FROM THE COLLAR:

BY FIVE-THIRTY P.M., the fifteen men who were scheduled to begin new lives at Sacred Heart Seminary had arrived. Most had journeyed there alone, driving great distances in their own vehicles, for some the only significant piece of property they still owned. They had come from Pennsylvania and Florida, California and Arizona , Colorado and Michigan . Some had come after years of planning and preparation, others in a rush. Mike Snyder, who had become a widower two years earlier, had packed the contents of his house into a trailer and driven from Texas to find a nine-by-twelve-foot room and a bed that would not fit his six-foot seven-inch frame. Bob Brooks, another Texan, had quit his $80,000-a-year job as a physician’s assistant and left his big yellow dog with his dad. His formal acceptance to the seminary had arrived just a few days earlier, and he had packed his pickup in such a hurry that things started flying out the back as he sped along the interstate. Ron Kendzierski came from Michigan with his mother. He promptly began to memorize the route from his room to the dining hall and chapel, counting steps, learning the sounds of the space, using all of his senses except his eyes, which had been sightless since birth.