Cueing up the USB he sees nothing. Again nothing. It must not have loaded, he realizes. The class of fifteen college students is quiet, waiting for an answer.
Flustered, the man addresses the class.
“I’m very sorry, but the Powerpoint didn’t load onto my USB properly. Please don’t go. I’ll be right back.”
And with that Father Rick Gribble bounded out of the Martin Institute classroom to his home on the edge of campus. The last time he ran without warming up, he partially tour his Achilles tendon. He settled into a half-run/half-walk until he was home.
After about ten minutes, Gribble came back into the classroom out of breath, apologizing as profusely as he was sweating.
“Sorry, class…” he says, pausing for breath. “It should be loaded up right away. Again, I apologize.”
And with that, he went back to work.
Father Gribble has never taken the easy way out. Whether it is joining the Navy, becoming a priest or half-sprinting to his home: hard work and self-discipline is a constant in his life.
As a junior in high school, he began thinking about the U.S. Naval Academy. He liked both the prestige and the price of it. So the son of World War II veteran used his second grade teacher’s husband to help make contacts within the academy and advice on the application. His Congressional appointment from Congressman Chet Hollifield soon followed.
It was in the academy that he fell in love with nuclear power submarines. In November 1976, after graduating from Annapolis and training at Nuclear Power School in Vallejo, California, he reported to the USS Thomas Edison stationed in Guam.
Each day of the twenty-six months he spent underwater began much the same way. Operating on Greenwich Mean Time, Gribble worked four day shifts as one of the sub’s officers.
Much of their time was spent watching, waiting. Their missiles poised on Red China, the first line of the MAD defense strategy, just waiting for the word to fire. Sleeping on bunks stacked three high and on a mattress that was only five feet, seven inches long, the short stature of Gribble was well-suited for the accommodations.
His days would be filled with tests. Testing every part of the ship until it became second nature. For Gribble, the big ones were the missile tests.
The sub would begin to stabilize, hovering at a depth of 100-150 feet, enabling the guidance systems to lock on. An exercise message would flash and the crew would begin flipping the same switches and pressing the same buttons that they would if the world was on the brink on nuclear war. Just like in the movies, the crew would interlock all their keys into the system and countdown the time until launch. The only key that was missing would be the captain’s.
It was during these months that the isolated Gribble began thinking about the priesthood. Attending Mass each week on base, he began to strike up a friendship with the chaplain.
“What would you think if I said I was thinking of becoming a priest, he asked the chaplain one day.
“I would think seriously about that,” he responded. “There has to be a reason God’s putting it in your head.”
Soon after his time in the Navy was through, Gribble enrolled in Notre Dame Seminary, in South Bend, Indiana. He began studying to be a Holy Cross priest.
It only lasted ten weeks.
Gribble began to think about the lives of his father and his friends. He started to yearn for a life of his own.
Working eight to five. Wearing a coat and tie. Dating. Maybe marriage?
“I want to be normal,” he said to himself.
Moving back to southern California, he worked and began to accrue the accoutrements of a
normal life: a nice house, he even splurged and bought a Porsche.
Gribble still kept up with the vocation director at Notre Dame. He made visits to Indiana every so often and slowly felt the itch to go back for good. He vacillated, he wavered, he rationalized until one of their meetings, he was told to make a choice.
“I’m getting tired of this indecision on your part,” he told Gribble. This would be the last visit, he said. He was to come here as a student or stay away.
So Gribble gave the Porsche to an ex-girlfriend, sold his house, and finally enrolled, for good this time, at Notre Dame. Studying at Berkeley for his Ph.D. and was soon assigned by the Holy Cross Fathers to a small liberal arts college on the east coast.
Today, his days are spent in a quiet solitude. His day-to-day life consists of God and his work.
Waking at 3 a.m., he turns on the coffee maker in his small apartment on the edge of Stonehill’s campus. Once the coffee is made, he sits at the table and talks to God. He begins with the Liturgy of the Hours, a series of prayers and psalms that all priests must say daily.
With that done, he begins his work. Reading for class, working on PowerPoint slideshows, grading papers, all while NPR provides ambience. Students are often mystified when his emails from his are sent at hours that they are still up from the night before.
Gribble then moves from a mental workout to a physical one. The regimen of push-ups and sit-ups has left him with a firm chest that sticks out from his crisp, black shirt.
At 645, he says mass at a local church. The priests are shorthanded, so he is glad to help out.
After his classes are through, he sits, wearing khakis, a crisply ironed dress shirt, and New Balance sneakers, at a large drafting table in the library meeting with students.
Though his hair may have thinned and lightened, he may no longer need to work 18 hour days on a nuclear sub, and he certainly does not drive a Porsche, the sense of duty for Father Gribble has never waned.
He sits in the back of the class watching three students give a presentation on Power and Authority. To close their presentation, the students ask the class a difficult question:
“So we want to close with what makes you all angry with Stonehill? What do you not like about it?”
The class is silent. Finally, an arm clad in black is raised from the back of the room.
“Ya know, I like to think of myself as a hard worker. I think all my students are hard workers and I try to give the same to you. That is my job,” he says, his voiced getting agitated as he recalls stories he's heard about professors canceling class needlessly.
Finally, Gribble states his doctrine: “I guess what bothers me is when professors don’t work hard.”
After learning about Father Rick Gribble, you can probably understand why.
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