Reading the news about Fr. John Leary, Fr. Michael Toulouse and Fr. Michael Treleaven has been supremely discouraging for this Gonzaga University alum.

I knew Fr. Leary, Gonzaga’s former president, during his long sojourn. I call it a sojourn because he always told me he would return to Gonzaga one day.

Like Mark Twain and other American nomads who leave homes to which they can never return, Jack Leary eventually came to Nevada.

I met him when he arrived in Reno, my hometown. I was a Gonzaga sophomore on summer break taking a religious history course through Old College, Fr. Leary’s unusual and daring liberal studies experiment.

Housed at St. Thomas Aquinas Cathedral in downtown Reno, Old College wasn’t far from casino row and the famous archway welcoming visitors to the “Biggest Little City in the World.” Fr. Leary transformed a drab domain – some musty storage areas – into classrooms and offices.

Old College wasn’t fully accredited when I applied, so when Gonzaga approved the course, I was relieved – I needed the credits. But then, helping students was an integral part of the university’s character.

Academic Vice President Fr. Peter Ely once waived my tuition. Stan Fairhurst, Gonzaga’s finance director, helped me pay for graduate school interview travel. Various professors wrote glowing recommendations. And in her role as student advocate, Student Life Vice President Sue Weitz was an uplifting friend.

I was grateful to Gonzaga and at Old College that summer, a part of me felt renewed.

The desert’s bland heat seemed to give way to the cool fall colors of ivy-draped academe, right there in the vapid soul of Gambling Town, USA. For a while, my worries faded – the recession-mired economy, whether I could afford next year’s tuition, our single-parent family’s mighty 28-year struggle with my sister’s muscular dystrophy.

My summer religious studies professor was brilliant but self-effacing. Through his meticulous reading of the Old Testament, I saw how human hands had shaped the script of God. I learned the importance of separating interpretation, error, and misjudgment from essential truth, all from a Jesuit priest with the sophistication of a New Yorker and the casual attire of a comfortable man.

Far more rambunctious than his Jesuit colleague and rarely without his white, clean collar, Fr. Leary was a dreamer and an envelope pusher. When I met him, he was dreaming of Nevada’s first law school, which would later graduate several people I knew, middle-aged teachers and casino workers and fellow dreamers who risked their careers to change their lives.

Online accounts note that Old College School of Law was indeed Nevada’ s first law school, established in 1981 by “former Gonzaga president John Leary, S.J,” who persuaded the Gannett Company to donate the school’s home at the Reno Gazette-Journal’s retired newspaper plant. Chronically short of money, the school closed seven years later. But 85 percent of its graduates passed the bar exam the first time they took it.

Jack Leary was a rebel, yes, but to me always a perfect gentleman, which makes the allegations about him so hard to take.

When we spoke, the theme of his personal heartbreak about leaving Gonzaga came up repeatedly. It bothered him immensely, but he never said why, only that “Gonzaga would always be his greatest love.” He never let on about his problems there, but I don’t suppose he would have.

When I asked Gonzaga faculty why Jack Leary left, in hindsight I guess they recited a playbook litany. “He spent too much money.” “He took too many risks.” “He built the dorms, but almost bankrupted the school.” It was time for a “steadier hand, like we have with Barney Coughlin.”

An equally charismatic GU philosophy professor told me the Jesuits had Fr. Leary “on a long and loose-fitting leash.” Much tightened, the thinking went, and they might strangle the innovator within, the man who, everyone agreed, built so much of the Gonzaga we knew.

If Father Leary committed the terrible crimes alleged, I am sorry for him, but for his victims especially. Their pain has only been compounded by time, that healer of all wounds which is bound to fail in the absence of verity.

Jack Leary’s travels brought good things to many people. It’s odd now to think of him as banished to a kind of purgatory, wandering for a time in the desert among the empty neon lights. If he left victims in his wake, then he – like them – must have wandered for a very long time hollow and alone.