“I do not ask to see the distant scene; one step enough for me.”
It was with these words taken from a favorite poem that Robert Botthof, the then-principal of Oak Park and River Forest High School, announced his resignation as the school’s leader in spring 1982.
Botthof quoted those words from John Henry Cardinal Newman, who, at age 44, had left his life as a theologian and writer to join the priesthood. Botthof had chosen to do the same. After 30 years in education, including 10 years as OPRF principal beginning in 1972, the then- 53-year-old Chicago native had decided to join the priesthood.
“I’m entering into another state of my life where I can do something new and meaningful — I have to take the risk,” Botthof told Wednesday Journal in April 1982.
He was ordained in the priesthood in 1987 at St. Vincent Ferrer Parish in River Forest. That year, he also became president and principal of Fenwick High School, just a couple of months before his ordination.
Of his appointment at Fenwick, Botthof told Wednesday Journal in April of 1987, “I’m looking forward to providing a high quality educational program with the added dimension of religious values.”
On Oct. 15, Botthof, 85, died of congestive heart failure at Chicago’s St. Pius V Parish’s rectory. Botthof served Fenwick until 1994. On its website, the Oak Park school acknowledged his passing.
“Accomplishments of his tenure at Fenwick include emphasizing sound financial practices and overseeing the transition to coeducation,” the announcement read.
A widower with two adult children at the time of his resignation from OPRF, Botthof joined the priesthood two years after losing his wife to cancer. After stepping down at OPRF, the principal position was combined with that of superintendent, where it stayed until 2007 before being separated again as its own post.
Upon joining Fenwick, Rev. Botthof told Wednesday Journal that his theological studies also helped him rediscover why he entered education in the first place.
“I’ve always enjoyed the students; I’m expecting this to be a fun experience and not a heavy duty,” he said.
Robert Jerome Botthof was born in Chicago on Oct. 27, 1928, almost a year before the Great Depression took hold of the nation beginning with the 1929 Stock Market Crash. It was a year, 1928, that also saw, among other notable events, the first Catholic nominated by a major political party for president of the United States — New York Democratic Gov. Al Smith, and the first ever appearance of Mickey and Minnie Mouse to moviegoers in the Disney animated short Plane Crazy.
Botthof attended Queen Angels and St. Sylvester grade schools, and later Old St. Pat’s High School. At LaSalle Institute in Glencoe, Missouri, Botthof trained to become one of the order’s Christian Brothers before leaving to join the Marines in 1953. He would teach at Niles East High School in Skokie, where he met his future wife, Mary Elizabeth Nutt. The couple was married for 20 years.
In 1969, Botthof earned a doctorate in education from Indiana University, and later became Fenwick’s director of athletics before becoming OPRF principal in ’72.
Upon leaving OPRF, he planned to enter a master of divinity program at St. Louis University, later becoming ordained in the Dominican Order of Preachers. He told Wednesday Journal in April 1982 that he’d been growing toward that decision over the previous two years. Botthof had discussed the possibility with his wife before she died.
With a disease such as cancer, Botthof told Wednesday Journal that “people can learn to use periods of remission creatively, to travel or to talk.”
Having buried his brother just months before his wife died in 1980 — and also recalling his father’s death while Botthof was in college — the former OPRF principal said he hoped to offer “empathy and someone to talk to during the loneliness of illness.”
Services for Botthof took place Oct. 21, at St. Vincent in River Forest. He was buried next to his wife in her hometown of Taylorville, Illinois.
CONTACT: tdean@wjinc.com