Bralove, who led the restoration plan, said the hardest part of the process for him was the patience he had to exercise waiting for the monthslong project to be completed.
But Michele Marconi, the college’s chief financial officer and another leader on the refurbishment, said there were other challenges, too — namely, getting the proper pieces and finding someone with the know-how to restore the original 1960s Brunswick lanes.
The first obstacle, he said, was that there was no longer a Brunswick representative in Italy, so they ended up using a Netherlands-based company for help getting the parts.
Marconi noted that “the gutters at the end were all broken” and that it probably would have been easier to install something new than to fix the old. But, he said, they were committed to keeping the 1960s charm and were able to find a carpenter to do the repair work.
“We had three different companies working on it … not only delivering the parts, but actually assembling the pieces,” he said, including a Brunswick expert who travels all around Europe.
The financial officer also pointed out the now-rare feature of the lanes with above-ground ball returns rather than underground, something he said is “really typical of the ’60s, ’50s.”
Rector Powers said “part of formation is to teach the men to study hard, to work hard, to be a complete self-gift to God and his Church, but also to have a healthy leisure in his life, and this is a great way to have some leisure with their brother seminarians.”
“And finally it’s something that faculty can actually compete in with these guys,” he added with a chuckle.
Hannah Brockhaus is Catholic News Agency’s senior Rome correspondent. She grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and has a degree in English from Truman State University in Missouri.
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