Marty Lane had a chance to leave. It was the late 1970s and he’d been working at Loyola University Chicago (LUC) for less than 10 years at that point. Aquinas College called, flew him to Michigan for a campus tour and offered him a job as director of development. In the end, though, he couldn’t leave his beloved Loyola, the place he would end up working for more than a half-century, retiring on Dec. 22, 2022, exactly 53 years after the day he started.

“The Aquinas president even told me, ‘I can tell that you don’t want to leave Fr. Baumhart,’” Lane says a few weeks into retirement. LUC’s president at the time, Fr. Raymond C. Baumhart, SJ, is one of hundreds of people who made an impact on Lane over his more than five decades there, a staggering one-third of the institution’s life.

It’s unusual today to see someone spend a decade, let alone a half-century, with a single employer. That is, unless you’ve found exactly what you’re looking for, a place you’re willing to dedicate your life to, a place whose missions you believe in. Lane’s connection to the Jesuits goes all the way back to his days attending Loyola Academy in Wilmette, Ill., when the school was still under construction and didn’t have a parking lot, cafeteria or gym. Many of the teachers were Jesuits, and in them he found not only support, but friendship. He went on to LUC, where his father had earned his law degree and taught for 25 years. After graduating with a political science degree in 1965, Lane shipped off to the Vietnam War, and when he returned, he landed a job as a debt collector for Loyola University Hospital. Father Baumhart had hired him at $10 an hour. Less than two months later, Lane accepted a job in the university’s downtown Chicago development office and never looked back. Today he is well known and beloved as the university’s (now retired) long-time director of alumni relations.

Through the years, he engaged alumni at events like the Valentine Ball and the legendary phonathons he ran for 20 years, enlisting the help of new and old grads alike to come to his office and solicit donations four nights a week. He drew volunteers in with his pleasant personality and his genuine passion for all things Loyola. But he always made sure to have plenty of pizza on hand, too.

Meeting Lane, you can hear the passion in his voice, and see the gratefulness in his demeanor. He was surprised in 2015 to receive Loyola’s Dux Mirabilis award, but no one else was. The award is given annually to a faculty or staff member for extraordinary contributions to the university. Close to 50 years into his advocacy, there couldn’t have been a more worthy candidate. “I walked into my office and there was a letter from Fr. Michael Garanzini, SJ, asking if I would accept the award,” Lane says. “Obviously, it made my day, my week, my month, my year.”

He accepted the award at his class reunion on the Lake Shore Campus after Mass at Madonna Della Strada Chapel. Tom Hitcho, Lane’s longtime Loyola colleague in the athletics department, was there. So was Loyola legend Sister Jean Schmidt, BVM, and some of Lane’s friends and family. Loyola was more than just an employer to Lane. The university, and the Jesuits and their missions, shaped him. They shaped his older brother George, too, so much so that he became a Jesuit himself.

Father George A. Lane, SJ, the longtime president and publisher of Loyola Press, now lives in a Jesuit health care community in the Detroit metro area. Marty and his brother Joe make the drive to visit George twice a year, and for Marty the trips have been extra powerful. Besides spending quality time with his brothers, he’s been reunited with dozens of Jesuits from both his employee and student days at Loyola. He has reconnected with the teachers, co-workers and friends he credits with helping him when he was young, consoling him in times of hardship, and laughing with him in times of joy. “I never thought I would be able to thank them again,” he says about the unexpected reunions. “They helped me so much, taught me so much.”

In retirement Lane has few plans beyond attending the occasional Loyola basketball game and spending plenty of time with his children and grandchildren. And who knows—maybe one of them will continue his Loyola legacy.