Nick and Jane Healy Are Living the Quiet Country Life -- For Now

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Published on Tuesday, 20 September 2011 16:22

Nick Healy loves life on his farm in southern New Hampshire, but the former president of Ave Maria University hasn't been able to retire there more than 20 years ago as he originally planned. Right, Nick and Jane Healy (at right in picture) with their son Nick Jr. and three grandchildren with their cider press.

For Nick and his wife, Jane, this is their third try at retiring to the farm in New Hampshire that they bought in 1988. The call to service in Catholic higher education just seemed to lure him away, first to Franciscan University in Steubenville, OH, and then to Tom Monaghan's efforts to start Ave Maria University.

"It's been a great summer of extensive outdoor work on the farm," Mr. Healy said in an interview. "I've been clearing land for pasture, put in an orchard, and I'm better shape now than any time in the past two years."

He'll be back in Ave Maria for the inauguration of his successor, Jim Towey, as president of Ave Maria University Oct. 7, and he and Jane plan to be in town for what is known in southwest Florida as "the season" beginning later in the fall.

Will his retirement be interrupted again, or will the third time be a charm? "We'll see," he said, adding that he is looking at various options for the future.

Mr. Healy spent 23 years in Catholic higher education, which followed a successful career in maritime law and the marine insurance claims business.

It was during that time that he was invited to join the board of Franciscan University, which, he says, "began my re-examination of what I wanted to do in life."

Over the next several years, he said he became more and more interested in what was happening in higher education. "My epiphany," he said, "came when I read the book by Fr. Michael Scanlan about spiritual warfare." [Deliverance from Evil Spirits: A Weapon for Spiritual Warfare]

"If I believed that only the Church had the power to change the moral drift of the country, what was I doing about that? I should put my life where my mouth was and join the war."

He sold his marine insurance claims processing business, and his home in Connecticut, built a house in New Hampshire and moved into it in July, 1988. Just a month later, the Franciscan University board, on which he served, called an emergency meeting to discuss problems with their capital campaign.

"I knew as soon as I heard of the problems, that that's what I wanted to do," Mr. Healy said. It turned out to be a life-changing decision, as it led to 23 years of involvement in Catholic higher education, first at Franciscan University and then at Ave Maria.

Despite the fact that he had never done any institutional fundraising, and propelled only by a strong belief in the mission of the university, Mr. Healy accepted the position of Vice President of Development and Christian Outreach at Franciscan University and under his direction, the capital campaign was a success. He counts many other accomplishments there, including the creation of the school's study-abroad program in Austria, but perhaps the most significant aspect of his relationship with Franciscan was that it was through this school that Mr. Healy met Tom Monaghan. Both men served on the school's board as well as on the board of the Christus Magister Foundation, set up to support new initiatives in Catholic higher education.

Referring to the part of the organization's mission to help start new Catholic colleges, Mr. Healy recalls that, "Tom turned to me and said, ‘I want to do one of those.'"

And when he did, by starting the Ave Maria Institute in Michigan, he called Mr. Healy in 1999 to seek recommendations for a president of the school.

Mr. Healy had just started his second retirement, and during the course of the conversation, Mr. Monaghan asked him to assume the role of president himself - just  for a year.

"It started as ‘interim,' then became ‘indefinite'," Mr. Healy said, as efforts to recruit another president were unsuccessful.

"Traditional academics might not like the structure - like sending Tom daily reports," Mr. Healy said.

Mr. Healy recalls the early years of Ave Maria as exciting, but remembers a "constant struggle with facilities, particularly the lack of residences." Mr. Monaghan's request to rezone property in Michigan for a campus met with local resistance and, with more than 50,000 students already in Ann Arbor area colleges, "Tom asked what I thought of going to Naples."

Mr. Healy began to explore the option with Mr. Monaghan.

"We met with Bishop Nevins" (Bishop Frank Dewane's predecessor as bishop of the Diocese of Venice), "because you can't come into a diocese without a bishop's invitation. We sat down, told him everything, asked him what he thought," Mr. Healy said. He recalled Bishop Nevins's response: "This would be a great gift to the diocese."

Equally encouraging was the response of Collier County Commissioner Jim Coletta, then chair of the board: "What do we have to do to make this happen?"

Plans for the new university were announced in February, 2002, as Bishop Nevins sat on the dais with Mr. Monaghan. The original intent, Mr. Healy said, was to build on a site at Immokalee Rd. and Collier Blvd. (now Heritage Bay) which had more than 1,000 acres suitable for development.

But the Barron Collier Cos. approached Mr. Monaghan before the deal was final and offered Mr. Monaghan 1,000 acres of land for free if he would locate the university within a new town the company hoped to develop farther east.

On the deadline day for a decision, Mr. Healy recalls that the Gospel reading for the day included the phrase, "The Lord hears the cry of the poor." They made the decision to locate farther east, where it was hoped that the university and town might be a positive influence on an area that was economically disadvantaged.

With 23 years of work in Catholic higher education behind him, Mr. Healy is looking to the future and sorting out options for the next phase of his life.

AMU founder Tom Monaghan, with whom Mr. Healy worked for almost 25 years in one way or another, paid tribute to him last spring with these words: "Together we have done things that have never been done before; we have made history, and what we have done together is only the beginning - as a beacon to Catholic higher education."

Mr. Healy said he is proud of what he accomplished in a decade at Ave Maria -- helping establish Ave Maria University, spearheading its move to Florida from Michigan and overseeing its accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

"I feel very confident that the foundation for a truly great university has been laid."