To say that Father Schubert is a giant in Lehigh Valley theater is an understatement.

To say anything about Father Schubert’s impact on the Lehigh Valley college, university, professional and community theater scene is an understatement.

Even the Dec. 10 DeSales University tribute to Father Schubert isn’t the final word.

Simply put, with respect to Lehigh Valley theater, and not to be disrespectul to the faithful, there is BFS and AFS: Before Father Schubert and After Father Schubert.

The Rev. Gerard J. Schubert, Oblates Of St. Francis de Sales (O.S.F.S.), who was born Nov. 21, 1929, and died Dec. 6, 2015, was a mover and shaker not only in the region’s theater scene and beyond, but in the greater Lehigh Valley arts community.

Father Schubert, 86, who founded the Performing And Fine Arts Department at DeSales University, Center Valley, Upper Saucon Township, and The Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, which marks its 25th anniversary season at DeSales in 2016, set the gold standard for producing, marketing and fund-raising in the arts. Father Schubert is a tough act to follow.

The opening of Labuda Center For The Performing Arts in 1982 at DeSales helped take Lehigh Valley college and university theater and arts programming to the next level. The 473-seat main stage theater and the 187-seat Schubert Theatre, named in honor of Father Schubert and his family, are where the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival holds forth.

Father Schubert is one of several Lehigh Valley movers and shakers who died in 2015, including Dr. Rudy S. Ackerman, 82, who established the Art Department at Moravian College, Bethlehem, and chaired it from 1963 - 2002, and as Executive Director greatly expanded The Baum School Of Art, Allentown; Elmer Gates, 86, a founder of the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp. and, more recently, Embassy Bank For The Lehigh Valley, and Robert P. “Bert” Daday, 85, longtime community advocate and former PPL Corp. marketing chief.

Among musicians who died in 2015: Phil Woods, 83, Poconos-based jazz saxophonist who received four Grammy Awards and founded the Celebration Of The Arts, Delaware Water Gap, and Joseph “Jolly Joe” Timmer, 85, a longtime polka band leader, Musikfest performer, and host of “The Jolly Joe Timmer Show,” said to be the longest-running cable TV show in the United States.

Two longtime chroniclers of the arts died in 2015: Jerry Duckett, 86, who contributed to the Lehigh Valley Press Focus section with interview articles about noted jazz musicians and also served on the Miller Symphony Hall Rodale Community Room “Jazz Upstairs” series committee, and Myra Yellin Outwater, 73, a longtime visual arts and theater journalist and theater reviewer (with whom I worked when I was Features Editor at The Morning Call), author and playwright.

A Mass of Christian Burial for Father Schubert, who was known as Father Jerry, Father or Jerry, was held in Connelly Chapel Of The Sacred Heart at DeSales. There were tears. There was laughter. There were prayers, readings from scripture, singing of hymns, a responsorial psalm, the Eucharist and “Ave Maria” sung by Friar Sandy Pocetto, O.S.F.S. There was incense, emblematic of the beautiful spirit that filled the chapel. A reception followed in DeSales’ University Center.

In addition to attendees from the DeSales University and Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival staff and board, and the Lehigh Valley community, those attending included Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival actors: DeSales theater department graduates Christopher Patrick Mullen, Matt Pfeiffer, Marnie Schulenburg and her husband Zack Robidas; DeSales professors Anne Lewis and Wayne Turney, as well as Greg Wood and Grace Gonglewski and Dennis Razze, Director Of Theater at DeSales’ University and Associate Artistic Director of the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival.

DeSales University President The Rev. Bernard F. O’Connor, O.S.F.S., noted, “Everything you have done here has been at the request of Jerry.”

You might say the memorial service was Father Shubert’s last show, the last production he directed, on Planet Earth anyway. “Flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest” stated the memorial service program cover.

William Tangradi, Father Schubert’s grandnephew who’s pursuing an acting career, said in his words of remembrance of Father Schubert, “He’s the personification of cool. He dresses all in black. He acts. He does a great Donald Duck impression. And he looks like Frank Sinatra.”

Tangradi spoke of Father Schubert’s “toughness,” and the belief that “In his view, it was a gift to be an artist.

“He inspired greatness and he sought greatness and he inspired so many artists.

“Starting out in a cornfield in the Lehigh Valley,” Tangradi said, “In his wake [was] a beautiful rippling of artists and creativity.”

Father Schubert was “dedicated to God and the Oblates of St. Francis DeSales. My uncle was dedicated to beauty.”

On the occasion of a visit, Tangradi said, Father Schubert mused, “I wonder if people will show up when I pass?”

Chairs were set up to accommodate 300 at the memorial, which, as it’s said in the world of entertainment, was SRO (Standing Room Only), in Connelly Chapel, which seats 250.

Father O’Connor’s homily was a wonderful parable about Father Schubert and his “children” at DeSales: the theater department, dance department, TV-Film department (“twins”) and Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival.

“He gave birth to the theater department. This was his first child,” said Father O’Connor.

“This past summer, he [Father Schubert] leaned over to me and said, ‘Bernie, we finally got it,’” refering to the critically-acclaimed and sold-out run of the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival production of “Les Miserables.”

“Jerry very much liked being Father Schubert,” Father O’Connor noted.

Razze, who also delivered words of remembrance, said Father Schubert was like “a second father” to him.

Razze recalled the day in 1969 when the newly-hired Father Schubert set foot on the DeSales campus “on crutches from a skiing accident.

“In his early years, he was a force of nature,” Razze said. “He was a dynamic athlete, excelling in skiing and golf. He was also skilled in stage combat.”

Razze said Father Schubert recruited him to be stage manager for a DeSales’ production of “Our Town,” presented at Cedar Crest College, Allentown, prior to DeSales’ theater department having its own stage in the basement of DeSales’ Dooling Hall.

Friday night pizza at the former Crossroads in Hellertown became a tradition, Razze remembered. “His favorite place to eat was the Coopersburg Diner.”

Father Schubert wrote a musical, “Mark My Word,” for which Razze composed the music.

‘Working with Jerry was always an adventure,” Razze said, mentioning that Father Schubert wrote on a yellow legal pad rather than using a computer.

As an actor in the Lehigh Valley, Father Schubert was best-known for his portrayal of Sir Thomas More in “A Man For All Seasons,” and his DeSales Theater Department direction of “You Can’t Take It With You” and “Arsenic And Old Lace.” Until his retirement as DeSales Performing And Fine Arts Chair in 1998, Father Schubert directed more than 40 productions.

Razze said that Roger Mullen backed Father Schubert’s vision for the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, which has grown to have an annual budget of $2.5 million. For the 2015 season, ticket revenues exceeded $1 million for the first time, there was a 45 percent increase in subscriptions, a main stage production (“Les Miserables”) played to 103 percent capacity and attendance for the season was 38,615, the highest since the festival’s founding in 1992 and 15 percent more than the 2014 season.

Razze said Father Schubert’s motto was to “give beauty back. Jerry Schubert gave beauty back in many ways. His faith was real and his conviction undeniable,” Razze said.

My own association with DeSales University and the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival has been in writing about and reviewing theater productions there for many years and as director of marketing and publicity for two seasons (2000, 2001) at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival.

I can still hear Father Schubert’s firm but soft voice, as he sat behind the big desk in his office on the DeSales’ campus. I can recall the twinkle in his eye when he warmed to a topic. And I can see the slow turn of his mouth into a grin, before he delivered a bon mot.

It’s Father Schubert’s humanity that we most remember.

As the Very Rev. James J. Greenfield, O.S.F.S., Provincial Of The Oblates Of The Wilmington-Philadelphia Province and a member of DeSales University’s Board Of Directors, said of Father Schubert at the conclusion of the memorial service in Connelly Chapel, “That’s what St. Francis tells us: ‘I am nothing but a man.’”

Father Schubert was such a man. While his physical entity is gone, his spirit lives on in the actors’ lives he touched, in the rembrances of those with whom he worked and in the edification of the audiences who attend productions at DeSales University and the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival.

“In honor of all he has done for the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, the theater community, and for DeSales University, we are honored to dedicate our upcoming 25th anniversary season to Father Schubert, our founder and friend,” said Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival Producing Artistic Director Patrick Mulcahy.

“I know that everyone associated with the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival counts it a privilege to have worked with Father Jerry and to continue to carry his legacy forward and upward. He would expect nothing less,” Mulcahy said.

In the Dec. 30 and 31 Focus in the Lehigh Valley Press: The 10th Annual ABEs Salute To Lehigh Valley Stage