Fr. Mike witnessed the beautiful 25th anniversary prayer plaza take shape from the drawing board. Several versions were proposed and modified until the final plans were eventually drafted and accepted. Original charter members of the parish were honored with a wall of bricks bearing their names.  Current members were encouraged to remember loved ones with an engraved brick on the plaza floor.  Fr. Mike bought paver bricks to memorialize the past bishops of this diocese.  On the feast of the parish
patron saint, Bishop Curtis Guillory presided over the dedication of the prayer plaza and prayers for a delayed rain were answered with not a second to spare.

Soon after arriving at St. Catherine, Fr. Mike accepted the invitation of Mr. Rodney Scarbrough to play golf on Tuesdays at Hearthstone Country Club.  Mr. Scarbrough's patient encouragement & keen eye helped the pastor improve his golf game by 15 strokes. Instead of playing 4 or 5 times a year, Fr. Mike now enjoys golf regularly on his day off.

As a youngster, Fr. Mike dreamed of playing the drums. In his high school senior year he dropped out of the basketball team at St. John, in Plaquemine, La., in order to work after school to pay for the second-hand red sparkle drumset he bought for $90 from a friend of his who was going off to college. Growing up in a family of eight, the young aspiring percussionist had little opportunity to practice without irritating family members or neighbors. He remembers playing in a variety of garages and on a
few high school stages before his family moved with the Dow Chemical Company from Plaquemine, La. to Lake Jackson, TX., in 1974.

In Texas many paying musical opportunities presented themselves and the college student played drums in a variety of bands: Country & Western, Rock 'n Roll, Top 40, and yes, there was even a Disco job. During summer vacation our pastor worked at the Dow Chemical plant in order to save enough
money to make it during the school year and continued to play music at night.  Playing drums earned enough money for the part-time professional drummer to purchase an authentic chrome pearl Ludwig Octa Plus drumset to show off on stage.

After finishing the first semester of his junior year in Chemical Engineering studies at the University of Texas in Austin, the young man admitted his dissatisfaction with his major course of study and inquired
about the seminary, since becoming a priest was actually the first vocation fantasy he remembers at the age of 5 or 6.  A lot of water had gone under the bridge since then.  Knowing what he didn't want to do anymore, but not certain of what he did want to do, the frustrated college junior attended a live-in weekend at St. Mary seminary on Memorial Drive in Houston.  That experience changed his life.

Fr. Mike went back to Austin to finish his junior year in an independent course of study, preparing to join the seminary in the Fall of 1977.  Once there the new seminarian learned to play the bass guitar to accompany the liturgical musicians who played piano and guitars.  He continued to play
drums in a solitary confinement in a room in the back of the gymnasium.