A Love of Learning Results in a Transformational Bequest to the Geisel Library

Wilfrid Paradis, Class of 1943, was a Chemistry major at Saint Anselm, and was active in Red Key and the Chess Club. Graduating in the midst of World War II, he joined the Army as a combat medic. He was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in action, but his experience in the war diverted him from medicine as a career, and he went to seminary and was ordained a priest in 1949. Msgr. Paradis earned multiple doctoral degrees, as well as an honorary doctorate from his alma mater in 1979, and became a leading expert in Church matters, including a very significant role during and after Vatican II.

Msgr. Paradis was a supporter of and a frequent visitor to the Geisel Library, especially the college archives, where he did significant work on his groundbreaking history of the Diocese of Manchester, Upon this Granite (1998). At his death in 2013, Msgr. Paradis left his personal collections, and the balance of his estate, to Saint Anselm College, for the use of the Geisel Library. In his honor and memory, we have named the newly renovated college archives The Msgr. Wilfrid H. Paradis Archives & Special Collections.