MASS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT HIGHLIGHTS
On the morning of September 14, the Loyola Blakefield community gathered in the Hollow to celebrate the annual Mass of the Holy Spirit to bless the start of another school year and to honor Dan McNeal ’90, who died tragically in the World Trade Center Towers on the morning of September 11, 2001.
Fr. Joseph Michini, Fr. Bruce Steggert, and Deacon Jack Ames opened the ceremony with a beautiful Mass, followed by an opening address from President Anthony Day, and one of Dan McNeal's classmates, Sean Cohen '90, gave our students, teachers, and everyone else present a deeper look inside just who Dan was as a person, friend, and man for others.
At the end of the ceremony, senior A.J. Carver was announced as the recipient of the 15th Annual Daniel W. McNeal Scholarship Award. A.J. has been described by both his teachers and peers as an eternally optimistic and genuinely kind young man. He is always smiling and always ready with a kind and heart-felt greeting for his teachers and peers. He embraces the ideal of being a man for others eagerly and robustly. Most important to him is his role as peer educator in which he finds great satisfaction mentoring our youngest Dons most in need of guidance. He takes his role as an upperclassman seriously as he knows that his behavior and actions will be modeled by those students who will follow him and inherit Loyola and its legacy. He knows that for this one short school year he and his brothers in the class of 2017 are stewards for Loyola. In addition to peer education, he is a proud member of the Patriots Club where he eagerly supports and exemplifies their efforts promoting good citizenship, moral character, and national pride.
As president of the student body, he works diligently with his peers to make sure Loyola is a better and more prosperous institution. His influence reaches most other aspects of the Loyola experience. Athletically, he has been a key member of the football and rugby teams where he is a tough competitor, hard worker, and vocal supporter of his teammates. He also enjoyed a joyful and cathartic pilgrimage with other Dons to meet the Pope in Philadelphia, where he was both in awe and inspired by his presence and message of peace. A.J. is a bright example of a Don, sound in mind, body, and spirit, concerned for and eager to help others, and determined to leave his mark positively on Loyola. He embodies what it means to be a Loyola Don in the same fashion that Dan did.
The Daniel W. McNeal Scholarship Award is given in loving memory of Dan McNeal, member of the Loyola Blakefield Class of 1990 and recipient of the Loyola Alumni Medal. Dan died tragically in the World Trade Center Towers on the morning of September 11, 2001. A faculty member described Dan as the example of the man Loyola seeks to foster: involved, energetic, brimming over with enthusiasm for life and anything Loyola, and a friend to all he met. Dan led his life, giving of himself and thinking of others first. This award is given to that member of the junior or senior class who embodies the characteristics that we hold dear in Jesuit education - one who lives his faith in word and deed, displays academic excellence, is actively engaged in his community, and most of all, exemplifies being a man for others.
