The Carroll College community is gathering Wednesday to share memories of one of its most-loved campus figures.

The Rev. Joseph Eugene "Gene" Peoples died Monday, after nearly 40 years at the college.

Peoples, 65, was a graduate of Cathedral High -- a school in Helena -- and then of Carroll.

He was ordained as a priest in May of 1966 at the Cathedral of St. Helena and was assigned to the Carroll faculty, where he taught theology.

But his presence on campus went far beyond the classroom.

Brent Koning, Carroll's student body president, said Peoples was "the guy you'd talk to," and virtually everyone on campus would likely have a story about him.

"It's unbelievable how many people were 'best friends' with him," Koning said with a chuckle. "He had so many people that he was so close to."

Koning said he and his fiancee had asked Peoples to say the homily at their wedding this summer.

Peoples' death, coming so soon after head football coach Mike VanDiest's father, Augie, died Sunday, has cast something of a pall over the college, Koning said.

In fact, some classes were canceled Monday afternoon after the news of Peoples' death came out.

That's one of the reasons for Wednesday's gathering, Koning said, to "bring pictures and share stories and laugh."

"(Peoples) wouldn't want to see our campus like this at all. At all," he said.

Koning described Peoples as having an "interesting sense of humor" and "an incredible sense of love."

"He wants people to rejoice in the time we shared," he said.

The Rev. Daniel Shea said Peoples liked to good-naturedly "confound" people by calling himself a "radical."

By that, Shea said, Peoples was referring the Latin meaning of the word -- "root."

"He would talk about the core of the truth, the heart of the Gospel," Shea said.

Shea, who is also on the faculty at Carroll, has known Peoples since 1961, when Peoples was a senior at the college and Shea was a freshman.

He said one of Peoples' ideas was "powerless love," which meant liking people and caring for them as they were, not to try to control them.

"We're going to miss him. He was a good man," Shea said.

Lynn Etchart, the college's vice president for finance and administration, said that Peoples' office was a reflection of his life.

One entire wall is covered with pictures, she said, of people he had known -- among them those he baptized or married or "students he enjoyed" -- over the years.

Peoples would famously sit on a sofa in St. Charles Hall when it was the student center so he could talk to students and get to know them, Etchart said.

"He'd say 'how are you' and mean it," she said. "They'd sit and talk for hours."

There is a plaque now in St. Charles Hall above the spot where he sat that reads, "Father People's Lobby Office."

He continued that tradition at the college's new Campus Center, Etchart said, where he could often be found with a knot of students and others gathered around him.

"I think that the students were the center of everything for him," said Tom McCarvel, Carroll vice president.

Peoples was always there for anyone in a crisis, Etchart said, and was an advocate for the students, helping them however he could.

"If you just said he was a truly great man and he loved everyone he met unconditionally, you'd have Father Peoples," she said.

Services scheduled for Father Peoples

- Wednesday, Dec. 7, at 7 p.m., a Remembrance Night service to share memories of Father Peoples at the Carroll College Campus Center. The public is invited.

- A vigil service will be held Sunday, Dec. 11, at the Carroll College PE Center at 7 p.m.

- Funeral Mass will be held at 11 a.m. on Monday, Dec. 12, at the Cathedral of St. Helena.

Those wishing to share memories of Father Peoples can also do so on Carroll's Web site at http://www.carroll.edu/memorial/