Travers: Overseeing High School

I love Richmond, and also feel this is a monastery with some potential. The [high] school is a military school (can you believe me in charge of that?) – Luke Travers – Summer, 2010

Rev. Luke Travers, O.S.B. sends the following,

“About a year and four months ago, I was hired to be a financial consultant for a monastery down in Richmond, Virginia. They are a small house, with some 11 monks, but they run a high school that has been there for about one hundred years. I enjoyed my work there and then they turned a financial corner of some significance and I thought my work there was done.

Then, mid-April, I received a phone call from the Abbot President of our American-Cassinese Congregation, asking me to assume more responsibility for the place. While there were some bumps in the road (the Abbot President who asked me to do this job came down with cancer and a new one has been elected to take the previous one’s place), on June 4th I became the non-residential Canonical Administrator of Mary Mother of the Church Abbey in Richmond, Virginia. While I don’t have to move there, I now spend several hours a day dealing with their issues and will be driving back and forth every six to eight weeks to spend some three to four days there. So I have become a carpetbagger!

I love Richmond, and also feel this is a monastery with some potential. The school is a military school (can you believe me in charge of that?), and our new headmaster is a 33-year-old Iraq war veteran who won an award for physical courage while in Iraq. l’m excited for the challenge. I’m putting my trust in God as always and what is meant to be will turn out. Keep me in your prayers. Otherwise, my work at St. Mary’s Abbey here in Morristown, New Jersey, stays the same: business office, American history teacher, sub-prior of monastery. I love every day!”

Portsmouth Abbey School
Alumni Bulletin Summer 2010