It was the day before we were to depart on our vacation out West when we received the dreadful word about the passing of a man we had the utmost respect for.

Beyond my immediate thought that heaven automatically gained a “shining star,” my thoughts shook me upon the realization we would have to miss the funeral of this great man.

John “Jack” Malarkey and I went back 56 years together from the first day I enrolled in Marian Catholic High School, following two brothers and preceding three other siblings. For those 5½ decades, we were friends.

Jack was a mentor to thousands, including me, in academics, athletics, family and life itself.

He taught us discipline, right from wrong, and, most of all, respect. In the arena of Marian athletics, he always insisted we respect our opponents, despite that not being the same in others’ case, as there were and still are others who feel differently, because, to Jack, “God hath no enemies.”

I remember a testament of how he gentlemanly held himself that came a few years ago when we traveled to Shamokin, where Jack’s grandson, Johnny, was playing for our beloved Colts. During a pause in the game, Mike Klembara, a legend in his own right at Lourdes Regional, took the microphone to tell the audience there was an icon in the gym in Mr. Malarkey.

To me, that spoke volumes about “Mr. Marian,” to know a foe had recognized the unparalleled commitment to Marian that Jack had made not for years, but for decades.

There are countless stories about Jack that speak to the kind of principal he was at Marian. Many are untold, but one of my favorites is a time when a visitor to the school in Hometown entered the front door and gymnasium, only to find a man on his knees refinishing the playing floor like he routinely did in summers.

“Excuse me, I’m looking for the principal,” the visitor said.

“You’re looking at him,” Jack matter-of-factly said. Incidentally, didn’t I just read where Jim Thorpe is getting its floor redone at a cost of over $50,000?

Then there was the time when a caller to the school insisted on speaking to the principal. “You can’t,” the secretary said. “Why not?” asked the caller. “Because he’s up on the roof shoveling snow off of it because there’s a leak in the gymnasium,” the explanation followed. To Jack, no task was too difficult if it meant helping Marian and its families to succeed.

I’ll never forget how Jack devoted his lifetime to creating opportunities for sons and daughters of parents who wanted a Catholic education for their children but at times lacked the resources to make that happen. We were among them, as Jack, through the former Schuylkill Carbon Agency for Manpower (SCAM) program, hired youths to work at Marian to bring more funds to households. And through decades of helping to raise money for Marian through the Men of Marian and Blue and Gold clubs, Jack created opportunities for lots and lots of families.

I could go on and on about the hundreds, maybe thousands, of reasons why Jack Malarkey was a different kind of principal. To me, he was a breed unto himself, a truly altruistic human being who had an unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others, traits that without question will never be duplicated or replaced.