December 27, 2024 • 20 mins
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 want 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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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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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
(00:30):
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 (00:43):
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 Harbor
View UH Hospital in Seattle, and then my dad was
discharged for 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 you're not sure
what's it going there, but we s sneak around the Oh,
it was just an adventure and I really enjoyed that.
(01:19):
When I was a young man and uh, we used
to get in trouble, we'd uh we had apple trees
in our yard and we'd sit up on our on
on the rop of our house when the tour training 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 in s the
South End Helena, and I looked at the kids throing, Man,
(01:40):
the building is so big, it's gotta be shorter to
cut through the middle of then to walk around it.
So i'd walk through there and uh, there's this grumpy
old guy and you know, always see me and there
he'd start chasing you damn kids, and he'd come running
after us, you know, like it was like a game.
You know, we'd run off you. And I did it
probably what now a times in my life. And sometimes
(02:01):
you come up and open the door and he'd be
standing there with his arms folded across the chest and
you say out. He wouldn't let us in there. Sometimes
you get in there and need Chasha. 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 with that.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
I didn't get him on the graduating class of nineteen
eighty one.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
My first year of college, I attended Western Montana down
to Dylan. You know, it was Western then I guess
this 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 for two
(02:43):
years under coach Bob Attrino, 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 short. 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, I was a Catholic school,
(03:04):
so I was always felt kind of like an outsider.
I remember we had to attend mass there part of
the part of the football preparation. Coach Rictuna came out
of his officer. One of 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 o'clock attendance
(03:26):
is mandatory. So I looked at the kid that was
dressed across the little the little walk away from ask
what's the chapel? And I didn't even know what it was.
He's like, yeah, yeah, he walked off, and one of
the 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 of this chapel's rectangular shape,
(03:49):
and there were I had no idea what was going
I looked 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 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 boy tied to a rock, and he's
(04:09):
gonna get in with a knife and it was a
story of Abraham and Isaac. I had no idea at
the time, but 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 you know, I had no understanding, no education.
(04:31):
They had us take a couple of religion classes there
when we attended the school, and 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 would teach his like history of the civilization,
or Italian history or all these different kinds of history.
(04:55):
And I kept interrupting this class and asking very ignorant
questions that didn't were late. 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 you cause he said, do you enjoy boxing? And
I said no, And he said, well, why don't you
meet me down at the gym today at four o'clock.
(05:17):
So I said, okay, So I went down there and
he took me into the little boxing room. And at
the time, Father Selimone 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 Jeremiah could hit the speedbag better than either
(05:37):
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 told me to do,
and I just fell in love with the I really
(05:58):
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 he was also one of the main boxing
(06:19):
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, and so I thought, you know, there's
(06:39):
there's an opportunity for this. But I had some dental
work done on my jaw and on my teeth are false.
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,
probably six months. I was working, but I just kind of,
(07:02):
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.
I didn't really have too much other I had a
(07:22):
friend that just I had just moved down to Los Angeles,
so we did that. I went down there and uh
to get you 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, it's you work long hours and the money
is just terrible. I did. I was in a CBS
(07:45):
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 i
gonna drag it out so you can to watch that.
Kind of embarrassed with some of the things I used
to do, and I had some I had some trouble
(08:06):
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, acquiring new talent, and they were talent agents
and directors and stuff, and it was it was a real,
(08:29):
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 night club. 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 go and I'll go get another job, you know,
during the daytime. And I started working at a museum
(08:49):
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.
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 stew 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 stew as told by Father Stuart Long himself. Let's
pick up now where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
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 a car and I smashed into a car in
the next line with my head. I was immediate line conscious.
(10:15):
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
lived with at that time, they were both in the
hospital there and I had some really really interesting religious
(10:37):
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 the Mexican girls. She had dark hair, dark skinned,
dark eyes. She was really nice, scown. And she came
in one day and she had a little chip on
(10:59):
her shoulder and 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 skinned, 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 of this apartment we shared.
And I looked at her and I said, that happened
(11:20):
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 there was something to it.
And she said, we were talking about getting married at
(11:41):
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 a date for our marriage sometime
after that. And I said, okay. I went through this
this about a year and a half of this RCI class,
(12:03):
and then I was 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 get married. And
I didn't really know what a priest did. So I
(12:27):
went on for about three days. Later. I told the
priest of baptizing message the other night when he baptized me,
I thought, 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.
Waite a few days. It'll go away. And I went
and I went away, thank you, but it came back,
went away, he came back. I played ping pong with
(12:47):
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
this religious order, and I discerned that I was better
(13:08):
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. I was involved in trouble making.
(13:30):
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 I just started weakening. And
(13:51):
I thought maybe because I had such a fast life,
I was just aging a little more rapidly than, you know,
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 didn't mr, No, your knee is fine.
(14:11):
And finally they did an X ray in my back
and they noticed something on my hip, and they did
an MRI and they 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. That's why my
(14:32):
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 is.
(14:55):
And I was diagnosed very soon after with a disease
called inclue should in body. 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
a lou Garrig's disease. And there's no care for this
one either. It will claim my life. But it's a
(15:16):
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. Is it's a profound experience suffering, and every
(15:42):
person in the planet suffers, and the more you try
and deny it and move it, 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.
(16:03):
It's 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 with 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 of 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
(16:50):
with their burdens through life. And you know, it's a powerful,
powerful reality. For myself, I have been very healthy and
active my entire life up until about five years ago.
And at the end of my ordination, I said, I
said before you, a broken man. My disease is disabling
(17:14):
and it will continue to progress in 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
(17:36):
extreme 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 planet. There's there's a really
interesting movie. It's called Gladiator, and there was one line
(17:57):
in that I really enjoyed. There was the man played
by Oliver Reed who was 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,
(18:18):
he said, we're all 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 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
(18:39):
God 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 side. Had Father Stuart Long, at fifty years of age,
passed away in the early morning hours on June ninth,
(19:06):
twenty fourteen, 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 Steu? And always understanding who is in charge?
For Father Steu? That was Jesus Christ. The story of
Father Stuart Long here on our American stories. The buck
(20:03):
of a bat of fo
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
(00:30):
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 (00:43):
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 Harbor
View UH Hospital in Seattle, and then my dad was
discharged for 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 you're not sure
what's it going there, but we s sneak around the Oh,
it was just an adventure and I really enjoyed that.
(01:19):
When I was a young man and uh, we used
to get in trouble, we'd uh we had apple trees
in our yard and we'd sit up on our on
on the rop of our house when the tour training 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 in s the
South End Helena, and I looked at the kids throing, Man,
(01:40):
the building is so big, it's gotta be shorter to
cut through the middle of then to walk around it.
So i'd walk through there and uh, there's this grumpy
old guy and you know, always see me and there
he'd start chasing you damn kids, and he'd come running
after us, you know, like it was like a game.
You know, we'd run off you. And I did it
probably what now a times in my life. And sometimes
(02:01):
you come up and open the door and he'd be
standing there with his arms folded across the chest and
you say out. He wouldn't let us in there. Sometimes
you get in there and need Chasha. 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 with that.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
I didn't get him on the graduating class of nineteen
eighty one.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
My first year of college, I attended Western Montana down
to Dylan. You know, it was Western then I guess
this 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 for two
(02:43):
years under coach Bob Attrino, 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 short. 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, I was a Catholic school,
(03:04):
so I was always felt kind of like an outsider.
I remember we had to attend mass there part of
the part of the football preparation. Coach Rictuna came out
of his officer. One of 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 o'clock attendance
(03:26):
is mandatory. So I looked at the kid that was
dressed across the little the little walk away from ask
what's the chapel? And I didn't even know what it was.
He's like, yeah, yeah, he walked off, and one of
the 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 of this chapel's rectangular shape,
(03:49):
and there were I had no idea what was going
I looked 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 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 boy tied to a rock, and he's
(04:09):
gonna get in with a knife and it was a
story of Abraham and Isaac. I had no idea at
the time, but 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 you know, I had no understanding, no education.
(04:31):
They had us take a couple of religion classes there
when we attended the school, and 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 would teach his like history of the civilization,
or Italian history or all these different kinds of history.
(04:55):
And I kept interrupting this class and asking very ignorant
questions that didn't were late. 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 you cause he said, do you enjoy boxing? And
I said no, And he said, well, why don't you
meet me down at the gym today at four o'clock.
(05:17):
So I said, okay, So I went down there and
he took me into the little boxing room. And at
the time, Father Selimone 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 Jeremiah could hit the speedbag better than either
(05:37):
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 told me to do,
and I just fell in love with the I really
(05:58):
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 he was also one of the main boxing
(06:19):
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, and so I thought, you know, there's
(06:39):
there's an opportunity for this. But I had some dental
work done on my jaw and on my teeth are false.
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,
probably six months. I was working, but I just kind of,
(07:02):
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.
I didn't really have too much other I had a
(07:22):
friend that just I had just moved down to Los Angeles,
so we did that. I went down there and uh
to get you 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, it's you work long hours and the money
is just terrible. I did. I was in a CBS
(07:45):
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 i
gonna drag it out so you can to watch that.
Kind of embarrassed with some of the things I used
to do, and I had some I had some trouble
(08:06):
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, acquiring new talent, and they were talent agents
and directors and stuff, and it was it was a real,
(08:29):
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 night club. 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 go and I'll go get another job, you know,
during the daytime. And I started working at a museum
(08:49):
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.
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 stew 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 stew as told by Father Stuart Long himself. Let's
pick up now where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
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 a car and I smashed into a car in
the next line with my head. I was immediate line conscious.
(10:15):
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
lived with at that time, they were both in the
hospital there and I had some really really interesting religious
(10:37):
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 the Mexican girls. She had dark hair, dark skinned,
dark eyes. She was really nice, scown. And she came
in one day and she had a little chip on
(10:59):
her shoulder and 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 skinned, 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 of this apartment we shared.
And I looked at her and I said, that happened
(11:20):
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 there was something to it.
And she said, we were talking about getting married at
(11:41):
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 a date for our marriage sometime
after that. And I said, okay. I went through this
this about a year and a half of this RCI class,
(12:03):
and then I was 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 get married. And
I didn't really know what a priest did. So I
(12:27):
went on for about three days. Later. I told the
priest of baptizing message the other night when he baptized me,
I thought, 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.
Waite a few days. It'll go away. And I went
and I went away, thank you, but it came back,
went away, he came back. I played ping pong with
(12:47):
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
this religious order, and I discerned that I was better
(13:08):
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. I was involved in trouble making.
(13:30):
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 I just started weakening. And
(13:51):
I thought maybe because I had such a fast life,
I was just aging a little more rapidly than, you know,
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 didn't mr, No, your knee is fine.
(14:11):
And finally they did an X ray in my back
and they noticed something on my hip, and they did
an MRI and they 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. That's why my
(14:32):
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 is.
(14:55):
And I was diagnosed very soon after with a disease
called inclue should in body. 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
a lou Garrig's disease. And there's no care for this
one either. It will claim my life. But it's a
(15:16):
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. Is it's a profound experience suffering, and every
(15:42):
person in the planet suffers, and the more you try
and deny it and move it, 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.
(16:03):
It's 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 with 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 of 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
(16:50):
with their burdens through life. And you know, it's a powerful,
powerful reality. For myself, I have been very healthy and
active my entire life up until about five years ago.
And at the end of my ordination, I said, I
said before you, a broken man. My disease is disabling
(17:14):
and it will continue to progress in 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
(17:36):
extreme 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 planet. There's there's a really
interesting movie. It's called Gladiator, and there was one line
(17:57):
in that I really enjoyed. There was the man played
by Oliver Reed who was 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,
(18:18):
he said, we're all 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 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
(18:39):
God 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 side. Had Father Stuart Long, at fifty years of age,
passed away in the early morning hours on June ninth,
(19:06):
twenty fourteen, 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 Steu? And always understanding who is in charge?
For Father Steu? That was Jesus Christ. The story of
Father Stuart Long here on our American stories. The buck
(20:03):
of a bat of fo
Host
Lee Habeeb
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