6 • Call 1.800.348.4732 in my lifetime.” And that’s with a staff of four — including Mary, Brother Brian, Marianist Brother Earl Leistikow, assistant province archivist, and Lisa Matye Finnie, project archivist. Brother Earl has been an archivist for the Marianists since 1994. At the time of this interview, the former schoolteacher was filing “discovered” files of Marianist Father John Gorman, who died in the early 1970s. Upon death, it is standard practice for a Marianist’s personal files to be shipped to the National Archives. But that doesn’t always happen — hence, they often receive “discovered” files: boxes that were stored and forgotten, Brother Earl explains. Painstaking as it is, he likes the work. “I enjoy finding out things I didn’t know be- fore,” Brother Earl says. “The past is prologue; ideas from the past give insight into the future.” Relics: Stories waiting to be told To walk into the National Archives building (by appointment only) is to walk into Marianist lore. Near the entrance, there’s a bell that was cast in 1851 in Cincinnati and used at St. Mary’s Institute, the precursor to St. Mary’s University, formerly located off the River- walk in San Antonio. There are magic playing cards and a signed David Copperfield (the magician) photograph that belonged to Marianist Brother John Hamman, himself a world-renowned magician credited with inventing more than 100 card tricks. There is a collection of hand-painted magic disks — an early form of animation popular in the early- and mid-19th century — that belonged to Marianist Father Louis Reile. There are two stained-glass panels designed by Marianist Brother Francis Grisez, from the Chapel of St. Joseph the Worker in Marcy, New York, where a Marianist novitiate formerly was located. There are boxes filled to the brim with VHS cassettes and audiocassettes of sermons and lectures from various Marianists, each with its own story. “Part of my job is to listen to stories that need to be told,” says Mary. “We want this to be a living archive.” The intent is to eventually style the National Archives entrance into something like a museum, with selected items serving as talking points for researchers and visitors. “The lives of the Marianists are interwoven in the geography, history and culture of the eras in which they lived and worked,” says Mary. Because their mission has been primarily education, the Marianists have impacted the lives of their students who moved Brother Brian Zampier, SM, with a painting by Brother Louis Schuster, SM, who died in 1989.