History
1977 photo with the Newman banner, Fr. Bill seated next to Amos Blandin '18, a judge in the New Hampshire Supreme Court and a former lumberman from the Moosilauke region.
The Foundation
Aquinas House's foundation can be traced to 1924 with the Newman Club at St. Denis Parish. Then pastor, Fr. John Sliney, enlisted the help of Catholic faculty at Dartmouth to get it started. The club waned under the leadership of his successor and brother, Fr. Francis Sliney, who received a young vicar in 1950 by the name of Fr. William Liguori Nolan. The story goes that when the pastor returned once from travel, he tried to suspend Nolan "for providing a keg of beer to undergraduates, but the bishop, by a mystical intuition, cheerfully decided that Father Bill should become Catholic chaplain to the college." (Fr. George Rutler) The bishop was Matthew Brady of the Manchester Diocese, who appointed Nolan to head the club at St. Denis. He did so for the next three years, organizing about 200 students, but their scheduling conflicted often with parish meetings. They purchased a house on 13 Choate Road - now the residence of the Dean of the College - and it was named Aquinas House. It was dedicated on December 8, 1953, with a library and offices open to students. Daily Masses were held in a makeshift basement chapel, while students were still sent to St. Denis for Sunday liturgies.
Father Bill recounts in his own words: "I got Cardinal Cushing to come up and talk to the students at a Communion breakfast. We had breakfast in the dining hall, and it was quite a deal. No cardinal had come up to Dartmouth before. He said to me, 'What do you need up here?' And I said that I felt what was really needed was a place for the kids to come and relax. If they want to talk about religion, there should be a priest assigned to that. The kids should be free to come and stay there as long as they want, in a place where everybody was welcome, I didn't care whether they were Catholics or not." This was in the year 1958, and Cushing, though a prelate of Boston, himself gave a $50,000 gift to begin fundraising a new site. Father Bill found few takers among other Catholics he petitioned. He was made to wait a long while outside of Sen. Edward Kennedy's office before he was dismissed. In the end, Nelson Rockefeller, a Baptist of sorts and yet a Dartmouth man, gave much of the money to complete the project. In 1961, our present property was received in a land swap with the college, and the new Aquinas House was finally completed and dedicated on April 29, 1962. The chapel was named after St. Clement Mary Hofbauer, CSsR, the co-founder of the Redemptorists with whom Father Bill was ordained.
Fr. Bill Nolan
The Founder
Monsignor William Liguori Nolan, our founder and first director, is best remembered by the title etched into his tombstone at nearby Pine Knoll Cemetery: "Our Beloved Father Bill." In his younger years, he was addressed as "Father Nolan," but later and especially once he was made monsignor, all the students knew him as "Father Bill."
He grew up a young piano prodigy, attending the Boston Latin School and close friends of his classmate Leonard Bernstein. He studied with the Redemptorists and was ordained in 1944 at Mount St. Alphonsus Seminary in Sopus, New York. After a few years teaching at the seminary, he earned a Masters in Education from the Preacher's Institute at Catholic University of America, and he then spent a couple of years preaching missions along the East Coast, from Philadelphia to Maine. Father Bill then became a diocesan priest of the Manchester Diocese by incardination, thereupon being assigned to St. Denis. When appointed as director of the Newman Club, he asked the college if he could hold Masses in Rollins Chapel but was refused. With the founding of Aquinas House on Choate Road, the new ministry caused a stir on campus, but he quickly befriended then president, John Sloan Dickey. The trustees of the college refused him a staff position at the college even when President Dickey proposed the measure, yet their friendship helped tensions to gradually subside with time, along with the alliance of another friend, Religion professor, Fred Berthold. The college would award Father Bill with an honorary doctorate at the commencement exercise of 1973, alongside the actress Shirley MacLaine.
Father Bill remained in his position until 1987 when he retired for reasons of health. He went home to the Lord on May 1, 2000 and is buried in Hanover. He helped countless students over the years, from conversions to the faith, to tuition payments, to unplanned pregnancies. In his time, Aquinas House gave rise to 45 priests, one bishop, and three religious sisters. In 1994 from retirement, Nolan commented: "That's a higher average than Boston College or Notre Dame." He had an orthodox and traditional style, but even before Vatican II he had introduced student lectors, as well as receiving communion while standing. Previous anti-Catholic tensions with the college gave rise to an emphasis on ecumenism throughout his years. He also had many assistant priests throughout his tenure, mostly diocesan or Jesuit clergy. Rick Mahoney '65 said of him, "Fr. Bill was a saintly, but very down-to-earth man, and he understood well the young people with whom he came in contact and how challenging their individual faith journeys could be. He is, to my mind, one of the great men of Dartmouth of the 20th century." Father Bill was close to many people. He would take students to Thanksgiving meals if they couldn't travel home, or let them call home on weekends from his office phone. For a time, even the maintenance man and the cook, Sam and Edie Johnson, were live-in staff at Aquinas House.
Monsignor William Liguori Nolan, our founder and first director, is best remembered by the title etched into his tombstone at nearby Pine Knoll Cemetery: "Our Beloved Father Bill." In his younger years, he was addressed as "Father Nolan," but later and especially once he was made monsignor, all the students knew him as "Father Bill."
He grew up a young piano prodigy, attending the Boston Latin School and close friends of his classmate Leonard Bernstein. He studied with the Redemptorists and was ordained in 1944 at Mount St. Alphonsus Seminary in Sopus, New York. After a few years teaching at the seminary, he earned a Masters in Education from the Preacher's Institute at Catholic University of America, and he then spent a couple of years preaching missions along the East Coast, from Philadelphia to Maine. Father Bill then became a diocesan priest of the Manchester Diocese by incardination, thereupon being assigned to St. Denis. When appointed as director of the Newman Club, he asked the college if he could hold Masses in Rollins Chapel but was refused. With the founding of Aquinas House on Choate Road, the new ministry caused a stir on campus, but he quickly befriended then president, John Sloan Dickey. The trustees of the college refused him a staff position at the college even when President Dickey proposed the measure, yet their friendship helped tensions to gradually subside with time, along with the alliance of another friend, Religion professor, Fred Berthold. The college would award Father Bill with an honorary doctorate at the commencement exercise of 1973, alongside the actress Shirley MacLaine.
Father Bill remained in his position until 1987 when he retired for reasons of health. He went home to the Lord on May 1, 2000 and is buried in Hanover. He helped countless students over the years, from conversions to the faith, to tuition payments, to unplanned pregnancies. In his time, Aquinas House gave rise to 45 priests, one bishop, and three religious sisters. In 1994 from retirement, Nolan commented: "That's a higher average than Boston College or Notre Dame." He had an orthodox and traditional style, but even before Vatican II he had introduced student lectors, as well as receiving communion while standing. Previous anti-Catholic tensions with the college gave rise to an emphasis on ecumenism throughout his years. He also had many assistant priests throughout his tenure, mostly diocesan or Jesuit clergy. Rick Mahoney '65 said of him, "Fr. Bill was a saintly, but very down-to-earth man, and he understood well the young people with whom he came in contact and how challenging their individual faith journeys could be. He is, to my mind, one of the great men of Dartmouth of the 20th century." Father Bill was close to many people. He would take students to Thanksgiving meals if they couldn't travel home, or let them call home on weekends from his office phone. For a time, even the maintenance man and the cook, Sam and Edie Johnson, were live-in staff at Aquinas House.
All aspects of priesthood represented: a shelf of books for study, framed photos of the people he loved, and on his desk, business!
Father John McHugh, O.F.M. Cap., succeeded him, having worked alongside him for two years already. Father John oversaw the renovation of the chapel in 1998 and remained as director until August of 2002. Father Brendan Buckley, O.F.M. Cap., a previous associate chaplain, returned as director, until the Dominican Friars were invited in 2005 by Bishop John McCormack to establish residency here and care for the ministry.
(1968) Redemptorists celebrating 25 years of priesthood at Mount St. Alphonsus on the Hudson. Fr. Bill back row, second from left.
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(1986) Aquinas House students decorating altar of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, the same icon in the chapel on the left where Fr. Bill was ordained.
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