June 2025
In 1973, while Richard Nixon was in The White House, I was a few miles away teaching high school students how to become alert readers (ARs). More specifically, I was teaching English at St. Anselm’s Abbey School, which was run by Benedictine monks, just like St. Louis Priory School, from which I had graduated seven years earlier, on 6/6/66.
In my time at St. Anselm’s I tried to inculcate in my students an appreciation for all genres of literature, including poetry, drama and fiction… an appreciation that would be enhanced by their reading alertly. One of my students was Steve Haaga, whom I last saw in 1974, a few months before Gerald Ford took Nixon’s place in The White House and I entered Georgetown Law School a few blocks to the east in the shadow of The U.S. Capitol.
Fifty-one years later, on April 30, 2025, Steve Haaga proved that he really was an AR when he encountered Dan Rogers in a parking lot in Rockville, MD. After noticing the logo on Dan’s shirt Steve alertly and correctly concluded that Dan worked for Schlafly Beer and introduced himself as one of my former students. This happenstance meeting was documented by a selfie of Dan and Steve and led to a subsequent selfie of Steve with his wife Nancy, both of whom are Schlafly fans.
Steve graduated from high school in 1977, the same year I graduated from law school and moved back to St. Louis. It was also the same year that Bob Prevost, aka Pope Leo XIV, graduated from another eastern university (Villanova) and moved to St. Louis within a few miles of where I was living.
To be more precise, I lived in the Shaw Neighborhood and Bob (whom I’m not calling Father Prevost because he had not yet been ordained) was living in the Gate District on the other side of Grand. He had come to St. Louis to start his novitiate with the Order of St. Augustine, a.k.a. Augustinians, who ran the combined parish of Immaculate Conception/ St. Henry’s. While in St. Louis Bob lived in the parish rectory on Lafayette.
Pope Leo grew up on the south side of Chicago and is a fan of The Chicago White Sox, who have won the World Series three times. His mother was a fan of The Chicago Cubs, who have also won the World Series three times. His father was a fan of The St. Louis Cardinals, who have won the World Series eleven times, which is 83% more than the total combined championships of the White Sox and Cubs. Just sayin’.
Steve & Nancy Haaga, Schlafly fans in Rockville, MD
ARs from St. Louis of a certain age may recall the Augustinians as the order that ran Augustinian Academy, which existed from 1961 to 1972 and competed in sports against my alma mater Priory back in the day.
Priory and Augustinian both competed against Lutheran South and Lutheran Central (the predecessor to Lutheran North), both of which were named for Martin Luther, who was an Augustinian friar before he married a former nun; translated the Bible into German; and arguably did more than any other individual to promote the spread of Protestantism in Europe.
Luther was fond of beer, especially Einbeck, and was proud of his wife’s skill as a brewer. He famously drove away the devil by breaking wind, but did not record whether his wife’s beer helped him perform the flatulent exorcism.
ARs who are beer connoisseurs are undoubtedly familiar with Augustiner Beer, which Augustinian monks were brewing long before Martin Luther joined the order and which they continued to brew after Luther’s break with the Roman Catholic Church. It has been widely reported that Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was the first Augustinian to be elected to the papacy and had served as Prior General of the Order from 2001 to 2013.
While some of the Augustinian breweries have since been secularized, most notably in Munich, Pope Leo is undoubtedly aware of his order’s proud tradition of brewing. If he ever wants to return to his former neighborhood in St. Louis, I would be honored to host him at The Schlafly Tap Room, which is in an adjacent zip code.
While acknowledging that the Augustinians’ brewing heritage is impressive indeed, dating back to the 13th century, I feel compelled to add that the Benedictine monks who taught Steve Haaga and me had been brewing beer for seven centuries before the Augustinians who taught Pope Leo started doing so. Again, just sayin’.
Tom Schlafly
Chairman
Schlafly | The Saint Louis Brewery
