A choice between duty, love

Paul Van Vleet wasn’t thinking about marriage — until he heard a voice.

The VCU adjunct instructor of Spanish sat back and smiled as he recalled how he met his wife.

Van Vleet had spent more than 20 years as a practicing member of Jesuitism, a Roman Catholic religious order for men.

He’d studied for 13 years after high school to become a Jesuit, been educated at Marquette, a Jesuit University, and in his early 40s was running a small junior college in Honduras when he heard the voice of Martha Canales on the other end of a telephone.

Honduras had a two-phone line system where one line could make national calls and fruit companies communicated on the other line.

Since Van Vleet and his golfing buddy couldn’t call each other directly, they formed a middleman operation where they each called the justice of the peace and relayed messages to each other through the secretary-operated telephone system.

Canales was the secretary that greeted Van Vleet on the other end of the line.

“I noticed that the person handling the phone had a nice voice,” he said of his first impression of Canales.

A revolution in the Central-American country would cost Canales her job but open a door for a friendship that would one day turn into love.

“When the revolution happened, I offered her a job with me working as my secretary,” Van Vleet said. “I wasn’t looking for a wife. There wasn’t much time for romance.”

The two didn’t have a typical courtship with dinner and movie. Instead, Van Vleet said, their love grew out of friendship.

“At first, I just wanted to be near her,” he said. “I was actually trying to find a good enough husband for her.”

That turned out to be a task virtually impossible for Van Vleet.

“Finally I realized I wasn’t going to find that guy and decided I better do it myself,” he said.

After four or five years, the two decided they wanted to be married.

“I just asked [Martha] ‘if it’s possible for me to marry you as a Jesuit, will you marry me?'”

For 25 years the Jesuits had taken care of him, providing him with food, shelter and clothing in return for his work as an educator in their schools.

In love, a whole new set of obligations and obstacles were laid out before him.

“I had traveled lots of dangerous places and didn’t think about getting hurt or killed,” Van Vleet said. “But with a wife and children you can’t do dangerous things anymore.”

Furthermore, he added, he didn’t have health or life insurance, having always been provided for.

“Without (being a Jesuit) I had no job, no money and no savings,” Van Vleet said.

After submitting a letter to Rome explaining his reasons for wanting to leave and a six-month correspondence, he received his freedom.

“I had to give it up to marry her,” Van Vleet said. “I was free to live as a normal man and they (the Society of Jesus) were free of their obligation to take care of me.”

Although Van Vleet said initially his family was shocked to see him making such a big change in his life, he said they came along nicely.

“They were surprised. It was like Bill Gates deciding one day to just wash cars,”he said.

“People asked me, ‘What are you doing giving up everything for something you don’t even know will last?’ ”

But Van Vleet knew there had to be a reason for that voice. There had to be some reason. “I had faith,” he said.

The couple chose to start their lives together in New York with Canales leaving Honduras six months before Van Vleet.

While Van Vleet established himself by obtaining a job and insurance, the Honduras-bred Canales conquered the task of learning English.

A year after Van Vleet joined her, they were married in a small ceremony in St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

“We didn’t know anybody in New York. My family was in the Midwest and hers was in Central America,” he said.

After 31 years of marriage, Van Vleet seems content. He and his wife have raised two boys, Peter and Paul, who have gone on to be reporters for CNN. Now it’s just the two of them, planning a private party for Valentine’s Day.

Sitting back, Van Vleet smiled as if churning the thought in his head.

“If I hadn’t wanted to play golf I never would have met her.”