Rest In Peace: Fr. Thomas Clancy, S.J., The TV Jesuit And Former Editor Of America Magazine,

Rev. Thomas Clancy, 85, dies
05:13 PM CDT on Monday, April 13, 2009
Dominic Massa / Eyewitness News WWLTV

Fr. Tom Clancy NEW ORLEANS -- The Rev. Thomas Clancy, S.J., a respected author, educator and Jesuit priest whose 11-year tenure as vice president of communications for Loyola University made him an important liaison between the university and WWL-TV, died Monday afternoon. He was 85.

Father Clancy served as Loyola's vice president for communications from 1978 to 1989, and in that role he helped supervised the university’s former broadcast properties, WWL-TV and WWL Radio. Loyola sold the radio station to another broadcasting company in 1989.

That was followed in 1990 by the sale of WWL-TV to a group of employees and investors led by former general manager J. Michael Early. WWLTV Former WWL-TV general manager J. Michael Early (left), Fr. Clancy, former station manager and sales manager Maurice Guillerman, and former finance director Pascal Glaviano.

"Father Clancy was a very vivacious, jolly person who, because he found television rather late in life, always seemed to be learning something new,”

said WWL-TV anchor/reporter Angela Hill. She remembered Clancy as a tireless supporter of the station and its employees.

“He was a real intellectual, and yet his work in television was a new experience, and so he was in some ways like a child discovering something new,”

she said. Before his work with WWL, Father Clancy also served as the leader of the New Orleans province of the Society of Jesus, more commonly known as the Jesuits.

As provincial from 1971 to 1977, he supervised Jesuit priests, brothers and seminarians in a 10-state region. From 1989 until his retirement in 2000, he directed the province's seminary and mission bureau. He was editor of the Jesuit magazine America from 1970 to 1971.

WWLTV Father Tom Clancy chats with sports anchor Hap Glaudi at a WWL station party. Father Clancy received his doctorate in political science from the University of London. In addition to teaching, he was also an academic vice president at Loyola University.

His research on an impressive range of subjects, including world history and the history of the Society of Jesus, was widely published.

Father Clancy is survived by a brother and sister-in-law. Funeral arrangements have not been finalized.

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