Stanley MacNevin, 82, former MIT chaplain

The Rev. Stanley F. MacNevin, a Dedham native who became a Catholic in his mid-20s and became a Paulist priest, spent a lifetime in campus ministry, including serving as MIT's chaplain in the 1970s.

He died in his sleep from pancreatic and liver cancer on Dec. 21 at his home at the Paulist Center in Boston. He was 82.

During the turbulent late 1960s, Father MacNevin was posted at Memphis State University where he helped launch the first fraternity for black students and marched with sanitation workers in their landmark successful battle for better wages.

"He was very proud of the fact he was able to take part in those walks," said the Rev. Wilfred Brimley of Boston, a fellow Paulist priest.

Friends and family said Father MacNevin was a fun-loving man who enjoyed a good cigar, a round of golf, and dinners with friends.

Brimley recalled playing golf in Vero Beach, Fla., with Father MacNevin, who drove the golf cart that day. Brimley found himself trying to hit a hole near a pond.

"I got my club out to hit the second shot and Stan says to me, 'Bill, you might want to look a bit ahead of where you're playing,' " Brimley said. "There, staring me in the face, was a 10- to 12-foot alligator."

The gator didn't alarm Father MacNevin. "He was driving the cart. He could get away better than me," Brimley said.

Father MacNevin was one of six sons born to Earl and Mary (Downey). His mother was from the Boston area. His father, who was a carpenter from Prince Edward Island, worked as a rodeo rider as a young man and once competed in The Calgary Stampede, the oldest rodeo in North America, according to his family.

Father's MacNevin's mother died in childbirth when he was a young boy, according to his family. The children were later raised by his mother's sister, Sara, who married his father. Only the oldest brother, Earl, 85, of Venice, Fla., survives.

Father MacNevin came to Catholicism as a young adult after growing up in a home where his mother's family were Baptist and his father was a Congregationalist, according to family members.

Father MacNevin's nephew Kevin MacNevin recalled his uncle as an affable man. "As little kids, we enjoyed him coming over," he said. "He could tell a good joke and was a trusted adviser and friend to our family always."

His uncle once recounted his role in a prank at MIT in the early 1970s, he said.

During a noisy party at a campus ministry building, Father MacNevin arrived in his pajamas complaining about the noise and staged a fight with other pranksters.

"It was all very shocking and ultimately very funny to all the people who were in on this," Kevin said. "He was willing to come down to that level and just have fun."

Father MacNevin was ordained in 1960 by Richard Cardinal Cushing at the Paulist Center in Boston, where he took his first assignment, and later served as director from 1978 to 1979, and as Superior of the Paulist Fathers of Boston from 1991 to 1997.

He received his first campus assignment in 1962 when he went to West Virginia University in Morgantown.

From 1966 to 1970, he served at Memphis State before heading to MIT, where he worked until the mid-1970s.

From 1974 to 1978, Father MacNevin was director of the Newman Center at Ohio State University and helped establish the center's team for leading marriage preparation sessions.

He returned to the Paulist Center as director for a year in 1978-1979 and then spent a year on sabbatical study at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge.

His most recent campus ministry was his assignment to the University of Connecticut at Storrs from 1982 to 1990.

In addition to his brother Earl, Father MacNevin leaves several nieces and nephews.

A service was held. Burial was in St. Joseph's Cemetery in West Roxbury.