St. Joseph's Seminary

Saint Joseph's College seminary began as a part of Saint Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, California, in 1898 where candidates for the Catholic priesthood were educated in a 12–year seminary program. Due to considerable expansion in the early part of the last century, Saint Joseph's College was built and opened as a separate school in 1924 in Mountain View, California. The program included the four years of high school plus the first two years of college education, preparing candidates for admission to the major seminary at St. Patrick's. The college was placed under the direction of the Sulpician Fathers, a society founded in Paris, France, and specially organized for training of aspirants to the priesthood. St. Joseph's grew to become one of the largest college seminaries in the United States. In 1968, St. Joseph's assumed responsibility for the four years of high school and four years of college. The high school program was discontinued in 1980. The Saint Joseph's College seminary became a part of the newly formed Diocese of San Jose in 1981. The seminary buildings were damaged beyond repair by the Loma Prieta earthquake on October 17, 1989. Students and faculty relocated to a commercial building in Santa Clara for a while, but the local bishop decided to close the college on June 30, 1991.

Alumni News and Events:

New updates added on: 1/14/2012
For details, see below

Our next annual Day of Recollection will be held on Saturday February 11, 2012. Rev. George Crespin, R'56 will be out host and facilitator. This has been a very popular day, hosted for us ex-seminarians, by our Alumni Association. Mark your calendars and plan to attend. A letter has been mailed; if you are on our distriburion list, you should have it by now. If not, (click here for the invitation letter). You will like the 1954 flu epidemic picture! If you want to see a quick history of these special "Days:" (click here). For more information please contact Jim Murphy.

Our next annual Alumni Day will be held on Saturday, April 28, 2012.
Our celebrant will be Bishop William Justice, R'62, and our homilist will be Rev. Jerry Coleman, S.S. The Rhet'1962 class will be celebrating their 50th anniversary. Jack Sutcliffe, R'62, reports that a committee has been formed to plan and organize their event. They are making progress working with class lists and gathering their classmates for this reunion.

This past year's Alumni Day - 2011 has given us a beautiful artifact. A new website was constructed by Paul Feyen and his class. Even if you do not belong to the R'61 class, you will want to visit and enjoy this special website, (it will pop up in a new window) just click on: www.sjcrhetclass61.com
Another pair of interesting web sites were created to celebrate the classes of 1957 and 1958. These classes also gathered some fascinating memorabilia from their years at Saint Joseph's College. They can be seen at www.sjc57.com and at www.sjc58.com

Here's a Pop Quiz!!! Who are these people??? 5 Guys
(click here to see the answer) A "Thank you" to Jack Henson for this photo!

SemNet: Earlier this month I was asked to write down the internet address for the SemNet. I was a bit surprised but I realized that some people, who are good at browsing the Internet, are accustomed to visiting web sites. Well, SemNet is not a location (or a site) on the World Wide Web. It is an e-mail hub of activity. As its name states, is it a network - and a marvelous one too. Former classmates have been writing and distributing e-mail messages about their halcyon days at St. Joseph's on this SemNet. So you don't go to the SemNet; it comes to you (via e-mail). All you have to do is subscribe to it by contacting Tom Sheehan. He will want your class year, your team affiliation, and your laundry number. Actually that's much better than a password.
(If you do not already know how to contact Tom Sheehan, send me a note. Then, if you are in our data base of former students, I will help you make this important connection.)

In the Memoirs Section of our web site two new items have been added. Click on the Memoirs button at the top of this home page to go look at these new additions.
First, Alex Larkin, R'61 has sent us a collection of graduation cards for 9 different graduation classes. Nothing like this has been posted to our website before. You are going to like these. Secondly, If you have ever wondered how you might find the area where our seminary used to be, you're in luck. I have posted a bit of research that delves into some old maps. It gives us a perspective of the location of our seminary (college) with respect to the current terrain and housing layout.

In Memoriam: (click here) - This new section at our web site has been growing. Bruce Atkinson recently sent an article to me about Father Charles Dillon, S.S. It was written by Fr. John Ward, S.S. Bruce also sent an excellent letter (a response) that he wrote to Fr. Ward, in memory of our former teacher. Both letters have been scanned, typed and posted here at our website with a few pictures of Fr. Dillon.

New Photographs have been added to our Photo Gallery. We now have 717 pictures, and these are really a treasure trove of old photographs. (click here) to go into our "Photo Gallery." Recent additions have been sent in by John Flynn (R'63), John Cannon (R'44), Loren Dwyer (R'53) very well annotated, John Gisla and Bill Wall (both R'63) have given us pictures from 1959 and 1960, and Phil Murphy (R'63) - check out his beautiful sundown picture.
Pictures from our monument dedication and luncheon party have also been added to our photo gallery. You will really enjoy these historical and current Pictures.

A Brief History of the Alumni Association, by Don Carroll, R'58, was written to commemorate the 25th anniversary of our Association (click here to read this interesting story)

For a list of our honored Alumni Of The Year, 2000 through 2010 (click here) To hear about and experience the 2011 awards, come to our Alumni Day on 4/30/2011.

To see a complete list of our current Alumni Board members (click here) or click on the "Message from our president" below.

Class lists are being added to this web site (Click here) or click on the ALUMNI button at the top left corner of this page. The years 1920 through 1959 are complete; but I have not made very good progress on this. I still hold out the hope that I can get back to this work.

The Alumni Association Board has written a statement regarding sexual abuse and fairness for priests: (to see this statement, click here)

Recent update history:
1/14/2012 updates include:
Newsletter Section: Eight more newsletter files have been inserted. They date from 1953 through 2005. I organized this page in anticipation of future expansion and inserted some notes about the changes and deletions.
Home page: Inserted a link to display the Day of Recollection invitatiion
Calendar button (top): Supplied a date for Alum Board meeting
1/12/2012 updates include:
In Memoriam Section: Inserted obituary for Fr. Frank Norris, SS (1925-2000)
1/9/2012 updates include:
In Memoriam Section: Inserted obituary for Fr. Daniel Fives, SS (1905-1990)
1/8/2012 updates include:
Memoirs section: Added a Bill Wall description of his class visit to St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park. It is wonderfully detailed. I inserted 5 photographs into his narrative.
1/7/2012 updates include:
Memoirs section: Added a very interesting recollection by Bruce Atkinson, R�52, titled "Some random reflections on St. Joseph�s � St. Patrick�s." This was written for his 50th class reunion in 2002.
Also Memoirs section: Added a Bill Wall discussion about the barn, with comments from Dan Folliard and Jim Nice (all R'63). Also inserted some barn pictures from Paul Feyen and Dan Folliard.
1/5/2012 updates include:
Modified and fixed the content of the Calendar and Reunions buttons at the top of this home page.
12/30/2011 updates include:
Newsletter section: Scanned and added "The Blow" 1961. With a "thank you" to John Owen, R'1965 who sent these pages to me way back in 2002. I Have to show it in 2 parts because the file size was too large to be in a single file. These pages are a copy of a copy and they are a bit faded; but I scanned them anyhow. I hope that you don't mind the blemishes. It helps a wee bit if you click your viewing window to "full size screen."
Memoirs section: Scanned and uploaded an article from People Magazine, 2006, about one of our fellow seminarians.
Memoirs section: Inserted Walt Harrington's hand drawn map of our grotto; It is a companion piece for his article on the history of the grotto.
Faculty section: John Owen, R'65 also sent this faculty picture to us. It was part of a Christmas message sent to all of us students. The picture's quality shows its age; I used Adobe Photoshop to improve it a bit.
To see this picture, just click on the Faculty tab at the top of this home page.
I would like to add everybody's name - If you could help me do this, please send me a note. Thanks!
12/27/2011 updates include:
Newsletter section: added 5 old newsletters from 1986, 1988, 1991, 1998 and 2000. (If the truth be told, I finally figured out how to use some software that drives my scanner to produce PDF files. Portable Document Files are the ideal format for capturing our old seminary newsletters. So, trying out this new-found trick, I scanned 5 old newsletters. I had to make some choices between file size vs. image quality, and the results have been uploaded to our website. Let me know if these newsletter files are too excruciatingly slow to open up, because I re-scan them at a lower resolution level that will open faster. This technique opens some new doors for us getting old newsletters (e.g. the Blow???) online to share. Enjoy!
12/26/2011 updates include:
Home page and Photo Album pages: Inserted the "pop quiz" photograph on the home page; then I created a new picture folder for the R'1955 class in the photo album section of our website. It would be nice to get some more photos from that year - 1955.
Home page: I wrote a description of SemNet based on a question that arose at our Alumni Board meeting earlier this December.
Memoirs page article: "A Year's Review in Sports" I inserted the Blow logo at the top of this page. (Note: this article might be better positioned over in the Newsletter section of this website?)
12/20/2011 updates include:
Home page: Inserted the date for our Day of Recollection.
Newsletter section: added a 1960 basketball all-star game article with pictures.
Cleaned up the Newsletter section; showing authors, sources and years.
To go there, click on the Newsletter tab at the top of this home page.
12/3/2011 updates include:
This home page - additions and deletions, much needed house cleaning.
A new picture at the bottom of this home page introduces the new president of our alumni board. Click on the words down there and you will go to a revised Alumni Board page (with more pictures). I also decided to insert some previous "gavel passing" pictures on that page. Enjoy!