A brief personal narrative:the Web Site of
"You have accompanied me on my path, O Truth, teaching me what to avoid and what to desire" - Augustine, Confessions X, 40
A brief personal narrative:
I was raised in a small town in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York which is the area where my parents, two sisters, and brother live today. I had the nickname of "Schatzi" when I was very young. As a youth, when not enjoying village life in rural Trumansburg, New York, my family would visit nearby Ithaca where our cultural life centered mostly around Cornell University and the Hanger Theater. The area was an interesting and eclectic place to live in those days. It still is, but that was the heyday of the Ithaca Commons, the Moosewood Restaurant and Cabbagetown Cafe. The Hanger, Collegetown Bagels and the Johnson Museum of Art are still great.
We moved to Pennsylvania in 1981 where I attended Abington High School in the suburbs of Philadelphia. It was at AHS that I became involved in theater. I won the best actor award 1983 and 1984, and earned a school letter for acting. I was actively involved in the Latin Club, Key Club, and Scouting. Major interests in high school were the British Empire, poets like Dante and Milton, and my hero Theodore Roosevelt. I served my senior year as President of the Abington Key Club.
I went on to attend Gettysburg College, a historic institution in Pennsylvania with which my family has had a relationship since its founding in 1832. In fact my college choice was a deathbed promise to my maternal grandfather, "Granddad," The Rev. C. Leighton King (Gettysburg Academy '30, Gettysburg College '34, Gettysburg Seminary '37). Due to weak eyesight, I was rejected from USMC OCS for which Mother was thankful (Dad was a DI, third division, in the '50s, old school, 'nuff said). While at college I played rugby, was active in politics and on the Chapel Council, participated in ROTC, and had a lot of fun in Sigma Nu. I was better known as "Buzz" in those days. My senior thesis for my one major, Classical Studies, was on the cultic ritual and practices surrounding the ancient Greek mystery religion of Samothrace for which Dr. Charles Zabrowski, of blessed memory, was advisor. I participated some with theater as a college student including a rather fun outdoor production of "Medea" where I got to play Agamemnon under the direction of Classics professor Dr. Leslie Cahoon. It was in college that I discovered my affection for Plato and Jane Austen, and would gladly debate rationalism vs. empiricism, taking either side. I focused on American government in my other major, Political Science, which I studied primarily under Dr. Shirley Anne Warshaw. It was a thrill being involved in the Center for the Study of the Presidency in those halcyon days. I graduated with a BA in Liberal Arts and went on from there to attend grad school in Columbia, South Carolina.
I began in the MDiv program at The Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary with the intention of becoming a Lutheran minister. I was a rather orthodox Lutheran all through college, and got the nickname "little Luther" among my classmates at seminary. When I wasn't called "Spanky." The first course was an intensive summer program for learning New Testament Greek. My previous study of Latin helped a lot, and Dr. Charles Park Siegel, professor emeritus, was a marvelous teacher. It was at LTSS that I also had the honor of studying with Dr. David S. Yeago. A student of the "Yale School," it was from him that I first learned classical theistic systematic theology, about Nouvelle Théologie, and the merits of narrative theology. I grew to love the early church fathers and the Catholic ressourcement patristic revival, discovering in the process an affinity with the Anglo-Catholicism of nineteenth-century Tractarianism, a.k.a., the Oxford Movement. My Christian Neoplatonist tendencies, rooted in my college experience, began to flourish as an adopted personal philosophy. I studied intently the Alexandrian school of early Christian thought, and read ancient and Anglican poetry like that of Gregory Nazianzus and John Keble. It was then that I also grew to love South Carolina BBQ and Palladian architecture. I earned a MA in religion having concentrated on ecclesiastical history and historical theology. Due to the teaching of Dr. Robert Hawkins rites, liturgy and festal calendars are still an avocation of mine.
After moving back to the Philadelphia area I began my library science studies at Drexel University's College of Information Science and Technology (now called the iSchool), while concurrently working full-time at the small but substantial theological library at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. I began at LTSP as an assistant in technical services and upon earning my MS from Drexel I became Public Services Librarian and later Assistant Librarian/Acting Director of Krauth Memorial Library. During that time I served two terms as president of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Theological Library Association, and had the pleasure of indexing a book by the premiere Melanchthon scholar in the U.S. While at LTSP I also worked part-time in the Lutheran Archives Center, and as an instructor in pre-Reformation church history. I was even awarded a fellowship by the faculty to continue my graduate studies, but I chose to leave the Lutheran Church after what I think were a series of ecclesial, theological missteps. Several lost opportunities for ecumenical reunion with Rome since the Second Vatican Council, which as a confrere of mine put it, made Lutheranism as a confessional movement irrelevant. I had great hope, at one time, for what in Lutheran circles was being calling the evangelical catholic movement, or the Pro Ecclesia movement, but with the conversion of Richard John Neuhaus to the Catholic Church, Jaroslav Pelikan to the Orthodox Church in America, the defection of William Lazareth from the cause, and some soul searching of my own. I knew I had to become what I was, a Catholic.
I had already begun working as a part-time reference librarian at Falvey Memorial Library. June 1999 I started full-time as a Reference/Catalog Librarian. This meant I split my time between work as a reference librarian and as a cataloger. Since starting full-time at Villanova University in 1999 I have been active in the Catholic Library Association. I also started teaching in the fall of 2000 as an instructor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova. In 2005 I was promoted to Coordinator of Programming and Outreach for the Library. This meant I would continue to participate in some very traditional activities as a librarian, including research assistance, instruction, and as a liaison, while growing with new responsibilities for overseeing academic/social/cultural programming and displays. (Exhibits are handled by Special and Digital Collections.) Coordinating events lead to managing programming and outreach for Falvey Memorial Library as the events and outreach team leader. As Outreach Librarian I am also responsible for the Community Bibliography project, the Academic Integrity gateway, and building relations for the library, such as forging an agreement between the American Catholic Historical Society and Falvey Memorial Library. For which I was honored with a distinguished service award at the Union League, Philadelphia, PA by the American Catholic Historical Society 16 Nov 2007. I am currently the chairman of the academic library services section of the Catholic Library Association and more recently was elected recording secretary of the American Catholic Historical Society. I continue with research consulting as a member of the Philosophy / Theology / Humanities liaison team among my other duties.
Beth, my wife, is a homemaker and we home school our children. So far, we have been blessed with five daughters and a son. We dated in high school and college, and were married just after graduating from G-burg. Beth Poley née Garbutt (Alpha Xi Delta) earned her BA in psychology and education ('90). She got me involved in Alpha Phi Omega. Like many young people we spent some time early in our life together trying to figure out who we were and what we should do. Thankfully we found occupations we love, as a librarian and a nurse, respectively, in addition to our beloved vocation of matrimony and parenthood. We were confirmed together and received into the Catholic Church in Sussex, New Brunswick, Canada in 1999. Like Augustine, we both were seekers of the Truth, one found it by study, and the other through much prayer.
Darren G. Poley
Outreach Librarian, Events and Outreach Team Leader
Instructor, Department of Theology and Religious Studies
Villanova University, 800 Lancaster Avenue, Villanova, PA 19085
Office: Falvey Memorial Library, Telephone: 610 – 519 – 6371
Web Site last updated 30 April 2008
The above image is of the St. Augustine Center on the campus of Villanova University
seen from the Our Lady of Good Counsel grotto across from the Library.
Photographer unknown.
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