While all of Creighton’s campus is waiting for Spring to finally spring, no one anticipates the thaw like the Rev. John Wymelenberg, S.J.

Wymelenberg, a retired physics professor (1962-1977), keeps six gardens, one on campus.

“I’ve been planting different things ever since my father took us to the farm she grew up on when we were kids,” he said. “We would go walking through the woods and look at the May flowers in bloom.”

While he has been retired since 1994, his presences is still felt in nooks of campus. One patch of the Jesuit garden – behind the administration building- has his mark on it. While he admits it’s not as organized as it once was, perennials add color to the tranquil setting near Ignatius House, the Jesuit residence.

His other four gardens are 25 miles East of campus in McClelland Iowa, where Creighton’s Satellite Communications for Learning Associated is located, broadcasting satellite educational programming to countries all over the globe. In between the buildings and satellites are colorful tulips, daisies, lilies, wildflowers, flocks, delphiniums and irises. Almost every color in the rainbow and ever letter in the alphabet can be accounted for in these patches. But, for Wymelenberg, roses remain his favorite.

“Lee Lubbers said it would be all right if I planted out there and I started gardens all over the campus,” he said. “I will try to keep all of them tended to this year.”

While most people at Creighton measure time by semesters, exams, tuition payments and class schedules, Wymelenberg sees things in terms of flowers.

“May is when you start to see tulips and daisies popping up, but June is when everything comes,” he said. “June is my favorite month because the gardens witness a super-abundance of growth, so beautiful.”

He could name what month gets what flora. Besides his knowledge of the seasons, his descriptions of his flowers can be considered exact (columbines look like “flying doves in different colors”).

Seeing this aged Jesuit walking through his gardens, one wouldn’t realize how unlikely the image is. Born into a family of six outside Green Bay, Wisc., it would have seemed likely that he – the oldest boy- would take over the grocer store his grandfather owned, the Red Owl, which is still in his family today.

Instead he lived the life of an average teenager, “hanging out at taverns, going to parties,” and joined the Navy after high school.

“To be honest, [I joined because] I saw a poster and liked the uniform,” he said.

After three years, he was discharged and saw a pamphlet for the Jesuits at church. He learned about the Jesuits in fourth grade and remembered his affinity for the social justice work of Saint Peter Claver, S.J. and joined in 1948.

“I guess my family was kind of thrilled that I joined, based how rowdy I was in high school,” he said.

“Living at the novitiate was more strict than the Navy,” he said, laughing. “We woke up at 5 a.m., slept in one huge room together, but by God’s grace I liked to pray, so I rather enjoyed it,” Wymelenberg said.

Through it all, he enjoyed his free time to walk along the Mississippi River, see the indigo buntings nesting in the trees, and enjoyed nature.