On A Mission

Dolores McCall now calls Ireland and Nigeria home

by Michele Krier

For Rockdale, Texas, resident Dolores McCall, setting foot on Irish soil felt like a homecoming. “It felt so natural,” she says. “I didn’t feel like a visitor in a foreign land. I had the sensation of having been away for a long, long time and finally coming home.”

Years ago, a friend invited Dolores to attend the American Ireland Fund’s World Conference. She fell in love with Ireland’s people and its beauty, charmed that much of the country looked as it may have looked some 50 years ago.

Dolores remembers a particular visit to popular County Limerick, where she toured renowned Glenstal Abbey, founded in 1927 as a priory by a Belgian monastery. A model showing plans for a much-needed addition was exhibited in the lobby. Dolores later flew back to Ireland (one of many future trips) for another visit. She met with the Abbott and discovered the Abbey was in dire need of a guest house. In the same determined way in which she rose to the occasion to run her husband’s oil company after his untimely death, she volunteered to lead the Abbey’s fundraising efforts.

“A guest house was very important to the Abbey, because Benedictines meet everyone as if they are Christ. We agreed to make the guest house a reality,” Dolores says proudly. “I had grown up with the necessities of life and decided it was time for me to gift.”

Her devotion to the Abbey and the American Ireland Fund led her to join the organization’s board in 1998. She and others from the umbrella Ireland Fund have helped build an architectural award-winning state-of-the-art library, and remodeled the Abbey’s kitchen, in addition to making other significant improvements to the monastery.

Dolores became a huge fan of The American Ireland Fund, which is certainly a huge fan of the go-getter from West Texas whose spunk and helpful spirit when she sees a need to be met are practically contagious. Her lifelong dream of being a missionary is now a reality, thanks to the Fund and the work she has been called to do on behalf of the Abbey in Ireland and the monastery’s foundation in Nigeria.

Not surprisingly, Dolores has been crowned as a tribal chief in response to her generous donation of time and money to the monastery’s Nigerian village.

The American Ireland Fund (which seeks support from Irish Americans and others) is the largest fundraising organization in the world for people of Irish ancestry and for friends of Ireland. Funds raised support programs of peace and reconciliation, arts and culture, education and community development in Ireland. A culture of peace is certainly reaping enormous economic dividends in Ireland today.

Dolores’ SMU business school education and stock broker career led her to meet her future husband Jack McCall when they both attended an international trade conference sponsored by SMU and Lehman Brothers. Dolores, who organized the cocktail party, made such an impression on him that Jack contacted her years later after his wife passed away.

“I thought it would be the life of leisure in Midland”, says Dolores. “But Jack passed away in ’91 after just 12 years together, and I suddenly found myself running his independent oil and gas business.” She didn’t know a lot about the oil and gas business when she took over, but good friends guided her along the way. Her staff, whom she affectionately refers to as “her girls,” have been together for 15 years — weathering fluctuating oil prices and stock market changes.

“It’s been an eye opener for three ladies in what’s traditionally thought of as a man’s world,” she says. But she was paid the ultimate compliment when an advisor told her: “Your pencil is as sharp as Jack’s was.”

The key to everything, according to Dolores, is that God is in control. “If you turn your concerns over to him, he’ll take care of them in his own time. Thanks to my uncle insisting that I go to business school, I was prepared when my husband died. And I finally got a chance to do my missionary work and to become a Catholic — something I had hoped to do for many, many years.” A spiritual highlight for Dolores, who was once introduced to the Pope in Rome, was finally being confirmed a Catholic at the Abbey on Easter.

To honor Dolores for her many contributions and support of the Abbey for the past 10 years, the Abbott proposed that an oil painting be commissioned for her. Dolores politely declined, because as she told them, “I couldn’t sit still long enough!” Dolores will always be on the move helping those she cares so very much about.