F. Stanley (Father Stanley Francis Louis Crocchiola) was a history buff whose curiosity and inner fire drew him to the study of people and places and events that had gone unnoticed until he saw them. It has been said that he wandered across the American Southwest like a Johnny Appleseed of history, planting seedlings in the form of booklets and leaving their later nurturing to others. "An easterner by birth but a southwesterner at heart, Father Stanley Francis Louis Crocchiola had as many vocations as names," says his biographer, Mary Jo Walker. "As a young man, he entered the Catholic priesthood and for nearly half a century served his church with great zeal in various capacities, attempting to balance the callings of teacher, pastor, historian and writer." With limited money or free time, he also managed to write and publish one hundred and seventy-seven books and booklets pertaining to his adopted region under his nom de plume, F. Stanley, The initial in that name does not stand for Father, as many have assumed, but for Francis, which Louis Crocchiola took, with the name Stanley, at the time of his ordination as Franciscan friar in 1938. All of F. Stanley's titles have now reached the status of expensive collector's items. This new edition in Sunstone's Southwest Heritage Series includes a new foreword by Marc Simmons, an excerpt from F. Stanley's biography by Mary Jo Walker, and a tribute to F. Stanley by Jack D. Rittenhouse (also from the biography).
