Local Franciscan is former champion ‘roller-dancer’

“Some people God will hit over the head, but he was extremely patient with me. The fog came in without me hardly realizing that I was being called,” said Brother Juniper, who recently marked 60 years of solemn professed life and currently resides at Franciscan-operated St. Mary of the Angels Church in New Orleans.
 

Something else enveloped – and surprised – Brother Juniper during a 20-year-period beginning in the early 1980s. What began as a middle-age stab at roller-skating grew into statewide and regional accolades in roller-based dance competitions, in both the individual and pairs divisions.
 

“The teachers said, ‘Let’s give the CCD kids a roller-skating party.’ I thought to myself, ‘If I gotta chaperone these guys, I’m not going to sit. I’m going to put on some skates,’” recalled Brother Crouch, now a still-spry 86-year-old, of his inaugural excursion to a roller-skating rink near his then-residence at St. Francis Monastery in Valparaiso, Indiana.
 

“I only fell once,” Brother Juniper said.  “I felt pretty good about it. I said ‘OK, that’s not bad.’ I skated the whole time. I didn’t sit down. I was tired, but I felt good. I said, ‘OK, this’ll work.’ I went and bought a cheap pair of shoe skates.”
 

Cultivating a hobby
 

Smitten with the sport’s precision, balance, athleticism – and the sheer fun of it – Brother Juniper began taking part in rink-sponsored Saturday “dance clubs” that taught people of all ages and abilities how to ballroom dance on roller skates.
 

“It was 13 weeks for $13, and they supplied a pair of skates at the end,” Brother Juniper said, describing his newly discovered hobby as “ballroom dancing on wheels.” During competitions, individual and paired dancers are challenged to execute a series of compulsory moves, intricate routines that total about 2 1/2 laps around the rink, Brother Juniper explained.
 

“It’s called pattern dancing, because the dances are (done in) a pattern – some look like a figure eight, others are square,” he said. “There are certain types of steps that have to be done in a given dance – anything from a 108-beat waltz to a 133-beat waltz to a 164-beat waltz. When you’re in a competition, the same dance is used for everybody.”
 

He evidently put in his work. At Brother Juniper’s first major competition – in the beginners’ division of Pennsylvania’s 1992 Keystone States Games – the then-58-year-old Franciscan earned an individual gold medal in the “Single Figures” contest. He also earned a silver, with dance partner Susan Snyder, in pairs.
 

“We almost beat out, in total points, what we would call a professional couple,” Brother Juniper said. “The lady who coached us did a good job.”
 

A memorable misstep
 

Later that year, upon his reassignment to St. Anthony Friary in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, Brother Juniper said one of his first orders of business was to locate his local rink. He began dancing with a new partner, Pat Schremmer, and went on to medal in the 2000 Tri-State Winter Invitational in Reading, Pennsylvania.
 

Brother Juniper said one of the most difficult – and basic – moves competitive roller skaters must master is called the “3 Turn,” in which the skater traces the number 3 on one foot without lifting his skate off the floor. Because dancers face each other as they move around the rink, they must mirror each other’s footwork perfectly and be able to lead with either foot.
 

“You have to learn to keep your feet under you – no skating outward or you’ll hit the person next-door to you,” cautioned Brother Juniper, recounting the time his and Schremmer’s wheels accidently met and locked together while they were practicing a simple shuffle move.
 

“Next thing I know, I’m three feet off the floor with her on top of me, and I knew my head was going to hit,” Brother Juniper said. “My first thought was, ‘Her husband’s going to kill me!’ I needed stitches, but she was OK.”
 

‘Dance genes’ from his dad
 

Ironically, Brother Juniper, who was born and raised in Steubenville, Ohio, never learned how to dance in “regular” shoes, although his parents’ no-nonsense work ethic was a source of inspiration. His mother, a farmer’s daughter, was a Methodist convert to Catholicism and a mother of six; his father, a World War II ambulance driver who worked at the local steel mill and drove buses and taxis, was a saxophone player and a champion ballroom dancer.
 

Despite having grown up in the frigid Midwest, Brother Juniper admits to having ice-skated only once: as a high school junior, on a pond that might not have been completely frozen over.
 

“I happened to look behind me as I was skating and I could see I was making waves,” he said, smiling.
 

Inspired by his namesake
 

In the early 2000s, Brother Juniper hung up his roller skates when he took on what would turn out to be a 17-year assignment as  groundskeeper at St. Paul the Apostle Church in Lafayette.
 

“I tried to do some skating, but the closest rinks were in Baton Rouge, Gonzales and Denham Springs – 70, 80 miles away,” said Brother Juniper, who has devoted six decades of service to the church in three states as a jack-of-all-trades handyman at retreat houses, monasteries and parishes.
 

At St. Mary of the Angels, his home since last summer, his roles include cooking for the parish’s six resident Franciscan priests and brothers; being a spiritual assistant for the St. John the Baptist Province; and helping out as an electrician, carpenter and plumber.
 

Baptized Frederick Crouch, Brother Juniper entered the Franciscans’ Pittsburgh seminary on Easter Monday 1953 at age 19, completing seven years of formation bolstered by vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.
 

“You get to the point where you’ve reached the front door, but do you wish to go through? It was serious,” he said of his period of discernment. “It’s not easy. You’re living in a community, and it can be difficult at times. I thought I’d take a crack at it and see what happened.” 
 

He took his Franciscan name from Servant of God Brother Juniper, one of the first followers of St. Francis of Assisi and also the namesake of the recently canonized St. Junipero Serra.
 

“He was a character. He was the only follower that St. Francis allowed to go out by himself,” said Brother Juniper of his 13th-century role model. “That can be taken two ways: because nobody wanted to go with him, or because of his holiness. Maybe St. Francis trusted him to go out on his own.”
 

To learn more about the early Franciscans, Brother Juniper recommends the book “The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi” by Raphael Brown.