The itinerary

1. 1. Denver, Colorado — Where the language found him

   A boyhood

   It began at the foot of the altar. Serving Mass in Denver as a boy, Richard heard the Latin of the liturgy long before he understood a word of it — and was caught for life. He would take four years of Latin in high school, the first stretch of a road that ran the length of his days.

2. 2. Annapolis, Maryland — An officer's oath

   The United States Naval Academy

   At the United States Naval Academy he traded the altar rail for the quarterdeck, earning his commission and going to sea. The Navy would have him for twenty years — and teach him a discipline he would one day carry back into a Latin classroom.

3. 3. The open sea — Twenty years before the mast

   Twenty years of active duty

   For twenty years the ocean was his address. Active duty carried him far from Denver and far from Latin — yet the habits of the watch, of precision and patience kept against the weather, were the very habits the language would later ask of him.

4. 4. The Gulf Coast — An engineer's long parenthesis

   Petroleum engineering

   Between his first Latin and his last came a detour of decades: a master's in petroleum management and a working career in petroleum engineering along the Gulf. He was an engineer by trade — but the old language was only waiting for him to come back.

5. 5. Gainesville, Florida — A return to first love

   A master's in Latin

   At the University of Florida he took a master's in Latin — returning, after a lifetime away, to the first thing he ever loved. What had been a boy's fascination at the altar rail became, at last, a scholar's vocation.

6. 6. Vatican City, Rome — Under the Pope's own Latinist

   The Vatican Latin school

   In Rome he studied at the Vatican's two-month Latin school under the Rev. Reginald Foster — the Carmelite who served as Latinist to four popes and was, by common account, the finest living teacher of the language. Here Richard's Latin was burnished to a shine.

7. 7. Covington, Louisiana — Home, and the seminary

   Saint Joseph Seminary College · 2004–2013

   Home at last on the north shore, Richard taught second-year seminarians at Saint Joseph Seminary College for nine years. To make a no-longer-spoken language live, he reached for puzzles and even mock football games — and there, with Elizabeth, his wife of sixty-six years, the long road came to rest.