Bob Elder is on a mission to share the wisdom of St. John Henry Newman– one click at a time. Elder, 84, has created websites that share Cardinal Newman’s works and life with the world.
But first, Elder had to be called home to the Catholic Church. Elder’s mother, Marian Adams Elder, baptized him in the Methodist church. He was inspired by her love of neighbor while growing up. “She was a great example of service,” he said. “She was volunteering in a local elementary school, helping little kids learn how to read.”
But in college, Elder drifted away from Christianity. After college, he joined the Peace Corps and traveled across the world.
“They sent me to the Philippines to teach in a teacher’s college, and that was my first experience living in a Catholic culture,” he said.
This exposure to Catholicism led him to his future wife, Socorro, nicknamed Cory, who was a lifelong Catholic.
When he returned to the U.S., Elder knew he had met someone special, with “the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen,” and he began to court Cory through letters. “I went to graduate school, and when I got back, I got a job here in D.C. When I’d earned enough money to pay for a plane ticket and expenses, I went back to the Philippines in 1970, and we got married,” he said.
When Elder returned to the U.S., he regularly attended church with Cory. “I promised to raise our children as Catholic,” he said. However, it would take 11 years before he entered the church.
“My hard skull was difficult to penetrate, I guess,” he said. “She challenged me one day to think about what my example was going to mean to my children in their faith.”
In 1980, the family transferred to St. Ambrose Church in Annandale. Elder began meditating on his religious beliefs and felt increasingly drawn to the faith that his wife had long exemplified. He was received into full communion with the church in 1981.
His devotion to Cardinal Newman, canonized Oct. 13, 2019, developed later.
In 1997, while teaching math and statistics at Marymount University in Arlington, he read an article on Cardinal Newman’s developing cause for canonization, and he remembered a book he had read years ago in grad school written by the future saint. He wandered through Marymount’s library, pulling more books by Cardinal Newman off the shelves.
“I started reading about him, reading things he’d written, as much as I could get my hands on,” he said.
Elder felt called to share his interest for then-Venerable Cardinal Newman. “I had just recently taken a course in website development just for personal interest. And the teacher had encouraged us to add something worthwhile to the internet,” he said. At the time, the internet was becoming more popular, with thousands of websites added to the World Wide Web.
Elder decided to create a website with digitized access to Cardinal Newman’s works. “I would check out a book from the library, photocopy it at an Office Depot or somewhere, and then run it through a scanner and optical character recognition software,” he said. “Then, I had to go through and clean up whatever mess was there. So, it was a tedious process.”
He completed his website in 2002 with the URL newmanreader.org.
It wasn’t long before the website caught the attention of Father Drew Morgan, parochial vicar of Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish in Pittsburgh, who founded the National Institute for Newman Studies in 2002. Elder became involved with the fledgling institute and decided to transfer the website’s rights over to the institute.
A Jan. 27, 2004, letter from Father Morgan to Elder described the website’s impact. “The other day, a young seminarian stopped by to see if I could point him in a direction for a paper he had to write. He wanted to write on Newman and social justice. We looked around at several works, not finding anything very exciting. He then said, ‘Oh, that’s okay, Father. I’ll look it up on newmanreader.’ … You have really made a significant impact on how people go about researching Newman,” Father Morgan wrote. By the time Elder received the letter, the website had received 98,520 page requests from online users.
Like his mother, Elder enjoyed serving the local community and the church. Over the years, he and Cory served at the diocesan Marriage Encounter retreats, diocesan Conferences for the Engaged and the St. Ambrose bereavement council, volunteers who assist with funeral services. Elder also served as an usher for 15 years and has been a knight of the St. Ambrose Knights of Columbus Council No. 8403 for 40 years.
The couple has two children: a daughter, Lorna, and a son, Matthew. They treasure the blessings of grandchildren: first came triplets and later, three more grandchildren, two of whom were twins. “They came in bunches,” Elder joked.
But Elder never forgets his love of Cardinal Newman, especially with his canonization in 2019. “When they announced that he would be canonized, I wondered what the internet looks like these days,” Elder said. “So, I decided to make another small website that would direct people to all these resources and promote knowledge of him.” His second website, stjhnewman.guide, includes a free e-book as well.
Sharing the life and writings of Cardinal Newman is more than an academic fascination for Elder.
“I saw a chance,” Elder said, his voice catching, “to show my gratitude for my faith, all that I received.”
Find out more
To view Bob Elder’s websites, go to stjhnewman.guide and newmanreader.org.
