Earlier this year, I wrote about my life experiences living in the Copley Hospital neighborhood on Aurora’s older southeast side. As I looked back, I realized that it was home to community servants, war heroes from at least three conflicts and even a future Aurora mayor.
I still have memories of a kid named Bob who was about six years older than I. He lived a block away from me on Lebanon Street, and was our Beacon-News paper boy for a time. Like most of us boys, he was a sports nut who spent many hours at our own baseball “Field of Dreams,” better known as the Lebanon Playground.
Also having leadership qualities, he played quarterback on his elementary school (Our Lady of Good Counsel) and high school (Marmion Academy) teams.
Little did we know then that Bob, later (and still) known by a different name, would become a well-known and admired Catholic priest and a community servant for his entire life.
Advancing in his studies and in athletics as a student at Marmion, he quarterbacked the school to an undefeated season as a junior. More football success was certain to follow the next year, but Bob’s plan for the future began to change. He started to think about his post high school years and about the possibility of studying for the priesthood.
Anxious to get started, he did not attend Marmion as a senior, instead enrolling at a Benedictine minor seminary in Nebraska to finish high school. His college years were completed at Benedictine University (then St. Procopius College) in Lisle by 1964. During those years, he did his religious profession as a Benedictine monk in 1961, and at that time took his new name as Charles, signifying the beginning of a new life.
He continued his theology studies at the university, and was ordained a priest in 1967 as the Rev. Charles Reichenbacher, OSB. He is well known by generations throughout the Fox Valley and beyond by that name, and at a very young-looking age 80, has shown no signs of slowing down.
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Throughout his studies, he always had the goal of returning to Aurora and to Marmion.
“I was an Aurora kid, and wanted to join Marmion to stay in Aurora and to teach at the school,” he said. “It was a young community of monks when I joined it in 1960. Only two men were over 60, and I knew and liked the school.”
He began his career as a teacher at Marmion Academy’s old Lake Street campus (present day McCullough Park) from 1968-71. That campus closed in 1971, and was consolidated with the Butterfield Road campus on the same grounds with Marmion Abbey.
His role at the Marmion Abbey and Academy began to change that same year. Continuing as a teacher, he also became associate development director, which involved doing fundraising and promotion of the abbey, school and the Marmion mission in Guatemala, which was founded in 1965.
His career evolved into his becoming a “man for all seasons” at the abbey and the school as he continued to assume new assignments and duties. Trying to list all of them would be difficult. They could not have been attempted by a person with lesser dedication and loyalty.
“I wanted to stay teaching because I loved the kids, but the demands and traveling of the Development Office infringed on teaching, so that assignment ended in 1980,” he said. “When Father Joseph Battaglia died in 1985, I became development director, and continued until 2012.”
He was also the alumni director from 1973-82, but he has really never stopped working in that role, an important one as the loyal alumni base has been a major contributor to the school and the abbey. Among other things, he has organized regional reunions around the country, and joked that “I have to go to Florida in the winter!”
In each of his director roles, he has traveled to California; Washington, D.C.; Arizona; Minnesota; and Florida among many destinations.
He has been the director of seven major capital campaigns, and said that he is most proud of the one conducted for the construction of the new Abbey Church, which opened in 1998.
“Our school has a much more religious identity today because of the new church,” he said.
He is also proud of the work to establish a fund for students in need of financial aid at the school.
He was also the editor of Marmion magazine and of the Alumni News from 1985-2012. Today his work in the development area is as the director of planned giving.
In his “spare time,” he was a bus driver for the academy from 1967-97. At the abbey, he was director of liturgy and master of liturgical ceremonies from 1970-2020, served as subprior from 1980-91, and still today does parish assistance work in the Rockford and Joliet dioceses.
I asked him what has kept him going during his 60 years of service not just to Marmion, but to Aurora and the Fox Valley.
“A love of the Lord propels you, and a love of people — especially local people, and a love of family,” he said. “Probably the most rewarding have been not just the projects, but the people I’ve been associated with. The monks I’ve lived with and all the lay people.
“I’ve had over 200 weddings, and 200 to 300 baptisms. All of the families I’ve known and been involved with.”
Tom Strong is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.