A rainstorm, a long list of contact numbers and adoration prayers answered made this summer’s diocesan WorkCamp even more memorable for one teen volunteer.
Benjamin Gilroy, 19, has been attending WorkCamp for years. The weeklong summer program for high school students combines service work with a spiritual, community-focused experience. Hundreds of teens and dozens of contractors and support staffers converge in a rural area — this year in the Shenandoah Valley — to do home repairs for folks living on the margins.
This year, as a senior graduating from Fishburn Military School in Waynesboro, college was on Gilroy’s mind. He applied to the U.S. Naval Academy but was placed on the waitlist. He turned down a few, including Villanova University and Virginia Tech. His back-up plan was a full Marine scholarship to The Catholic University of America in Washington, but he kept thinking about and praying about his decision and the Naval Academy.
At eucharistic adoration June 24, the Tuesday of WorkCamp, Gilroy kept reflecting on a Bible passage “about the pain you are going through now is nothing compared to the joy coming later. That kept recycling in my head,” he said.
“Right before I went to bed I said, ‘You know what God, you’ve got this planned for me,’ ” assuming that he would attend Catholic U. “I said, ‘Let’s go, let’s run it; this is the plan you have for me, that’s going work out just fine.’ ”
This is where his mom, Monica Gilroy, picks up the story.
She was also volunteering at WorkCamp. She’d seen Benjamin at a work site, but he was transferred to another site because he could work a jackhammer. A rainstorm came up and she ushered all the kids at her site into her car where she’d left her phone. There were several missed calls and voicemails.
“This is the dean of academics … trying to get a hold of him,” one message said. “He said he couldn’t understand how an 18-year-old boy doesn’t have his phone on him,” Monica laughed. Teens are not allowed to have their phones at WorkCamp.
It took time, but Monica tracked him down. The contractor shouted for Benjamin using his full name. “My neck just snapped. I thought, ‘Oh no, that’s not good.’ It was my mom; she scared me half to death.”
His mom said she was going to put him on hold after saying, “We are going to get through it.” He said he sat down and thought please don’t be something bad. “She takes me off hold, and I said, ‘Mom who died?’ ” And he heard her chuckling.
His mom had a three-way call and Benjamin heard, “Hello, this is the dean of academics at the U.S. Naval Academy. How are you, Benjamin?”
“I’m good,” he said.
“We are calling to offer you an appointment.”
“I was in shock; I didn’t even know what to think. I asked for some time to think about it.”
Monica said the dean replied, “Son, it’s 4:30. I don’t think this should be a question in your mind.”
Benjamin said he had about a half-hour to reply. He was driven back to WorkCamp homebase and he made a couple calls. He called his grandmother.
“(The dean) had called every number on my contact list,” Bemjamin said. “I called nana, she said, ‘I heard you got into the Naval Academy.’ I said how did you know? My grandma, uncles and aunts knew before me that I got my offer.”
If he accepted, Benjamin had to be at the academy by 9 a.m. the next day.
“I will never forget this,” he said. “I called the dean back on my mom’s cell in a bathroom (at homebase); there was nowhere else to go.”
Afterward, he walked up to his mom and said, “Looks like I’m going to need a ride to Annapolis.”
His father, Michael, picked him up and they drove there nonstop arriving at 12:30 a.m. “I hit the bed and I woke up at 6 a.m. to report to the Naval Academy.” It was I-Day, or Induction Day, when all the freshmen arrive for Plebe Summer.
Monica couldn’t leave WorkCamp because she was with the youth group from her parish, St. Theresa Church in Ashburn. She did get to watch a livestream of Induction Day with other WorkCamp staff who all cheered.
Both mother and son mentioned how extraordinary it was that he was surrounded by people who have long supported him when the call came in: his confirmation sponsor and parish youth minister Paul Dwyer, and Father Peter St. George, former parochial vicar of Blessed Sacrament Church in Alexandria, who was just commissioned as a chaplain to the U.S. Navy. He gave Benjamin a blessing before he left for the academy.
Benjamin, the oldest of five children, was an altar server, and Monica said, “his faith has been such a blessing.”
He’d been through military high school. “That was hard,” he said, “but it helped me in the sense I learned how to interact with people and manage my time better.”
At the academy, Benjamin said summer was “definitely challenging: up 5:30 a.m. for workout, trainings, obstacles, training on boats, range qualifications, marksmanship. It’s still challenging, but I’m loving it here. I’m so glad that God had this place in store for me.”
“What got me through it was my friends and family, my sponsor. Sitting in my bed, thinking I don’t know if I can do another day of this, I thought of Mr. Dwyer, and said it’s all good, one more day, one more week at a time,” he said.
At the end of the summer, the plebes, dressed in their while uniforms, got to see family, “and I got my phone back,” he said.
“Hearing the stories of others, I was inspired to come here,” he said. “Maybe if someone sees this or reads about it, they might have an idea. This is gonna be a story I tell forever.”
Augherton can be reached at [email protected].
