Brother Mark McBride, T.O.R., Remembered

I recently learned of the passing of Brother Mark McBride, T.O.R.. Brother Mark was the principal of my high school, and someone I thought of as a friend. Though I hadn’t kept in touch with him, he was someone who’d cross my mind from time to time. He was a kind man, very down-to-earth, and very unlike a principal or other authority figure.

On the first day of my sophomore year of high school, I arrived late and had to ask one of the faculty where I should be. I was new there that year. I didn’t know anyone, didn’t know the building, didn’t know the first-day routine. I was told that sophomores should be in the auditorium (the different grades were in different areas), and somehow found my way there.

The crowd was sparse and I took a seat. A Franciscan friar was on the stage, speaking into a microphone. This was Brother Mark. The first impression he made upon me was when he said something that elicited a smattering of tepid applause — he reacted to this by saying, very dryly, “You may applaud”. I thought this was funny, and I wasn’t the only one, as I glanced to my left and saw two other students, looking at each other and laughing at Brother Mark’s statement. You probably had to be there. It was all in his delivery. He reminded me of Dan Aykroyd.

I don’t remember when I actually met him. I have to wonder if it was a day I think was in my sophomore year where kids who sold a certain amount of candy or magazines during a fundraising drive got the day off. I didn’t sell anything and was one of a handful of kids in my grade who were in school that day. Brother Mark was the one who worked with us that day, as we didn’t attend normal classes. This may have been the time they showed us a learning program hosted by John Ritter, but I’m not sure. I remember Brother Mark talking to us and just sort of hanging out. He didn’t speak to us as if he had any authority, but rather conversed with us as if we were all equals. I seem to remember him beginning the discussion by talking about the errancy of the phrase “God is angry”, explaining that God does not get angry (something I don’t believe is correct based on what I’ve read in the Bible — by the way, I’m an atheist, but wasn't at the time). He also told us about being so nervous when he started teaching at the school (he’d been a teacher before becoming principal), that he was worried the students would be able to see his heart pounding through his chest. I didn’t think too much about any of this at the time, but looking back on it all in hindsight, I can’t help but think of how down-to-earth he was, that despite his authority, he didn’t speak to us from a level higher than our own. To this day, I’m not sure I’ve ever had another superior admit a fear to me. He seemed, somehow, able to be an authority figure while also being one of us.

In my senior year, I was elected homeroom representative. Not because I ran for it, but because my classmates thought it would be funny. I went with it. Part of the responsibility was to pick up the homeroom folder each morning on my way in, and I’d often see Brother Mark in the office as I did so. I have only two memories of Brother Mark which could be considered negative: one was of him during my sophomore year, holding an assembly to tell us how bad the school had done when the results of that year’s standardized tests came back; the other was of one morning when I was picking up that homeroom folder, and him scolding me for how messy my hair was (I have naturally wavy hair which has never been manageable). These two memories stand out not because they’re negative, but because they are so different from the way he normally was. Hey, we all have our bad days, and he was only human.

When graduation was approaching, the school disciplinarian decided to crack down on us one last time for the length of our hair, and I was one of the students who was told that he needed his hair cut to be able to attend graduation. With aspirations of growing my hair long, and not wanting to submit to one last haircut, I skipped graduation. If I were a worse person, I’d write a blog post about that disciplinarian, who told me that he’d see me in the future with a shaved head and having joined the military. I did neither, and find his insinuation of what military service meant insulting. But I digress. As it so happened, I was hanging with a friend that night, and we drove by the school on our way somewhere else. I’d forgotten that graduation was happening, and when I saw the turn-out we decided to pull into the parking lot. The ceremony had ended, and people were leaving. My classmates were, in that moment, moving on with their lives: high school was officially over. After speaking with a few of them in the parking lot, I made my way to the front door where Brother Mark and another friar, Brother Tom, were conversing with some people. I was asked why I hadn’t attended graduation, and after explaining, Brother Mark told me that I should’ve reached out to him. “Oh, Alan, I’ve been covering for you all year!”, he said.

I didn’t really think much of any of this at the time. High school was finally over. But it was only a few months later when I’d see Brother Mark again. The fall after graduation -- just a few months later -- I stopped by the school in the afternoon after the students had been dismissed, to talk to Brother Mark about a problem. I seem to remember that one of the ladies at the front office took me to his office where I waited for him. When he arrived, he was in a cheerful mood and happy to see me. Again, his demeanor was so unlike an authority figure. He spoke to me, as he almost always had, as an equal. A short time later – days, weeks, maybe a month or two – I stopped by the rectory on a Sunday evening to give him an update. Looking back, I feel like this was rude, to come by announced outside of his working hours. I feel bad about it, and feel like he was doing his best to be gracious when I’d stopped by like I had. And that’s the last time I saw him.

Some time later – more than a decade – I reached out to him via email. I don’t remember what prompted me to do so, or how I found his email address, but at that time he’d moved on to a different role. I started my email by saying that I wasn’t sure if he’d remember me, and went on to talk about what had happened in my life since high school. I heard back from him after some delay. He told me that he did remember me, and apologized for not getting back to me sooner, explaining that his new role had been keeping him busy. He also told me that he missed teaching, as he felt that’s where he could do the most good. He ended the email by telling me that he was glad to hear from me, and that we should keep in touch. I can’t remember if I replied to this email. At some point in time, I had the feeling that I didn’t want to bother him. Re-reading that email recently, I had a different feeling, that he really was happy to hear from me. Sadly, we didn’t keep in touch, and I very much regret it.

I found a few pictures on the internet, and have included the ones here which most closely resemble how he looked when I knew him. The picture at the top looks pretty close to how he looked when I was in high school, with the exception of the greyer hair. The picture further down looks like it could've been taken around the time I was there.

His obituary can be found here.

His funeral from Rome was posted on YouTube here.

A website called “The Good Catholic Life” posted an article with an audio interview with him in it, which can be found here. By this time, Brother Mark was living in Rome, and seemed to have developed a little bit of an accent. I loved listening to this clip, as in a few, short moments in the interview, his humor reveals itself.

He also has a page at Find a Grave, here.

I considered Brother Mark a friend, and am grateful for his kindness, his humor, his humility, and for being treated as an equal. I miss him.