Readers’ Album

Eight Roman Catholic priests, graduates of the Josephinum Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, and newly ordained in 1941, pore over books and maps to locate their first assignments (smokers have evidently been relegated to the right). At far left is the late Reverend George Reinweiler, whose nephew, Mike Johnson, sent in this photo and writes, “My uncle and one or two of the others were assigned to Arizona, which at the time was still officially designated ‘mission territory.’ Uncle George spent his entire career in Arizona, much of it supervising the construction of churches, schools, rectories, and convents. He was an unusual man, a priest who flew airplanes, hunted mountain lions, fished, golfed, bowled, and advocated ecumenism long before it became popular.

“When he was stationed in Globe, Arizona, around 1970, the producers of The Great White Hope wanted to use his church as the backdrop for the movie’s climactic fight scene. But they insisted on installing front doors on the church that more accurately reflected the period. Uncle George agreed, with one condition: that he be hired as an extra to play a member of the audience.”