Larry Siewert (below) teaches a computer science class at Nativity Jesuit Middle School.

They teamed up for the first time more than 35 years ago on the Marquette University High School football field – Coach Larry Siewert and Billy, a determined, talented freshman running back. By 1985 the coach was school principal and Billy, having traded football formations for Jesuit priestly formation, returned to Marquette as a regent to teach for two years. Seven years after that Fr. Bill Johnson, SJ hooked up with his former coach again, this time as part of a two-man team charged with establishing the Nativity Jesuit Middle School on Milwaukee’s near South Side.

Together they accomplished their mission beyond any reasonable expectation, starting the 2004 school year in a larger, freshly renovated facility just west of its original site. Now, in the months ahead, they will part ways again when Fr. Johnson, as Jesuits are called to do, will be sent by his provincial to apply his talents and skills to another assignment where “the need is greatest.”

Fr. Bill Johnson, SJ and Siewert gather with students (right) under a hallway Christmas decoration which also tells a little bit about what the school’s mission offers graduates.

Siewert, his friend and colleague of many years, recalls the first time they sat down to talk about Nativity as if it were just days ago, not more than a decade.

“The Jesuits had a developing interest in serving the Latino community, which led them to consider a middle school in the Nativity model,” Siewert says. “They figured Bill was the right guy and I guess they figured right.” Besides having been to several places in South America, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic, Fr. Johnson, fluent in Spanish, had volunteered at a Nativity school in Boston while completing a master’s in education at Harvard.

“When Bill called me in January of ’92, I thought he just wanted to tap into me as someone who had been around education in Milwaukee for a long time and get my ideas about the kinds of things he should be thinking about.” Fr. Johnson did precisely that before popping a surprise question.

“How about you joining on?” he asked Siewert, who seemed like a logical partner given a longstanding interest in minority education, his efforts to diversify the MUHS student body, and the core values he held as “a good Ignatian man,” a term Fr. Johnson uses with unmistakable reverence and respect.

In the tradition of a good Ignatian man, Siewert, 51 at the time, gave up the security he had earned from 28 years at Marquette High to be part of a two-man team and lay the groundwork for what both affectionately refer to now as “the Nativity family.”

Counselors and teachers give students a workout at Nativity’s summer camp.

Over the years, that family has become a body of students, their families, teachers, countless volunteers, staff, graduates, and approximately 3,300 active benefactors, along with others who, over time, helped create the Nativity of today. They started growing the family out of the Jesuit-run St. Patrick’s Parish inwhat was once a modest school facility adjoining the parish church in the neighborhood where Siewert grew up.

“St. Patrick’s was our home, our beginning, our roots. Starting out there was like a family moving into their first home,” Fr. Johnson says, seated in his office at their new home, a three story building, with a chapel, large gymnasium, and all the amenities of a fine, modern school. Nativity began its 12th school year in fall 2004 with 53 students in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, and 64 in local high schools, most of them Catholic.

In summer 1993, however, the family consisted of just 14 incoming sixth-graders, Fr. Johnson, Siewert, a small paid staff, and an enthusiastic pack of volunteers. Under the Nativity model, each school year begins with a summer camp experience – classes every morning followed by normal camp activities, and evening prayer and bonding. With an assist from the Wisconsin Province, property for the camp was purchased in northern Wisconsin. It included a house, three tiny, primitive cabins, and a large outbuilding.

“It’s going to be tough, probably harder than I know; maybe like a father saying goodbye to his kids going off to college. But I’m the one who’s leaving.” – Fr. Bill Johnson, SJ

The 14 kids crammed into two cabins. Fr. Johnson concentrated on developing the property while Siewert ran the program, a division of labor that pretty much mirrored the roles they had assumed in Milwaukee setting up the school’s primary facility.

“I don’t think we went to bed before midnight that first summer,” recalls Siewert. “After the kids went to bed we met, reviewed the day, discussed the next, and washed the dinner dishes. Now facilities there are developed and there are enough personnel for a lot of the things we had to do ourselves.” Fr. Johnson became school president from the start. Siewert was the first principal until becoming director of graduates several years ago, a role in which he continues to track, mentor, and guide students through high school and into college while helping them fulfill Nativity’s ultimate goal of preparing today’s youth to be tomorrow’s Christian leaders.

Over time some Nativity family ties became genetic as well as institutional. Two of Siewert’s five children, daughter Sandy Laats and son David, work there. Sandy teaches. David, 31, is the school’s director of development. He was just a kid when Fr. Johnson first met him years ago in the Siewert back yard after being on the wet end of his water pistol. Today David brings more sophisticated skills to Nativity and talks about the “complementary” nature of his father’s and Fr. Johnson’s talents.

Safety comes first during a science experiment.

“They are two very different personalities, both committed to their core to what they’re doing here; they feed off each other. Bill really trusts my father in regard to the educational and classroom side of everything. There’s a respect that you can observe, sometimes awe for my father’s ability to lead a school, motivate a faculty, and communicate with students and graduates and their families.

“By the same token my father admires Bill’s ability to multitask and take on this huge business of education. The fundraising demands, the finance demands, the details of renovating a new school and moving into it. Then there are all the pastoral social demands that go with being president. It’s a 24-7 job. He is always the president of Nativity,” David Siewert says.

Always will come to an end in June after graduation.

Rosario Sanchez, Nativity principal, says she will miss Fr. Johnson, who recruited her from a “fast track” corporate consulting career in 1996 for what was supposed to be a 10-month commitment as the school’s business manager. However, the Nativity spirit and mission caught hold and she chose to remain in education.

Fr. Bill Johnson, SJ in his school office.

“I try to view Bill’s leaving as a good thing more than a bad thing, because it’s a natural part of healthy organizational growth,” one that signals that Nativity is maturing in a positive way says Sanchez. “At the same time we will miss him. He had a vision, passion, and a charismatic leadership that I think was essential.”

Adds Larry Siewert, “Bill’s not just any president, but the first who established the place.” He cites an ironic parallel that the school is looking for a new president just as it is transitioning to a new facility that offers a broad array of potential and possibilities.

“Both Nativity and Bill are at a crossroads in their lives. And I’ll likely be leaving at some point soon. Not tomorrow, but I’m not going to be around for another 10 or 15 years either. So one thing that concerns me is that we continue in the right direction as we remain open to a new spirit and new people and what they might do.”

Or, as Fr. Johnson says, “You’ve got to do your ABCs, but you have to maintain your transcendent values too.”

So as both men look to the future, both short- and long-term, they are reminded about a relevant lesson they learned many years ago.

Blazing a trail for community and God

For more than a decade the Nativity Jesuit Middle School has been building an educational and social network to advance its mission of preparing today’s Latino youths to be tomorrow’s compassionate, competent leaders. Nativity does so by providing a value-centered, Christian education for boys who want to study at a college-preparatory high school and go on for a university degree. The photos here demonstrate how the roots of that mission are strengthening and beginning to bear fruit. Pictured together (left) when they were members of the first class to enter Nativity in 1993 are (from left) Michael Ayala, Rigo Macias, and Benjamin Padilla. Today Michael (below left) is a valued employee at Waukesha Stamping in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Rigo (below center) is a senior at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. He is pictured with Eddie Rodriguez who followed in his footsteps at Nativity and is an MSOE freshman. Ben is married, has a baby boy, and attends the University of Wisconsin– Milwaukee.

“In the beginning we thought the hardest part of starting a new apostolate would be raising the money,” Fr. Johnson says. “But a lot of people assured us if we remained true to our mission, good people would take notice and the money would be the easy part. The hardest part would be in the details of pursuing the mission and pulling together all the loose ends associated with daily activities and our goals. I don’t know that raising the funds we need to fulfill our mission was easy, but they were right – it wasn’t the hardest part.”

As wrong as Fr. Johnson and Siewert were then, they know for certain the hardest thing in the coming months will be saying goodbye to each other. And for Fr. Johnson that means the added pain of saying goodbye to his Nativity family as well. “It’s going to be tough, probably harder than I know; maybe like a father saying goodbye to his kids going off to college.

“But I’m the one who’s leaving.”