Jerry and his wife Carreen at the 2011 Celebration of the Crest

Brother Donnan Berry, S.C.

• Brother Martin, S.C., suggested that some hospital bonds that had been donated to the province should be held in the Foundation. That formed the first substantial single contribution.
• The initial goal was to provide enough money to fund a partial scholarship each year at Brother Martin. But that soon expanded.

At one meeting, Brother Donnan, the principal, said, "This is nice. We appreciate that money coming in. But that's not going to make or break us on a year-to-year basis. I'm concerned what will happen to my successor 20-25 years from now when running the school will be much more costly."

That started the idea that this foundation could provide quite a funding source, more of an endowment. It grew quite well. Look at all the things that have been generated. The first and second phase of the development plan. We've put up a lot of brick and mortar out of that.

• Jerry chaired the Phase One Capital Campaign, which was the first fund-raising effort by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart in New Orleans. The campaign raised the money to erect the Ridgley Center in 1999.

The first Board of Directors for Brother Martin High School started in 1976 and consisted entirely of brothers stationed at the school.

• Later, the board expanded to include laymen, the first of whom was Jerry Reso.
• In 1991, Jerry spearheaded the formation of a set of boards at each school owned by the New Orleans Province of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart.

The provincial at the time, Brother Bernard, was concerned about putting a structure in place that would be a sustaining force as the number of brothers in the schools dwindled. To bring that about, you would have to identify lay leaders and train them in the charism of the brothers.

We wanted to establish the school as a corporation as well as create a corporation to hold the properties of the school and a foundation to generate the funds. I didn't see a model for that anywhere. A lot of it was laid out on my kitchen table. I drew a lot of diagrams.

We created the structure for Brother Martin, but the provincial wanted it applied to the other province-owned schools, St. Stanislaus and Catholic High. All three setups went into effect at the same time [1991-2].

Before going public with it, we had a meeting of brothers from the province. How would the older brothers react? We went through the presentation and there were a few questions. Then Brother Remigius [last president of St. Aloysius who served when the St. Aloysius Century Foundation began] said, "It sounds like a good idea to me. Why didn't we do this before?" So it was well received by the community.

It's a tribute to Jerry's work that there's been hardly any change in the set up since then.

It functioned fine right from the beginning. We had a structure in place to handle whatever came up. It follows the principles of corporate law that apply to businesses as well as non-profit entities.

• He continues as the senior member of the operating board of Brother Martin.