from Chapter 1- "Rich Roots"

"Those alumni (alumni of other Jesuit institutions who now lived in Houston) especially interested in getting the Jesuits to come to town formed themselves into an advisory committee that met at the home of lawyer Daniel Sheehan.  The group included men whose names would resonate down the decades of Strake Jesuit’s history, as sons and grandsons attended the school: George Brueggeman, Hubert Ried, Jim Saccomanno, Dick Hollern, and Wally Schindel.  Arguably the key figure in this effort was G. Harris Emig, a 1922 graduate of Jesuit High School, New Orleans.  Mr. Emig convinced his old classmate, Fr. Laurence O’Neill, by then Provincial of the Southern Jesuits, that a prep school in Houston was a viable idea."

"Life at Jesuit in the 1960s involved freedoms and constraints that may raise the eyebrows of today’s students and parents.  A 1968 article mentions that tuition was exactly $500 (with scholarships available).  Early alumni such as John Glover ’65 remember stopping off in the wilds of Alief on the way home to do a little bit of duck hunting.  If a student did not have the luxury of a car or truck, he might have to be patient.  The city buses went only as far west as Sharpstown Mall, so the Jesuits did three morning and afternoon runs in a green VW van, ferrying students to and from campus along a still partially unpaved Bellaire Boulevard.  Fr. Bahlinger would never forget “walking waist deep in [flood] water” to the mall to let those bus-dependent students know that school had been cancelled for the day.  When conditions were merely muddy, a tractor came in handy. And even regular driving had its limitations.  The Southwest Freeway had still not come very far southwest."