When Holy Cross Brothers start projects against great odds, they’re spurred by the needs of others. Brother Stanley Culotta’s life unfolded just this way in two different fields — education and medicine.

“I didn’t like going to school,” he admits, “although I didn’t miss classes and always did my schoolwork. I enjoyed the topics covered in math and science — solving problems and learning concepts about physics — but I would have preferred to stay home and tinker with my interests. Now [after more than 25 years as a teacher and school administrator] I’m sure that learning and teaching are different!”

With the encouragement of his teachers at Holy Cross School in New Orleans, Brother Stanley decided to enter the novitiate in Watertown, Wisconsin.

“There were around 20 of us there, and since I had never lived in a large family, the equivalent of having so many brothers seemed really different,” he recalls. “To me it was a refreshing experience. It was something I chose, and I met people who had chosen the same thing and were working toward the same goal. It was almost like being a team.”

In 1955 he entered the University of Notre Dame, where he studied under faculty whose teaching style influenced his own.

“My chemistry professor, Emil T. Hofman, was such an organized teacher,” says Brother Stanley. “He did everything completely and explained things so clearly. I also had two wonderful math teachers who were well prepared and almost laid-back, so the information just flowed from them. From them, I picked up a very relaxed approach to teaching.”

Brother Stanley put their influence to work at Holy Cross High School in San Antonio, where he spent the next 15 years in the classroom and working as assistant principal and principal. At the time there were about 15 Brothers at the school, and he also served as Superior of the Brothers’ residence.

An Archdiocesan school on the city’s west side, Holy Cross serves Hispanic families who struggled to provide a decent life for their children. In 1968, Brother Stanley faced a great challenge when the Archdiocese said it could not continue to subsidize the school and it would have to close.

“We decided no, the school should stay open,” he says. “The Archdiocese was subsidizing $75,000 a year, so we had to scramble to raise the money. That same year San Antonio hosted the Hemisphere Fair, where singer Vikki Carr was performing. Brother William Duling and Brother Robert McCarthy went down to see her and told her the situation. She said, ‘All I have is my voice.’”

The Brothers told her that was quite enough and invited her to visit the school. The singer decided she would do what she could to help Holy Cross, and over the years she gave ten benefit concerts.

“With her help, we brought a lot of attention to Holy Cross, which also encouraged other people to help us out,” says Brother Stanley. “For some people, education is automatic, and they don’t give it a second thought. But people who are struggling, like our families, realize how important education is.”

They also pursue it avidly. Almost all of Holy Cross High School’s seniors are accepted to college, and some graduates have gone on to serve in Brother Stanley’s other ministry, a neighborhood clinic known as the Holy Cross Center.

“As we at the school got involved with the community in San Antonio,” he says, “we asked ourselves, ‘How could we serve the neighborhood in addition to providing an education?’ We conceived the idea of a community center, and one of components was healthcare. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, this is a physician-shortage area, with five fewer physicians than are needed. It is also a medically underserved area.

“I kept thinking about the community center and thought maybe one of ways to get this started was as a physician,” Brother Stanley recalls. “I got approval to pursue this, took pre-med courses at St. Edward’s University, then became a medical student at the University of Texas Health Science Center. After doing my residency in McAllen, Texas, I ‘put out my shingle’ in 1981.”

The Holy Cross Center outgrew its original clinic, expanding to a five-physician, full-service health center and relocating across the street from Holy Cross High School. The Sisters of Holy Cross operated it until drastic changes in healthcare made it difficult for them to continue, and they left the facility to the medical practitioners. Today incorporated as the Holy Cross Family Practice Association, the center serves 100 people a day, seeing to basic healthcare needs of children, the elderly, and those in between.

Although Brother Stanley still visits the center, he returned to Holy Cross High School in 1995.

“My original intention was to get the clinic started,” he explains. “I enjoyed it, and the patients were great, but it was going well.”

His alma mater, University of Texas Health Science Center, honored Brother Stanley in 2001 as Distinguished Alumnus of the Medical School for his contributions to his neighbors. Three years before, Reader’s Digest magazine named him “An American Hero in Education” — one of only 10 educators in the nation recognized. At that point he had again become principal of Holy Cross. In 2001 he was named president.

Reflecting on his career in education, he recalls how going to college sparked his interest in affecting the future of young people.

“When you get some good news, you want to tell everybody,” he says. “This was good news for me. I got really involved in teaching, thinking all the time, how could I influence my students to pursue an education?”

With the same relaxed enthusiasm he learned from his college mentors, Brother Stanley also encourages his students to give a budding vocation the chance to grow.

“I always tell the students, if you want to do something, go ahead and try it. Never tell yourself no,” he advises. “When I first left New Orleans and went up to the novitiate, there were three from our graduating class that joined the Brothers. We would tell each other, ‘If people would only try it, whether or not they stay, it would have an effect on the rest of their lives.’”