Fenn, Father Lyman Alphonse

1985, July 20

Date of Birth: 1901, July 2

Dear Confrere:

On Saturday evening, July 20, 1985, our Sulpician brother, Lyman A. Fenn, died peacefully in French Hospital, San Francisco, at the age of 84. In the annals of the United States Province, his long life of distinguished priestly ministry will be a truly significant highlight.

Lyman Alphonse Fenn was born on July 2, 1901, in San Francisco to Lyman J. and Jane (nee Briody) Fenn. His elementary and high school education was received at Star of the Sea School from 1907 to 1919. He then entered the college department of St. Patrick’s Seminary, Menlo Park, where he received a B.A. degree in 1923 and began theological studies for the priesthood. On June 18, 1927, he was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of San Francisco for service with the Society of St. Sulpice.

That fall Father Fenn began his year of Sulpician formation in Baltimore at St. Charles College, where he taught a course in Greek and completed requirements for his S.T.B. at St. Mary’s Seminary, the degree being awarded in 1928. The following two years were busy ones for him at St. Charles, with English, Latin, and religion added to his teaching duties, plus serving as a spiritual director, a dormitory prefect, and director of athletics. That last position was indicative of his life-long love of sports as an avid participant and fan in activities ranging from fishing and golf to handball, skiing, and swimming.

In the fall of 1930, shortly after the death of his mother, Father Fenn entered the Collegium Angelicum in Rome, and there received his S.T.D. in June 1932. For two months of the summer of 1931, he had vacationed at the Sulpician seminary at Issy-les-Moulineaux in the company of his confrere and fellow Roman student, Edward Wagner, improving his facility in French and familiarity with Paris.

To his great delight, Father Fenn was then assigned to St. Patrick’s Seminary to teach philosophy, which he accepted as an opportunity to deepen his background for teaching dogmatic theology, his chosen field and one he never did get a chance to teach.

Only two years later, at the age of 33, he was asked by the Sulpician provincial council to accept the presidency of St. Joseph’s College, Mountain View, the minor seminary of San Francisco, which also served many of the Western dioceses. For nine years he gave it vigorous leadership, including a very strong athletic program, while serving also as vocation director for the Archdiocese and recruiting students for the College.

In 1943, recognizing a personal need to move into some other field, the same year in which he received an honorary LL.D. from St. Mary’s College, Moraga, CA, he became the first Sulpician to take a sabbatical and spent a year at The Catholic University in Washington studying moral theology and canon law, which he saw as areas that would make him more useful to parish priests. Philosophy, however, would again be his teaching field from 1944 to 1949 at St. Mary’s Seminary, Baltimore. Underlying that appointment was the wish of the provincial council that he become the director of the Sulpician year of Formation, the “Solitude,” when it resumed in 1945. It had been moved to Paca Street from St. Charles College in 1941. Again, his facility in working with priests was evident, as were his strong leadership qualities and community instincts. In February 1945, he also suffered the loss of his father, who died before Father Fenn could reach his bedside. It was also at this period of his life that he moved more actively into directing priests’ retreats throughout the country. Directing over forty such retreats he regarded as having been the greatest privilege of his own priesthood.

During the 1948-1949 school year, Father Fenn was appointed the first rector of St. John’s Provincial Seminary, which opened in 1949 in Plymouth under the sponsorship of the bishops of Michigan. When Father John J. Lardner died suddenly in October 1948, Father Fenn had to assume in his place the additional responsibility of working with Father George Ott, S.S., who had already moved to Michigan, in representing the Sulpicians in the final construction stages. For the next ten years Father Fenn laid a strong foundation of formation in the new seminary, even though privately he sometimes expressed his weariness of administration. He also taught moral theology at St. John’s, while enjoying the golf course, which surrounded the Seminary, and the other sports amenities of St. John’s.