Section D · Page 20
The University Daily Kansan
Monday, August 16, 1999
Dancer leaves old role to answer priesthood calling
The Associated Press
OVERLAND PARK — On a hot summer day in 1997, Kent O'Connor, a young actor and dancer then appearing in "Gypsy" at the New Theatre Restaurant in Overland Park, had a strange experience with a familiar song.
At the time, he was driving on I-435 listening to a tape of mixed music made for him by one of his brothers.
Among the songs was one by REO Speedwagon that included the repeated line, "I can't fight this feeling anymore."
"That line' caught me so off guard I almost had to stop the car." O'Connor said.
At the moment the song began, O'Connor was pondering the resolution of a quandary that began during his childhood.
It began with a feeling he could no longer fight.
This summer O'Connor is appearing at the New Theatre, playing a featured role in "Hello Dolly."
But he is playing another role as well, and his photograph appears not only in the theater program.
It is displayed as well, on the bulletin board at Holy Cross Church in Overland
Park. The wording beneath his picture at the church identifies him as a seminarian and future Catholic priest.
Now living in the church rectory for the summer, O'Connor devotes the time he has between stage performances to working with the church's summer youth program.
On Tuesday morning, for example, he helped lead a group of elementary school children as they prepared for an upcoming musical show.
He sang along as they rehearsed, and despite the fact that his singing was subdued, his strong tenor voice reached from the altar to the rear pew.
His is a trained voice, for although he is only 24, he has been working in the theater for 17 years.
He was seven and growing up in Topeka, when his mother asked if he would like to be in the Nutcratcher Suite. "And I said, 'Sure,' without even thinking about it," O'Connor said.
He began dance training that year and soon was involved with community theater, sometimes with as many as three productions at a time.
He threw himself into performing with such vigor and elan that his mother, Marilyn
"I remember looking into a flickering candle in the sanctuary and thinking, yes, I'll be a priest."
Kent O'Connor actor and seminarian
O'Connor, sometimes feared that he would hurt him himself off the edge of the stage.
But at the same time his theatrical fervor began to blossom, another seed was planted, one that grew more slowly but whose roots, perhaps, went deeper.
"When I was seven or eight, I was sitting in church as the priest was talking about religious vocations," O'Connor said.
"I remember looking into a flickering candle in the sanctuary and thinking, yes, I'll be a priest.
"I didn't mention it to anybody, because I didn't really know what it was all about. But I sensed it was a lasting commitment."
While O'Connor was in high school he
began to believe that what he was experiencing was a "calling," an almost inexplicable summons to the priesthood.
“It's not that I literally heard God call my name,” he said recently. “It was more of a constant nagging in the back of my head, an endless questioning: Am I on the right path? Is my life going to be complete?”
His mother, sensing something, joked that if he chose dance as a career he could always become a priest when his legs gave out. But though he laughed, he still wouldn't talk about that idea with anybody.
"For one thing, I wanted a social life," he said. "And what girl would date a guy who says he's going to be a priest?"
Beyond that, the theatrical world still beckoned. And so instead of entering a seminary, O'Connor went to the University of Kansas, where he studied dance and theater.
During spring break in 1997, his senior year in college, O'Connor traveled to New York City to try his luck in the cattle-call world of theatrical auditions.
"I went with this funny notion that the theater actually needed me," he said.
His reception was positive, his talent recognized. After five auditions he made the final cut for one show, was called back for
another, and received a job offer from a ballet company.
But despite that success, he reached an unexpected conclusion.
Suddenly frustrated with what he called the "self-centeredness" of the dance world, feeling like a trained dog performing tricks, he began to think he was wasting his other talents.
"I'm not doing anyone a big favor by being here," he thought. "The theater will do just fine without me."
And so he attended a religious retreat in Atchison and then visited Mundelein. Seminary near Chicago. He soon discovered that simply applying to Mundelein, a seminary devoted to training diocesan priests, is a rigorous process.
"Every candidate first has to be approved by his own diocese," said Thomas Tank, a Catholic priest and vicar-general of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas.
All candidates go through extensive psychological evaluation and are then screened by both dicosan and seminary acceptance committees.
Famous names are bait to Internet domains
After running that churchy gauntlet, O'Connor was finally accepted and has now completed his first sequence of semiinary course work.
K.C. man adds new twist to celebrity cybersquatting: no porn, just good causes
The Associated Press
SHAWNEE — When Rob Moritz started buying the online identities of Hollywood stars two years ago, he easily could have passed for a cybersquatter — the tag assigned to some of the worst hucksters of the Internet revolution.
Steadily, Moritz built a stable of big names with.com at the end — Billy Crystal, Faye Dunaway, Nick Nolte. to name a few.
Moritz began buying names out of his home in suburban Kansas City after he first used the Internet several years ago. He saw the potential to reach mass audiences, but much of what Moritz saw was the misuse of celebrity names — and much of that was pornographic.
It's called cybersquatting or, say critics,
"virtual hostage-taking." Individuals buy
up celebrity domains and lure traffic to
their own content.
Moritz and his Friend to Friend Foundation staked a claim to a potentially lucrative piece of online real estate, the domain name, the main part of an Internet address identifying a Web page's subject.
Moritz, however, tries to take the information highway's high road by giving away domains to the stars they identify. His mission: protect cultural icons from Internet exploitation.
As of late June, Friend to Friend had registered at least 300 celebrity names, of which about 40 had accepted the gesture. Moritz pays $70 for each name to Network Solutions Inc., an Internet domain name clearinghouse.
"Do unto others what you would like to have done unto you," says Moritz, 47, a former youth minister who travels abroad speaking to religious groups and portraying the biblical apostle Paul in stage productions. He also has aided humanitarian efforts in poor nations such as Haiti and Honduras.
Other squatters simply register the domain name and put it up for bid. Monica Lewinsky's domain name recently went on the block with a minimum starting price of $50,000.
"That's pretty serious exploitation," Moritz says. "It doesn't seem right."
There is, however, some potential benefit for Moritz.
Online users who punch in the name of a star who hasn't picked up their domain from Moritz — marytylermoore.com, for instance — be steered to his friendtofriend.com site, which mostly features links to electronic commerce sites.
In instance, friendtofriend.com links to a sporting goods retail site, fogdog.com. Moritz has what's called an affiliate relationship with fogdog.com, meaning that whenever someone reaches fogdog.com from friendtofriend.com and buys something, Moritz receives a percentage of the total sale, often ranging from between 10 percent and 15 percent.
"It's a powerful way of generating revenue for the e-commerce site," said Duffy Jennings, a fogdog.com spokesman.
Moritz's list includes names such as Seinfeld actor Jason Alexander, NBC's Jane Pauley and actress Mia Farrow. Others include Jane Fonda and Paul Reiser. The celebrities learn of Moritz either through word of mouth, or Moritz's efforts to contact their agents.
Once the celebrity agrees to the transfer, Moritz mails the domain paperwork to the person, who must then pay $70 to reregister the site under their own name with a domain name clearinghouse.
Sometimes, the stars will return the gesture, in money or memorabilia.
So far, about 40 celebrities have accepted their domains from Moritz, with some sending donations along with letters of thanks. The estate of the late Eva Gabor sent wigs to the American Cancer Society to help women undergoing chemotherapy.
Trail ride
A cyclist vaunts over an obstacle on the trails north of the Kansas River. Students can ride their bikes on trails around town at various area parks. Photo by Jamie Roper/KANSAN
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