Read Politics Never Broke His Heart - Washington Secretary of State

THE GRADUATE AND THE NOVICE
25
In a letter to his sister, a newlywed whose spouse was in law school
in Omaha, he wrote that “the weather was stormy.” That meant he had
decided to leave. He packed quietly and crept out while the others were at
their kneelers or tucked in their spartan beds. When some coins spilled
from his pocket onto the concrete floor, one of the novices heard the clatter.
“He was trying to sneak away without making a stir, but the one who heard
the coins drop told us he knew John must be leaving because we had no
money,” Father McCarthy recalls.
“It would be impossible to say anything unkind about John Spellman,”
says Father Navone. “He threw himself into it. We really knew he had tried
to discern if this was his calling, so when he left you knew he had really
given it everything and had concluded, ‘This is not what the Lord is calling
me to do.’ ”
John had resolved to become a lawyer and follow his interest in politics
and public service. The church would always be his lodestar, he told himself,
but he could serve it best as an energetic layman.