St. Joseph Parish celebrates NFL Coach Don Shula

By Tom Tracy - Florida Catholic

MIAMI | His legacy is established as one of the greatest NFL coaches, who in the early 1970s twice led his team, the Miami Dolphins, to Super Bowl victories and an unprecedented "perfect season." 

 

South Floridians also know the Ohio-born Coach Don Shula for his track record as a community-minded civic leader, businessman, philanthropist and daily communicant at Mass: Shula has had long associations with several parishes here and friendships with Miami archdiocesan clergy and bishops alike. 

 

What may be less known to sports buffs is what Shula might have become had he not thrown himself into coaching at an early age: 

 

“I was interviewed with him for a network documentary in which he says at one point he wanted to be a seminarian, although that was not included in the final documentary,” said Father Juan Sosa, pastor of St. Joseph Parish on Miami Beach, where Shula has been a longtime parishioner following an equally long affiliation at Our Lady of the Lakes Parish in Miami Lakes. 

 

At St. Joseph, Shula and his wife Mary Anne supported the completion of a three-story, state-of-the-art facility with music room, computer lab and spacious offices for the parish elementary school (now a charter school). 

 

More recently, the Shulas launched a $10,000 annual scholarship endowment fund at the parish, to assist one local family in transitioning a child from a public school to a Catholic high school in the archdiocese. The endowment will be in the Shula name and supervised by a parish committee. 

 

This is a good time for the local Catholic community to thank the Shulas, Father Sosa said. 

 

“Every other organization, the sports world, the business world, the social world of South Florida and even the U.S. President recognized the (Dolphins) team from his era, and many documentaries have been made about him, but I don’t think the Church was recognizing him,” said Father Sosa, who joined Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski and the Catholic community Nov. 15 in honoring the Shulas for their philanthropy and leadership in Miami. 

 

Archbishop Wenski presented Shula with a lifetime achievement and appreciation award at a Shooting for the Stars parish gala for 150 guests at the Miami Beach Resort. He thanked Shula for his support of Catholic education, and in particular for creating the new scholarship fund at St. Joseph Parish. Archbishop Wenski noted that sometimes the priests of the archdiocese humorously refer to him as the "Don Shula" of the local church for his leadership style as archbishop.  

 

Among those on hand for the gala were Sean Clancy, a former Miami Dolphins player who served as the master of ceremonies for the event, and Msgr. Frank Casale, president of St. Thomas University in Miami Gardens. 

 

“It’s nice to be remembered,” said Shula, who is now 84 but still keeps a fairly high profile in the community. He recently took part in a public conversation that coincided with a "Living Legends" photography exhibition at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach. 

 

In Ohio, the Shula family consisted of seven children, including a set of triplets. Shula's father held a job in the fishing industry for $15 a week, and later worked at a rayon plant outside of Cleveland. Young Shula attended elementary school at St. Mary's, a private Catholic school in Painesville; his mother was a devout Catholic, and his father converted to the religion when they married, according to biographical information. 

 

Shula is a graduate of John Carroll University near Cleveland, where he studied on a football scholarship and became close to the Jesuits on faculty there. He later endowed the Don Shula Chair in Philosophy, which supports the Philosophy Department at John Carroll by presenting programs of interest to philosophers and the general public. Shula's children and grandchildren attended Catholic schools in South Florida over the years, including St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Fort Lauderdale and Chaminade-Madonna College Preparatory in Hollywood. 

 

Clancy, who played for the Dolphins in the late 1970s, noted that Shula is credited with being “the winningest coach" in NFL history, with 347 career victories and two Super Bowl titles. He was a unanimous inductee into the NFL Hall of Fame and the only coach to have an undefeated NFL team: the perfect season accomplished by the 1972 Dolphins, who went 17-0 and won the Super Bowl. 

 

Reyna Jovel, assistant to the office manager at St. Joseph Parish, noted that the Shulas have donated personal sports memorabilia to the parish educational endowment effort, and that they are still active in the life of the parish. At the dinner, Shula was presented with a plaque in the name of the parish, and gave orchids to Mrs. Shula.

“We will hope to have an annual fund drive every year to replenish our funds,” Jovel said, adding that the parish website features a link for donors. “We are hoping this will be the beginning of many years of raising funds for the scholarship.” 

 

Shula, who owns and operates a chain of 35 restaurants under the Shula name, also formed the Don Shula Foundation to fund breast cancer research (in memory of his first wife, Dorothy, who died of the disease). 

 

Mary Anne Shula is an Arkansas native who has been married to Don Shula since 1993. She is deeply involved in business, politics and philanthropy. She is the president of Shula Enterprises and March of Dimes named her Arkansas Citizen of the Year for her efforts on behalf of students with learning disabilities. She is also a former director of the Miami Heart Institute and a supporter of countless causes for the needy.