The elusive monk tells his favorite escape stories from many years of Charity Weeks
Fr. Robert E. Maguire, O. Cist. was born in 1943. In the summer of 1967 he “hopped on a Greyhound bus in San Francisco and traveled for two and a half days” to the University of Dallas.
Fr. Maguire witnessed, on opposite ends of the mall, the construction and completion of the Braniff Building and the Braniff Memorial Tower. Not only does Fr. Maguire remember the growth of our campus, but he also recalls the development of a rich campus culture. An especially prized tradition in his long memory is Charity Week—a time he has relished for decades.
In his earliest days at the University, said Fr. Maguire, “we did not have a jail.” Instead, male students “built a wooden platform about five feet off the ground,” upon which students would be successively paraded. Traditionally, a male student would bid on a female student. Fr. Maguire said, “and what usually happened is that the guy would ask the girl to iron his shirt. Big deal. And the worst that would happen would be she’d have to take a sack of his laundry and wash that, okay?”
Several years later, the university began using the Charity Week jail we all know today. Fr. Maguire, although some might say his athletic prime is behind him, is viewed by himself and others as one of the greatest Charity Week jail escape artists of all time.
He recalled taking role before a class in Carpenter Hall and anticipating some students’ attempt to capture him (“they were like baited lions”), he dropped the attendance sheet as soon as it was completed and darted for the door.
Fr. Maguire continued, “I got out, and the door of the classroom opposite me was unlocked. I went in there and locked the door. I went to the window, opened it, slithered out and got on a ledge. Then I jumped down to the ground … they caught me and picked me up, put me on their shoulders and carried me from Carpenter Hall to the jail. It looked like a trail of ants carrying a potato chip.”
In those earlier days, the jail was not a heavy 2×4 construction but a frame of chicken wire–more degrading than effective.
Maguire recalled also the first years with a barred-jail, saying, “One year, because I had a reputation for getting away, they got these really big guys, heavier than I, and they grabbed me. They dragged me to jail–and the jail had bars this time–so they duct-taped me to the bars in cruciform. However, I was ready for them. I made arrangements with a student to sneak up behind the jail when they weren’t looking and, with a knife, cut the duct tape. And then the students and I charged the door full-force and broke out.”
Fr. Maguire is also, I assume, the person we have to thank for the jail being roofed. One year, Fr. Maguire said, “they put a guillotine gate on the jail which was designed to keep me in. However I had, again, an accomplice who came around behind the Gorman Center with a ladder. He came up from the other side—nobody saw him. He climbed up, pulled the ladder up, ran across the roof of the Gorman center and lowered the ladder down into the jail. I climbed up the ladder, we pulled the ladder up, ran across the roof, and slipped down the other side.”
Another story took place in Braniff 201, Fr. Maguire said, “We called it the fountain room, and in those days the back wall was open so you could hear and see the fountain. The arresting committee had moved a lot of furniture up against three of the doors. They left one door open where they were going to grab me as soon as I stepped outside of the classroom, so I looked at the classroom for the girl who was of the slightest build and I picked her up. Carrying her in both arms, I walked to the back of the classroom right to the door where the arresting committee was waiting to jump me and I hurled her through the air so the lead jailer had to catch her. And while he was stumbling back, holding the girl, I charged out and ran.”
Father Maguire’s stories go on, if you see him on campus go up and introduce yourself, or you might find yourself being thrown into the open arms of a malevolent jailer.