For decades, a loose association of high school buddies has been getting together to talk about the good old days.
Every August during a meetup, they swap stories (for the umpteenth time) about their days in the 1950s and 1960s as students at the Dominguez Memorial Seminary, the property built in 1924 for the Claretians, an order of Catholic priests and brothers.
The seminary, located in the unincorporated community of Dominguez Hills near Compton, functioned as a high school, novitiate, and college for future priests until it closed in 1972. The property eventually became a retreat center and now serves as a retirement center for retired Claretian missionaries.
As John Crowe (Class of 1964) recalled, the conversation at a reunion five years ago turned to something other than nostalgic musings.
“If we’re going to be spending this much time together,” Crowe said at the gathering of alums from the boys-only high school, “we ought to do something more than tell stories.”
Thus, a fundraising campaign was born to pay for much-needed improvements to the old seminary building as it prepared to celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2024.
Led by Crowe, alumni council president, his classmate Bob Carey, alumni council vice president, alumni council treasurer Bill Johnson, and Bob Loera, past president, some 70-plus alumni of the Dominguez Memorial Seminary have raised more than $500,000 for renovations with a goal of reaching $600,000 by next July.
“I’ve been surprised by the outpouring of generosity from all these boys I went to high school with,” Crowe said. “This is our way of paying back for all we received from the Claretians and for helping to take care of the people who were once our teachers and mentors.”
A gift from three daughters
The Claretian Missionaries, a clerical religious foundation founded in Spain and headquartered in Rome, was founded in 1849 by St. Father Antonio María Claret y Clará. The order has a particular devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
The daughters of the Dominguez family, whose patriarch worked closely with Father Junípero Serra in evangelizing California, gifted their historic Rancho Adobe and 17 acres to the congregation in 1922 as a training ground for missionaries.
The seminary building opened two years later.
For the next 50 years, Dominguez Memorial Seminary sent out missionaries across the United States and to Panama, Mexico, Canada, China, the Philippines, England, Japan, Guatemala, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Equatorial Guinea.
In its day, the seminary housed local and international students of theology and philosophy, a tailor shop for making cassocks, a photo lab, a printing press, a dairy farm, intramural sports, ceramic kilns, and a renowned choir under the direction of Roger Wagner, founder of the Roger Wagner Chorale.
The students hosted drama productions, an authentic old-style pit BBQ fundraiser, and Nuns’ Days, a hugely popular end-of-school-year weekend of picnics and entertainment for Catholic school teachers.
After the high school seminary closed, the site gradually evolved into a place for retreats and a formation center for a small number of adult vocations.
Starting in the 1990s, it became a center for clergy and missionary formation, parish outreach, opportunities for spiritual direction, and a residence for retired missionaries. A total of 18 of them live there today.
‘A different era’
Today, the number of Claretian priests and brothers is at more than 3,000 in 70 countries on five continents.
Crowe attended the seminary in its heyday when boys from large Catholic families decided they wanted to study for the priesthood.
Neither Crowe or any other members of his class of 70 teenagers went on to become ordained. But their years at the seminary proved to be seminal, he said, in their development as Catholics. Many of them went on to careers in law enforcement, as parole officers, social workers, and teachers.
At the seminary, students learned critical thinking, ethics, liberal arts, and languages like Latin and Greek.
Crowe earned a college degree in journalism and wrote for the Daily Breeze in the South Bay for many years before teaching journalism at Cal State Dominguez Hills. After that, he spent most of his working years as a college administrator at USC and at the Claremont Colleges.
Now 78, Carey recalls life at the seminary.
“It was a different era,” he said. “We were limited in our contact with families and the world.
“We were allowed to go home for one week for Christmas and for a month during the summer. The rest of the time we lived and studied in a restrictive environment, but it was a lovely experience as far as I was concerned. I gained a lot from it.”
Crowe was at the seminary, founded by missionaries from Spain, when it started to see an influx of priests of Irish heritage. He arrived at the seminary from St. Emydius Catholic Church in Lynwood.
Crowe fondly recalled one teacher, Father Jim Griffin, an Irishman from Chicago, who cut him some slack.
Active with the high school newspaper and other seminary publications, Father “Grif” allowed Crowe to skip his senior Greek class because of his extracurricular writing activities.
Old-fashioned networking
Using phone, emails, and Zoom sessions and relying on records that weren’t well maintained, Crowe, Carey, and Johnson began soliciting money from alums in 2019.
Money began trickling in with a $10 check here, a $100 check there. Soon, several donors kicked in $10,000 each.
Call it good old-fashioned networking by four guys who know how to get things done.
Carey worked in the biomedical industry in Buffalo, New York; Johnson, a CPA with experience working with non-profit organizations, lives in Torrance; and Loera, a marketing executive from Pasadena.
“All of us have been touched and surprised at the generosity of our donors,” said Crowe.
The old seminary building has a long list of needed upgrades, including air conditioning and heating, new electrical wiring, and plumbing to make its residents, all in their 80s and 90s, more comfortable.
The first recently completed project was the HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) system. Next up will be plumbing, roof work, and electrical, said Crowe, who lives in San Dimas.
The centenary celebration, which included a Mass, mimosa reception, BBQ lunch and a live band that played hits from the ’50s and ’60s, was held Aug. 24.
Father Brian Culley, CMF, superior of the Dominguez Claretian Community, and alumni liaison Father John Raab, CMF, helped lead the celebration, which attracted some 160 guests, including members of the Del Amo and Watson families. The Alumni Association dedicated a centenary tree and plaque.
“We are very grateful to the alumni for their ongoing support,” Culley said. “Their gratitude for the formation and education they received in our Claretian Missionaries formation program is inspiring.”
Anyone interested in donating or getting more information, email Crowe at [email protected]. Donations can also be mailed payable to “Claretian Missionaries” and sent to Centenary Campaign, Dominguez Seminary, 18127 S. Alameda St., Rancho Dominguez, CA 90220.
