A Man for All Seasons

Thomas Treadaway, born in Edna in 1897, the youngest of five children, entered the Society of Mary in July of 1915, and began his novitiate that August. In 1919 he earned his B.A. from the University of Dayton.

His teaching career that spanned six decades began at Chaminade High School in St. Louis. Brother Tom first came to St. Mary’s for a year in 1925, and again from 1933 to 1935. He settled in for good in 1938.

Armed with both M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from St. Louis University, he was professor of English, dean, registrar and admissions director. His gaunt stooped figure with beak nose, silvery hair and bushy brow, black sweater and green eyeshade, became omnipresent.

Students marveled at his ability to read upside down, to “register by paper clip” with matchless patience. Legendary, too, were his mystifying hieroglyphic balance sheets, his only apparently gruff exterior, his mental gymnastics in juggling a marginal student’s academic record to make graduation look miraculous. Remarkably, Brother Tom personally registered every student from 1938 until automation in 1965.

These are realities deeper than the facts, that no historian can do justice to, that no institution can recreate, that nobody will relive.

When made an honorary alumnus, the citation included: “Mr. St. Mary’s has been the heart and soul, the mainspring, the catalyst, the bone and sinew of the University.”

And, when given the School of Law’s St. Thomas More Award, his plaque read: “This counselor to many generations, a weathered and tried person of loyalty, fortitude, faith, wit and wisdom is St. Mary’s Man for All Seasons.”

Brother Thomas Treadaway, S.M., died June 7, 1969, at the age of 72. He was a Marianist for 53 years.