I remember meeting Lou Twomey in the middle of all this. He was then famous for having done a lot of work in racial and social ethics as well as for starting a law school down South. He was one of the big name Jesuits at the time. When I met him he bellowed, "Hello, I'm Lou Twomey!" And though I was only a first-year scholastic at the time, I said in a similar tone, "Hello, I'm Bill Devine!" And he said, "Oh, I've heard a lot about you!" And I said boldly. "What have you heard about me?" He replied, "I heard you got in a lot of trouble with Maxwell when you went to a meeting at the longshoremen's union." It turned out that Fr. Bill Keneally was a friend of his and that he had told him about me.

Over to the Economics Department

I had fun teaching those courses in the philosophy department, and, once in a while, I still hear from some of the students I had in those interesting days. Then, after a short while, the dean found out that I had a degree in economics as well as some experience in teaching economics. So he moved me over to the Economics Department. At first, it was part-time, then later, full-time. Then I started going to Fordham to do the course work for a doctorate in economics.

In fact, the guy who was my mentor at Fordham had once been my colleague at Fairfield University. While I was in the Economics Department at Fairfield, we gathered a group of people, including a number of professors, who came to worship together every Sunday. I was a kind of pastor for that group of about fifty families. He and his wife had been among the first in the group. It had started as a family worship group. Then, since I had gotten into AA, some people in AA started coming to it. They wouldn't go to the local parish church, because their children were too noisy, or because their own childhood faith had weakened. They were now giving it a second try in coming to our little group. I offered Mass every Sunday, and it became an important support group for me as well.

This began with faculty members and then spread out to their friends in the area. Then it spread even further because of my connection to AA. Many of these people had stopped earlier going to some church. So it was quite a mixed group. They were also interested in social action of various kinds. We did many things together. Among the things, we used to picket outside Bridgeport GE all the way through Lent, year after year after year. There was a lot of activity connected with the group.

The homily was always given by someone in the group. For example, during Advent, a pregnant woman would give a homily on Mary's pregnancy. And there were homily times when nobody over twelve could speak except me. The children would lead the homily. As you can see, homily was always an interesting time for the group.

I started going to spiritual direction workshops here and there. Eventually, I had a full-time sabbatical, which I used to pursue this. It led to my really getting into spiritual direction by taking some courses at Weston College, which, by this time, was located in Cambridge.

Then I went to St. Beuno's in Wales for a three-month program of renewal, though, in reality, I was doing most of the spiritual programs for the first time. It was a very big conversion experience for me, and it also taught me how to direct a thirty-day retreat myself. When I got back home, I rounded it all out at a retreat house with an internship. So I began doing more and more retreats.

And I felt, after twenty-seven years at Fairfield, that it was time for me to move on to spiritual direction full-time. Then, one day, the phone rang. It was Fr. Bob Manning, the provincial, who said, "I know you love Fairfield and everything about it, but I would like to ask you to give it all up and join my staff."

As it turned out, this was another step towards giving retreats. Part of my job was to be the provincial assistant in charge of the province retreat houses. I was also given excellent supervision with the work, including my own retreats. It was beautiful. It fit in very nicely with what I had been doing. Then somebody resigned from running the Campion Renewal Center. I said I'd take it over temporality. I found myself running that retreat house and carrying on my job in the provincial's office at the same time.