Family members of Cardinal Shehan share memories of beloved uncle

After celebrating Mass March 18 with the students of Cardinal Shehan School, Father Patrick Carrion, pastor of St. Matthew, asked them a question.

“Who here was born in the 1800s? Anybody? I am sure one of these teachers was,” he asked, as the students giggled. While he then admitted he was probably the oldest person in the church, he informed the students that the day would have marked the 128th birthday of the school’s namesake, Cardinal Lawrence Shehan.

To celebrate the occasion, the school welcomed Cardinal Shehan’s family members: Bill Baird, the cardinal’s grand-nephew; Baird’s wife, Mary; and Joanna Shehan Baird, Baird’s mother who is also Cardinal Shehan’s niece – to share their stories and memories of Cardinal Shehan, the former archbishop of Baltimore from 1961 to 1974, whom they called Uncle Lawrence.

“If Cardinal Shehan were here today, he would want to know more about you than he would want you to know about him,” Bill Baird told the students gathered in the school’s cafeteria. “He would look in this room and see the hope, the promise and the extraordinarily bright future.”

His grand-uncle, Baird shared, lived on a dairy farm and delivered milk to the neighbors, including the residence of then-Archbishop James Gibbons, whom he met when a housekeeper there introduced him.

“He was only like 10 years old,” Baird said. “That sparked in him something that had him start discerning what would be next in his life.”

At age 19, Shehan began attending St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore in 1917 before going to the Pontifical North American College in Rome from 1920 to 1923. Baird shared that his mother had found a box of handwritten letters from Cardinal Shehan that he had written to his family while abroad.

“We got a letter from him around Thanksgiving telling them that just before Christmas that year, he would be ordained a priest in the Catholic Church on Dec. 23, 1922,” Baird said. “And that started his great work as a parish priest.”

Baird, who himself is in formation to become a permanent deacon, touched on the cardinal’s involvement in the Civil Rights Movement and how he marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Washington D.C. Cardinal Shehan also famously spoke before Baltimore’s City Council about the need for fair housing for everyone – enduring some heckling from some who attended the hearing. 

“He would be surprised today that we’re still wrestling with some of the same questions and some of the same battles, but he would be emboldened to take up this challenge and take up this charge in every community, in every place, that is affected by inequality,” Baird said.

Baird, former chief financial officer for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, shared photos of his grand-uncle, including one of Cardinal Shehan presenting him with his diploma from what is now Loyola Blakefield in Towson. There was also a copy of his uncle’s autobiography, “A Blessing of Years: The Memoirs of Lawrence Cardinal Shehan,” that he signed twice as Baird had accidentally given them to his grand-uncle upside-down and backward.

“Mom made me go back down to see Uncle Lawrence to do the exercise again,” Baird said, with a laugh.

The family also displayed their uncle’s mitre, which was framed as a gift to Baird’s mother, as well as items from St. Mary’s Seminary archives, including his zucchetto and biretta.

“I was really excited to learn about this,” said Chase Wallace, 12, a seventh grader. “I think that it’s really cool that his family member is still succeeding and advancing in life today. It makes me proud to see today that the world today is really becoming better.”

Joanna Baird said afterward that it was special for her to be there for the event, because she “got to see so much more of what’s come from this. He would have been so pleased.”

A “Shehan Birthday Bash” should be held every year, said Allen Vessells, the assistant principal at Cardinal Shehan School.

“It’s great knowledge. It’s great history and it is a part of who we are. It’s our identity,” Vessells said. “We should talk about him every year to empower the kids to continue the work that he began.”

Email Katie V. Jones at kjones@CatholicReview.org

To view a video of the celebration, click play below:

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