Fr. Ted Said…Cultivating Hope, Part 3: J. Martin (Marty) Regan, Jr. '76

Topic: J. Martin (Marty) Regan, Jr. ’76

In his inaugural address, University President Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., called us to be “sustainers of hope and builders of bridges.” But in a world where optimism often feels in short supply, where do we find the inspiration to keep nurturing the good? Plant those seeds through a revitalizing experience where you can pause, exhale, and allow your spirit to blossom. Come hear this calling echo in powerful, personal stories from Notre Dame alumni and faculty who are living examples of what it means to cultivate hope—just like Fr. Ted.

Speaker:

• J. Martin (Marty) Regan, Jr. ’76 

J. Martin (Marty) Regan, Jr. ’76 serves as Senior Staff Attorney to the City of Memphis. He is General Counsel to the Southern College of Optometry and General Counsel and Planned Giving Director to Community Foundation of Greater Memphis. He is a Director of the Memphis Grizzlies Foundation, Memphis Land Bank, Inc., and Alpha Omega Veterans Services, Inc. Marty has been a trusted advisor to mayors, bishops, and numerous non-profits, often providing pro bono legal services. He played a key role in the revival of Jubilee Schools, an initiative focused on reopening inner-city Catholic schools, and was awarded the Sportsman of the Year award in Memphis for a key role in bringing the Memphis Grizzlies Basketball team to the city, and the development of its FedEx Forum arena.

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Transcript

Speaker 19 0:00

To have a country that has, in a sense, a microcosm of the whole world and all its diversity and all its color and all its beauty, because God didn't make people beautiful just because they were this or that color. He made... Everything he made was beautiful. And when you see it all together in one country, and everybody making it, not just these kind of people making it or that kind of people making, but everybody having the opportunity, and everybody getting educated, and everybody having work to do, and everybody developing a sense of family life and, and neighborly life and, and a beautiful environmental life, which we're kind of learning more about these days. I think that that would be a tremendous example, 'cause they can look here and say it's possible. It's only possible for all these people to grow together and get educated together and be successful together. It's possible for them to be happy together

Juliana 0:49

Please welcome proud member of the 50 year celebrating class of 1976, J. Martin "Marty" Regan Jr., who is a nonprofit leader and partner in the law firm of Lewis Thomason in Memphis, Tennessee.

Rev. Pete McCormick, C.S.C., ’06 M.Div., ’15 MBA 1:15

I'm from an Irish Catholic family that settled in the river town of a small city along the Mississippi, Memphis, Tennessee. And I know at least four of you have been there before visiting. For those of you who haven't, it has been a small river town that has had its share of problems, but also a tremendous amount of hope from different people. I'm the product of five generations of Irish Catholic men and women who have devoted their lives to a multitude of things, whether healthcare, medicine, teaching. But each generation had its own problems, but each had a tremendous optimism for the city and most importantly, for the people of the city. And through that, there's one person who really stands out in my mind. It's the matriarch of the family, Mary Coyle Shea. She was my great-grandmother, lived to be a hundred and three years old. Interestingly, she was born before Lincoln was president. She witnessed the Civil War with gun battles on the river, battles in the downtown of the city. She always was happy and joyous, and despite whatever the adversities were, she always was loving to everybody. And one of the most significant things she and her mother did was that in the 1870s, there was the yellow fevers. It came up the Mississippi River from New Orleans and wiped out twenty-five percent of our city, and most of the family died in it. She never complained. She nursed the people. She went on to raise nine children. But most importantly, even when she was a hundred years old, she wanted to be with young people. She was heavily involved with a Catholic Dominican grade school, a Catholic college for women. And through that All of her descendants sort of revered what the family could do for the city of Memphis. It did have its problems. When I was a grade school kid, I would go to get uniforms for grade school, for St. Dominic Dominican School, and I noticed on the door there were signs, "Whites only." And I'd ask my parents, "Well, how did the African Americans get in here?" "Well, they had to go in the back door." The restaurants, the movie theaters were all whites only. There were hotels that would not even admit African Americans. And I struggled as a kid with that. And I remember watching Walter Cronkite, and there is this Catholic priest from University of Notre Dame, Father Ted Hesburgh, and he's marching in Chicago with a young African American reverend, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I got to know the name more prominently in the city of Memphis because shortly after that, we had a series of sanitation strikes and marches, and Dr. King marched quite frequently in the city. And in the leadership was a Catholic bishop, Catholic priests, Catholic nuns, Catholic brothers. And the real debate was, we were only five percent Catholic, what are the Catholics doing in politics? Why don't they leave it in the church? And following that, I entered the University of Notre Dame, and I started learning about social justice and political activity. And as I arrived on campus, the first person I met truly was Walter Cronkite. And he put a microphone in my face and said, "What's it like being on campus with women?" And I had to admit, "Sir, I've never been here before. I don't know." They brushed me aside, ran over to find an upperclassman and asked that. But I thought, there Father Ted goes again. And I remember his remarks of saying he looked up atop the Golden Dome and said, "Mary, I apologize that it took so long Well, not only was I a student interested in studying, but it was my first exposure to roommates other than an older brother. And each of us got involved in service. And I know Bob McDonald here got involved in ROTC. And each of us, Mike Laird and Mike Apfeld and Jim Keegan, we all got involved with Tim Scully, and there was a program called the St. Joe Bail Bond Program. And there were other programs that people got involved in, Logan Center. And it was interesting to be living with people that had a mission, but at the same time, service was important, as important as everything else we did. And we went on and we had magnanimous professors. We had Father John Dunne, who talked to us through biographies of other people and what they had done. We had a very interesting Professor Basil O'Leary. And Basil was here from the Milwaukee Fourteen that protested the war in Vietnam that was raging when I was a student. And the interesting thing was he was part of a peace and justice program that Father Ted had created at the university despite political pressure because he felt like that's what the church should be doing. Well, I went on from that through law school and came out, and my first client was the Catholic Diocese of Memphis. And I think with this hope that springs, we were able to get involved in working with the federal government, the state government, and we got funding for housing for the elderly, and we got funding for programs for alcoholism and programs for behavioral health, a multitude of programs that all were social service. And through that, I became sort of a nonprofit lawyer that was willing to work pro bono. And through that pro bono work, I was contacted by these two wonderful anonymous donors. We called them Anonymous Donor One and Anonymous Donor Two. They contributed over a hundred and fifty million dollars to reopen nine inner-city Catholic schools. And fortunately, we had this fascinating, wonderful African American bishop, and his history was that his parents were sugarcane sharecroppers in Basse Terre, Louisiana. He never spoke badly about any of that, but if you knew sugarcane workers in Mississippi or in Tennessee or in Louisiana, it was not much different from slavery. But as I said, Bishop Styve never complained, but he always challenged. And there's a lot of debate because school systems nationwide were suffering for money. But he always said, "What we do for those in the east side," which was the richer side, "we're going to do for those in the inner city." And the debate was, "But Bishop, these children are not Catholic." And he said, "Of course not, but we are. That's why we do it, because we are Catholic." And so we went on from creating a school system that educated thousands of inner-city children through the Catholic schools. And through that program, I had an opportunity to spend a day at one of the schools, St. Patrick's Catholic School. And at this school, I'm with the principal. There's a young student, third-grader Marcus. Marcus always asked for an extra sandwich, and he took that and his bag of chips and put it in the backpack. And finally, the principal said, "Marcus, are you hungry?" And he said, "No, my little brother at home is and has nothing to eat." And that awakened in me the real challenge that poverty is not something on TV. It's in your neighborhoods, it's in your city, and it's something we can do about it. And so that becomes one of the challenges where we all need to hope that there are things we can do. The flip side of that story that brings encouragement to me was somehow I'm not a sportsman, but I got involved in bringing a basketball team, pro team, to the city of Memphis, the Memphis Grizzlies. And I was not one to really go to a lot of sports games, but I took Bishop Stieber one day, and we get on an elevator, and there is an elderly Black lady who says, "Bishop, can I hug you?" And Bishop Stieber opens his arms and says, "Why would you wanna hug me?" And she said, "Bishop, you educated my children. You educated my grandchildren." I didn't know that she knew the word trajectory, but she said, "You have changed the trajectory of my family for generations to come." And that brings tremendous hope to what you and we can do and how great the need is. And I went from working in education to there was a wonderful woman that I worked with at Catholic Charities who ended up going to work for the governor. And through that, we learned the word collaborative. And in the collaborative, we were able to get funding for mental health, and we built a brand-new forty-five million dollar mental health facility, the largest in West Tennessee for behavioral health We recently got four hundred million dollars from the state and from local government for a new med school. And through that, University of Tennessee School of Medicine has agreed to be in a collaborative with Catholic Charities, with our behavioral health entity, Alliance Healthcare. We brought in the number one optometry school in the country, Southern College of Optometry, and we brought in the food bank. And we've brought these campuses to where the people are that need them. And through that, I have realized the strength that you don't have to be a leader, but it sure helps to be a collaborator. And when you do that, it's a tremendous reward to you individually. And it makes me recall the words of our Father Hesburgh, who said, Following Christ does not have to be a burden. It can be the purest joy you ever experience. And I can't tell you how much joy I derive from seeing programs that help people with the philosophy, you don't have to be the leader. Just collaborate and help your fellow citizens and follow the Lord and do things remembering social justice, remembering humanity, and realizing it's not just your parochial problem. There's enough for all of us to do something. And so I will end with the challenge of what brings you joy and what do you do that makes you happy, that helps the people in the future? It's just like the Notre Dame question, what is worth fighting for for you? And so I leave you with that. And also, as much as I've done these things, I think that each one of you from Notre Dame has been doing the same in your own lives. So I congratulate you and say, go Irish and go Notre Dame.