LEX FUGIT-JUDGE JACK DILLON ’44-BELMONT BOY

(Note: This post first appeared in a former blog of mine in April of 2010.  That blog is no longer on the web, but this post certainly belongs here. This profile of  17th District Judge John "Jack" Dillon was originally written for the Detroit Catholic Central Alumni Magazine.  Judge Dillon passed on September 18, 2013. Belmont is the location of the CC campus at the time Jack Dillon attended the school. MB)

Catholic Central’s Novi camus is grand by every measure. From the beautiful, wooded grounds and carefully tended stadium and athletic fields outside, to the state of the art classrooms and labs inside, everything about CC impresses. The chapel’s stained glass window and the many “halls of fame” remind students of the past, and the School Seal in the floor of the entry hall has started one of the new traditions of Detroit Catholic Central-Novi.

While the halls of CC celebrate the school’s rich tradition, every current Catholic Central student’s experience is defined by the Novi campus. Novi is Catholic Central’s fifth home, and the life of a Shamrock was very different back at Breakfast Drive, Outer Drive, Belmont and Harper. In the age of IPhones, IPods, laptops, Facebook , and acronyms like WiFi, HDTV, and LOL, it may be good to reflect on what it was like to be a CC student in the days of the DSR, LSMFT (in the stairways and lavs) and World War II (acronym WWII).

I had the honor to sit down recently with John “Jack” Dillon of the CC graduating class of 1944, who went to CC during the Belmont years. A breakfast interview that wife Jan and daughter Marybeth thought should have taken about sixty minutes, turned out to be much too short at three and a half hours. The talk came easy, as I thought it would. Jan and John Dillon had started raising their family on the next block from where I grew up, and John Dillon was the first judge before whom I had appeared (as a lawyer).

While one of my primary interests was his high school experience, the discussion often turned to those matters most important him: his family, his faith and his service to the community as a District Court Judge in Redford.

Jack Dillon and his brother Bill ’42, both went to CC after attending grade school at Visitation. Jack, the youngest of five children, was the son of James Dillon, an Irish immigrant, and Ford worker who had left school after fifth grade. His mother, Irene, also worked as a seamstress to support the family.

Visitation Parish had its own High School back in those days, but the family thought it was important for Bill and Jack to go to CC. Jack remembers that none of the boys in his grade school class that stayed at Visitation High School ever went on to college.

It was not easy for the Dillon boys to get to CC in those days. The family home was near Davison and West Grand Boulevard, and Catholic Central was located behind Blessed Sacrament Cathedral. No car pools, no kids with cars back then. That was all right, as there was no parking lot at CC for anyone to park in, anyway. The Dillon boys came to CC by DSR bus—two buses and one hour travel time each way to get the four miles to school. Bus fare was six cents, which included the one cent transfer-- amounts of money that will buy exactly nothing these days.

Enrollment was between four and five hundred at the time, and virtually all classes were taught by priests. Those that weren’t were taught by Basilian Scholastics. All students took two years of Latin, the only foreign language offered, with the really smart students taking four years. “Electives” were virtually non-existent. Most students took all the same classes. Jack was an honor roll student and a member of the Science Club, but could only remember a single science lab in the building.

Jack Dillon was a basketball player during all four years at CC but while the gym was brand new it was not attached to the school. While most of the CC community remember that Catholic Central never had a home field on campus before Novi, during the Belmont years, the campus was landlocked, and football players had to take a bus to get to practice.

On the other hand, there was a (some) pretty good facility(ies) close by for religious services. Every school day began with Mass at Blessed Sacrament Cathedral.

Student discipline was a little different in the early Forties. Now you would think no student of even moderate intelligence would mouth off to a Basilian Father. But some tried. Judge Dillon recalls one instance when a student (a football player, yet) talked back to a priest. Well, Father took the student by the nape of the neck and the seat of the pants and….. Well, I probably shouldn’t get too descriptive here. Suffice it to say that the student did come back to school, he didn’t mouth off again, and, contrary to popular legend, the classroom window was open at the time and it was only a three- foot drop to the ground.

When Jack Dillon started at CC, it was the era of the two- handed set shot and the underhanded free throw in basketball. Judge Dillon had practiced shooting in his backyard for years before coming to Catholic Central. He developed a very good one handed jump shot, pretty much unheard of then. In fact, he tells the story of when, as a freshman, he was taking jump shots in the CC gym. He was approached by none other than the immortal Fr. James Martin, who told Jack he would never play basketball for CC shooting like that. Jack replied that he could beat any CC player, varsity included, at 21 using a one-handed shot. Fr. Martin turned and walked away. There must have been something in what Jack said, as during his senior year in 1944, CC went to the state Semi-Finals, losing by one point to the eventual State Champions.

From Jack Dillon’s Senior Yearbook: “Master physicist, deadly cager, and all-around sportsman, “Chicken” has increased the blood pressure of many a Visitation colleen (sp?) at the weekly dances. Good-natured and easygoing as he is, he has the happy faculty of doing the right thing at the right time.”

Jack Dillon went on to the University of Detroit on a basketball scholarship, and when he lead U of D to victory over the City College of New York, as high scorer, he was, at that time, the youngest college basketball player, at age 17, to play at Madison Square Garden.

However, completion of college had to wait for a while. During World War II, many CC students were drafted before they could graduate from high school. Jack was still 17 when he graduated from CC in 1944, and started college the following year. But, he turned 18 in December, 1944, and was serving in the US infantry in the South Pacific before the war ended.

 

Judge Dillon finished college and law school and went on to be the longest-serving District Judge in Redford Township history. He and his bride Jan have raised four children, including CC grads, John ’77, and Andy ’80. Many Dillon grandchildren have attended CC, and more will be entering Catholic Central in the coming years.

With student experiences so different, what could the Wixom boy, the Redford and Detroit boys have in common? What does CC give all its young men? Here’s a quote from “Jack”, “Chicken”, John, Judge Dillon: "What was instilled in us at CC was the importance of a good education; staying true to our Catholic faith with devotion to our Blessed Mother; and praying to find our vocation in life to lead us to our eternal reward."

I guess that is because all of us CC boys do have one acronym in common, the Congregation of St. Basil—CSB.