From the Defense Intelligence Agency, to a hospital chaplain, to a priest, and a flight instructor, new Trinity Prep chaplain Father Russell Wohlever has done it all.
Wohlever grew up in Brookfield, Connecticut where he attended elementary and high school. He attended college at the Pennsylvania State University and earned his masters degree in divinity at a college just outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Wohlever left All Saints Church to work at Trinity, as he sees the current time in high school students’ lives as very important.
“I wanted to be in a school environment because I value this time in people’s lives,” Wohlever said. “It was high school especially, where my life was basically set on a trajectory.”
After graduating college, Wohlever worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency in the Alert Center at the Pentagon.
“It was really cool, but it was also a little nerve wracking because you realize that what you were doing was going to impact the country,” Wohlever said.
Wohlever mentioned that he would see the reports of the government on the news and had already known what was going on before they reported it.
“The most frustrating thing that happened when I was working there was listening to the media, the news, and sometimes they were reporting things as facts, and I’d be sitting there like, that’s all wrong,” Wohlever said.
After working in the Defense Intelligence Agency, Wohlever came down to Florida and became a hospital chaplain at Arnold Palmer Children’s Hospital in Orlando.
If working in the Defense Intelligence Agency and in a children’s hospital is not interesting enough, Wohlever also has worked as a flight instructor and done many interested things in the air.
Wohlever worked at a place called Spruce Creek Aviation in Daytona Beach and worked with many foreign European pilots. One of the most exciting parts of his flying experience included a trip he called “$500 hamburgers.”
“Down in Miami, there was a Cuban restaurant, not far from the airport so we would [fly]there. Have dinner, and then refuel the plane and fly back,” Wohlever said.
Throughout his life Wohlever has had quite the experiences and is happy to start sharing them with his students at Trinity.
“I’ve been lucky to have experienced what a lot of people haven’t,” Wohlever said.
