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By James Dempsey
It is no understatement to say that Rev. John Dennis Crowley, S.J., who resided in Lehy Hall in the mid-1960s, was not particularly popular with the students in that dormitory. A professor of philosophy, he was known, because of his temper, as "the Dancing Bear." Even Fr. Brooks admits that his "aggressive and hard-charging personality" made him the "perfect subject" for the Poe-inspired prank played on him in May 1964.
Loyola Hall was undergoing construction at the time, and the students smuggled cinder blocks from the site into the Lehy dormitory, one by one, until they had the requisite number. One spring night, after the Dancing Bear had finished growling for the day and retired to his den, the students mixed a batch of cement and quietly bricked up the doorway to his room. Fr. Brooks recalls that when the contractor was called the next day to dismantle the wall and liberate the immured and fuming Fr. Crowley, he found the work so good he offered to hire the student masons on the spot. Fr. Crowley's response to this generous compliment is not recorded.
There is an elaboration of the story that is somewhat harder to corroborate, but which bears mentioning. The evening before the immurement, a student asked Fr. Crowley to hear his confession. When the priest turned away to perform the sacrament, as was the custom, the penitent cut his telephone wires. Consequently, in the morning, Fr. Crowley had no option but to open his third-floor window, bellow to passersby below and wait, like Rapunzel in her tower, to be set free. Theologians may wish to consider the intriguing issue of whether the student was committing a sin in cutting the Jesuit's wires—and, if so, whether the sin grew in seriousness because it was perpetrated during a confession in which it was not confessed.
The incident was featured in the Worcester Telegram under the headline "Professor ‘Plastered.'" (Of course, there was no plaster involved, but when there is an alliterative apothegm to be had alluding to clerical crapulousness, the journalist's license extends even further than that of the poet.) The newspaper story reads: "In spring, a young man's fancy lightly turns to ghoulish thoughts of ‘A Cask of Amontillado,'" referencing that delightful short story by one of our country's noted writers, involving a bricked-in corpse and a hungry cat. The article concludes: "This week's prank was perhaps the most notable at Holy Cross since students ushered a live cow into a corridor a couple of years ago to protest the removal of a milk machine."
Read more Myths & Legends:
"The Fenwick Exorcism"
The Jeane Dixon Axe Murder Rumor
"Letters to Tomorrow"
The Cow That Came in From the Cold
The Plot Against the Greenhouse
The Naked Bunch
The Immurement of Father Crowley
The Lord of the Rings on Mount St. James?
More myths and legends...revealed!
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