DONOR SPOTLIGHT: BC celebrates the life of Mr. John Stephens '40 with the dedication of the Stephens Lecture Hall in the Brown STEM Wing

Benedictine Military School was excited to celebrate the dedication of the Stephens Lecture Hall in memory of Mr. John Stephens, Benedictine Military School Class of 1940, on Tuesday. We were honored to have with us members of the Stephens and Halligan families.

Mr. Stephens was one of Benedictine’s most generous donors. Before he passed away in 2015 at age 92, he and BC Headmaster Fr. Frank Ziemkiewicz had been discussing opportunities for him to make a gift to Benedictine. Sadly, Mr. Stephens was not able to see the beautiful college-style lecture hall that is named in his memory but his daughter, Kay Stephens Halligan, and grandson, Kevin Halligan (BC Class of 1993), told us “he would be elated” and that it would have brought “tears to his eyes.”

“He would be elated. He really would,” Kay Stephens Halligan said of her father. “It would bring tears to his eyes. He would get emotional. I wanted to do this because I know he intended to do something. He would never ever have requested that something be named after him so he would consider this a tremendous honor and he would be very moved about it. Very proud.”

Mr. Stephens’ father, John W. Stephens, came to Savannah from Syria. His mother, Sarah, was from the Atlanta area. When John attended Benedictine, Sarah would volunteer every day in the cafeteria, cooking lunches and serving meals to our Cadets. After graduating from Benedictine, Mr. Stephens served as a captain in the U.S. Army during World War II. He saw combat service in the 81st Division in the Pacific Theatre and commanded an infantry company through the Philippine campaign. He oversaw 300 men in his company in the South Pacific. Mr. Stephens met his future wife, Dorothy Kessler, at an Army hospital in New Guinea. They were married in Savannah after the war (they were married for 36 years) and had three children: Kathleen Ruth, John Michael, and Mary Elizabeth.

“He would never talk about (World War II) very much but he had a picture in our garage of his company; a big, long picture,” Kay Stephens Halligan said. “The only thing he ever told me was he was scheduled to take his men into some type of beach invasion the next day and he already knew that he was going to have a large number of casualties, is what he told me. And they dropped the (Atomic) bomb that night before. That kept him from having to go into a beach somewhere in the South Pacific, the fact that they dropped the bomb. It was an awful thing, but it saved a lot of his men. He didn’t have to live with that guilt, that posttraumatic stress disorder. Maybe he wouldn’t have even survived. I don’t know how men do that. I just don’t know how they do that. He was very young. He wasn’t too far out of high school when he went in the Army. I look at my twin (grandsons), who will be 18 in February, and I just can’t imagine 18-year-olds in battle. We took the boys to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., about three years ago and they were very moved by it, all three of them. I asked them if they had studied what happened back then and they said they had studied about the Holocaust. Whether that will stay with them like it stayed with us, I don’t know. Like, 9/11. It has stayed with me all these years. For them, they weren’t even here. They study it but they weren’t born.”

Mr. Stephens went into the insurance business right after he got out of the Army. He worked for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company, one of the larger life insurance companies in the country, and at one time he was only one of five people in the world who had been a member of the Million-Dollar Roundtable for 50-plus years. The Million-Dollar Roundtable is an international organization for people in insurance. And to make the Million-Dollar Roundtable, you must have a million dollars-plus in premiums in a year. And Mr. John Stephens did it 50-plus years.

We are humbled and grateful to the Stephens and Halligan families for their generosity and support of Benedictine. Mr. Stephens loved Benedictine and he quietly helped countless young men, financially, so that they could attend grade school at Sacred Heart and then high school at Benedictine. He also helped many young women attend St. Vincent’s Academy. We are grateful to Mr. Stephens for his love and passion for Benedictine Military School. He would be proud to know that his grandsons – Kevin and Mary Jo’s children - Stephen, Sean, and Colin attended Benedictine. Sean and Colin, who are twins, are in the BC Class of 2025. Another of Mr. Stephens’ grandsons, Rand Parsons, Jr., is a member of the BC Class of 2021. Kay’s brother, John Michael Stephens, is a member of the BC Class of 1968.

“My grandfather, BC was near and dear to his heart,” Kevin Halligan said. “It was his philanthropic goal to help people go to school at Benedictine. He always felt like they needed a Catholic education, the environment that it provides young men, and he always wanted people to have the opportunity to do that, so to have a place where his name is in it, in a place that meant so much to him, is special. He believed in what BC stood for and what it provided to young men in all walks of life. My grandfather was a man of honor. He always did for people. He lived a simple life, but he always wanted to provide opportunities for people to have a better opportunity to get where they wanted to. And he believed in BC being able to provide that.”