39):
looked at the kids throwing. Man, that building is so big,
it's got to be shorter to cut through the middle
and then to walk around. 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, it was like
a game. You know, we'd run off you. And I
did it probably but now ten times in my life.

(02:01):
And sometimes you come up and open 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 he 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 on it.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
I did the gentleman 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
it was 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

(02:42):
for two years under coach Bob Atrino, 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 for it. 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

(03:03):
was a 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 Ritunia came out of his officer. 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 as 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 window was
about eight feet up along each of the long walls

(03:46):
of this chapel's rectangulary shape, and there were I had
no idea what was going I look 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 the 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

(04:08):
boy 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

(04:28):
you know, I had no understanding, no education. They had
us take a couple of religion classes there when we
attended the school. 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

(04:49):
would teach his 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 even 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
cause he said do you enjoy boxing? And I said no,

(05:12):
And 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 Selli
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 Father

(05:35):
Jeremiah 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 tells me to do. And I

(05:56):
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

(06:17):
he was also one of the main boxing referees of
his day. And he was also involved with Top Rank
Boxing on ESPN, where they take younger fighters and give
him 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,

(06:38):
and so I thought, you know, there's 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,

(06:59):
probably six months. I was working, 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.

(07:20):
I didn't really have too 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 you know, to get in the movie business.
And I did. I did some. I did a couple
of commercials. I was did. 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

(07:41):
the money is just terrible. I did. 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,
so that's something I 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 watch that. Kind

(08:02):
of embarrassed with some of the things 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, uh

(08:23):
acquiring new talent. And they were talent 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 a nightclub. 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

(08:44):
go and I'll go get another job, you know, during
the daytime. And I started 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.

(09:05):
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.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
Let's pick up now where we last left off. 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

(10:10):
a car and I smashed into a car in the
next line with my head. I was immediately un conscious.
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

(10:31):
lived with at that time, they were both in the
hospital there and I had some really really interesting religious
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 no Mexican girl who had dark hair, dark skinned,

(10:52):
dark eyes. She was really nice. Scown and she came
in one day and she had a little chip on
her shoulder and I had a 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 skin, 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

(11:16):
of this apartment we shared. And I looked at her
and I said, that happened 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

(11:38):
there was something to it. And she said, we were
talking about getting 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 it Dad for
I'm marriage sometime after that, and I said okay. And

(12:00):
I went through this this about a year and a
half of this RCI class. And then 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

(12:21):
get married. I didn't really know what a priest did.
So I went on for about three days later. I
told the priest of baptizing massage. The other night when
he baptized methought, 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.
Wait a few days, it'll go away. And I went

(12:42):
and I went away, thank you, but it came back,
went away, he came back. I played 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

(13:06):
this religious order, and I discerned 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 a priest in two thousand and seven,
in December. It's funny, because I lived a very fast life.

(13:27):
I was involved 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 problem 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,

(13:49):
I just started weakening. And I thought maybe because I
had such a fast life, I was just aging a
little more rapidly than people my age. And 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 did m No,

(14:10):
your knee is fine. And finally they did an X
ray in my back and they noticed something on my hip,
and they did an MRI and 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.

(14:32):
That's why my knee was hurting. So they removed that tumor,
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.

(14:56):
And I was diagnosed very soon after with a disease
called incl us and 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

(15:17):
very curious experience because through the difficulties and 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 probably the best thing that's ever happened
in me. It's a profound experience suffering, and every person

(15:42):
in the planet suffers, and the more you try and
deny it and move, 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 brideful ways which were
with a big cross for me for many years. It's

(16:04):
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 it
became Catholic. I used to go and volunteer at a convalescent

(16:26):
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, in helping them struggle

(16:51):
with their burdens through life. And you know, it's a powerful,
powerful reality for myself. Know, I have been very healthy
and active my entire life up until about five years ago.
And at the my ordination, I said, I said, before
you a broken man. My disease is disabling and it

(17:14):
will continue to progress and 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 we should have been living
all along. And sometimes people like me, there's an extreme

(17:36):
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 climate. There's there's a really interesting movie.
It's called Gladiator, and there was one line in that

(17:57):
I really enjoyed. There was the man played by Oliver Reed,
who's 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 in the into the arena to fight,
and he said, he said, ultimately, he said, we're all

(18:19):
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 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

(18:40):
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 Father Stuart Long, at fifty years of age, passed
away in the early morning hours on June ninth, twenty fourteen,

(19:08):
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 Stu? And always understanding who is in charge?

Speaker 2 (19:35):
For Father Stu? That was Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
The story of Father Stuart Long here on our American Stories.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
U