Go Beyond the Archives with Tyler Bieber
The post below was originally published on February 20, 2025 on this site.
The Power of Personal Histories
Writing Against the Current: Father Tom Oddo and the New American Catholic required extensive research and deep dives into archival material.
It necessitated trips to the Oregon Historical Society, requesting a dissertation from Massachusetts, and combing through documents that—for many years—lay untouched in sealed boxes. But most importantly, it involved finding people to talk to about my subject, Father Tom Oddo CSC, a man whose death 35 years prior meant the task wouldn’t be easy. Not immediately knowing any of Tom’s living relations, the first place I turned was the University of Portland Archive. Tom served as UP’s 17th President from 1982-1989, when current University Archivist Fr. Jeff Schneibel CSC was new to the campus.
The UP Archive is a room housed within a study hall on the southeastern side of campus. Inside the building, downstairs, and down the hall from a wall portrait of Fr. Paul Waldschmidt, one of Tom’s predecessors, the Archive feels like the center of a labyrinth. Big shelves contain millions of pages of institutional history. For over a decade, Tom’s papers were among them, sealed up in boxes without indexing. The first attempt at cataloging everything came 12 years after Tom’s death in a 1989 car accident. Even then, only a single chapter of a larger university history had been written about his life and service. Piecing together those initial materials set me on the path to discovering the whole story of his life, from birth to death, in printed records. But taken alone, they only represented part of that story. Interviews would be critical to the project.
The first person I spoke to about Tom was Fr. Schneibel, in the Archive. He told me about Tom’s personality, his ubiquitousness around campus—attending every event he could and making a point of holding regular meetings with students and staff—and his death, the impact of which was profound throughout the university and the Congregation of the Holy Cross. He also recalled when the Archive produced an exhibit titled “The Life and Times of Fr. Tom Oddo, CSC” that included personal effects now tucked away in their shelves. Before we adjourned with some mutual understanding in order, I asked about who I should connect with for more interviews. Fr. Schneibel suggested I meet with Frs. Richard Berg CSC and Richard Rutherford CSC, both of whom had worked directly with Tom, and could give some greater detail for the book. Soon enough, through email I confirmed interview appointments with both of them.
“Tom Oddo is my friend.”
My interview with Fr. Richard Berg, UP’s former Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, is mentioned in the book. It took place in a corner of the university’s Pilot House, a bar and grill restaurant with an actual bar at the far end. Dick, as he’s known, is a lively and jubilant priest who has spent a large part of his professional life at UP. “What’s one word you’d use to describe Tom Oddo?” was my first question. Dick replied, without hesitation, “Tom Oddo is my friend.” He still talks to Tom regularly, praying to him in both happy and turbulent times. If Dick is stumped on something, you’ll bet he’ll be talking with Tom about it.
Fr. Richard Rutherford was equally enthusiastic about our conversations. Our first meeting involved a plate of baked goods in the Bauccio Commons, which Fr. Richard graciously offered (along with a small trove of documents from Tom’s death and memorial). During our conversation, he introduced me to Patti Brown, the Commons’ longest-serving staff member, who was also featured in the book. They both told me about how Tom created a real energy on campus, breaking bread with students in a way that had never been seen at UP, or so regularly. But our second conversation was much more of an active experience: Over the course of two hours, Fr. Richard gave me an extensive tour of the Chapel of Christ the Teacher, the church he helped to build with Tom and renowned architect Pietro Belluschi. As we paced through the interior of that holy space, Fr. Richard pointed out the changes made over time from when the chapel first opened (the discarding of the open floor model, installation of traditional pews and new art pieces, etc.), and the key pieces that have remained the same, like a beautiful stained glass window of a dove in flight. Through his recollections, of triumph and tragedy under the same roof, Fr. Richard imparted a more personal image of Tom and his work than I thought was available. Indeed, it’s not if you just read student newspaper copy.
While UP’s newspaper The Beacon has a fantastic digital archive, these browning and yellowed snippets of the past cannot compare to the memories communicated by the people who lived through those years. Memories shared by Ed Oddo, Tom’s cousin, painted a picture of an upstart young man in Long Island building a bridge to the priesthood through his teenage relations in school; Fr. Monk Malloy’s remembrances take us back to Tom’s seminary days, just as Brian McNaught’s peer into Tom’s service with DignityUSA; and others shared by Norman and Jeremey Countryman pull back the veil on the dark day his priestly journey ended on Portland’s North Columbia Boulevard. Almost none of these anecdotes have ever made it to print, including some big revelations on Tom’s life.
That is the power of memories, and of the personal histories they tell: they provide the context which is missed either explicitly or implicitly in the written word, in the crafting of our shared history. Without them, Against the Current would’ve been impossible to make.
