IVC Omaha Evening of Gratitude 2024
About Our Honorees:
Fr. Larry Gillick, SJ was born in Milwaukee and attended Marquette Jesuit High and St. Norbert College before entering the Society of Jesus in 1960. He received his bachelor’s degree from St. Louis University in 1966. He taught at Campion Jesuit High in Wisconsin for the next three years. He was ordained in June 1972 after completing his theology studies at Regis College in Toronto. For the next seven years, he was on the staff of the seminary in Toronto as a Spiritual Director for the younger Jesuits.
He was sent to Omaha in 1979 as Spiritual Director for the young Jesuit Scholastics studying at Creighton University and living at Campion House in Omaha. In 1984, he assumed the office of Rector of the Jesuit Community at Creighton Prep in Omaha. He served in this capacity until the fall of 1991, when he was assigned to be the Director of the Deglman Center for Ignatian Spirituality at Creighton University, and has continued in this office since then. His support of the Ignatian Volunteer Corps has been constant and unwavering since its founding in 2008.
Fr. Gregory Carlson, SJ is Associate Professor of Literature and Theology at Creighton and Associate Director of the Deglman Center for Ignatian Spirituality. An award-winning teacher with a doctorate in Classics from the University of Heidelberg, he has complemented his research on ancient poets and storytellers with wide-ranging presentations and interactions on Ignatian Spirituality. The Jesuit order has called on him to be active in the formation of younger Jesuits. Creighton University has him working frequently with Creighton faculty and students in retreats, spiritual direction, and formation for mission.
Fr. Carlson’s history has opened up for him an unusual and engaging constellation of expertise growing out of personal passions. One of these passions, fostered by his father’s occupation as toy-buyer for Milwaukee’s major department stores, is for the place of play in life. Another has to do with fables like those we associate with the name Aesop, a form of literature that plays with story. Fr. Carlson has developed a world-class collection at Creighton of some 10,000 books and thousands of objects all representing fables — in 66 languages. His passion for human growth in spirituality shows up not only in his retreats and spiritual direction but in works like “Faith and Fables,” twelve DVD video conferences using fables and parables to engage a mature contemporary spirituality. Fr. Carlson is a previous Omaha IVC Advisory Board member. He and Fr. Gillick led numerous retreats, days of reflection and promoted the Ignatian Volunteer Corps tirelessly.