Dr. Mantil Honors His Late Father,
Leads Rebuilding of High School in India

For more than 80 years in Kereala, India, St. George’s Catholic High School has educated young people in the humid, poverty-ravaged village at the southwestern tip of India.

Due to limited community resources, it was not possible to maintain the building and it was in a terrible state of decay when a KMC physician and his six brothers and sisters began to intervene. “I went back to India three years ago for a wedding, and we looked at the school and decided that something needed to be done,” said Joseph Mantil, MD, PhD, medical director for the Nuclear Medicine and PET Department at Kettering Medical Center. “It was falling apart.”

Dr. Mantil and his siblings had a vested interest in the school where they had earned their high school diplomas. Their late father, Chacko Manthurathil, was the school’s very first head master, serving from 1926 to 1929 before going into politics and business. He died in 1995, and, thanks to the loving care of his children, his legacy brightly shines in a new place of learning.

With Dr. Mantil’s sister, Susan Pachikara, supervising construction, the family started from scratch and gave the school all the modern amenities. The family gathered at the school on Dec. 30, 2009, along with dignitaries and about 3,000 townspeople to celebrate the rebirth of St. George’s High School.

More than five times its original size, the new St. Georges has a 1,000-seat auditorium which doubles as a gymnasium. It also has more than 50,000 square feet of learning space. There is a library with many more volumes than it had in the past, along with a computer lab with 20 workstations. Pat McGowan, a local businessman, paid for most of the computers, but the rest of the project was financed by Dr. Mantil and his siblings.

“It was one of the nicest things I have probably done in my life,” Dr. Mantil said. “These people have nothing. The whole village was so excited. Ministers from the state of Kerala and members of parliament and the state legislature attended. The Catholic Church’s Archbishop was there, and so was an Indian Supreme Court judge who was an alumnus of the school. A federal minister, Mr. Ravi, unveiled a new portrait of our father in the front lobby.”

It was quite a homecoming for Dr. Mantil, who left India in 1958 to pursue a master’s degree on a scholarship at the University of Detroit. He went on to get a PhD in Physics from Indiana University, and then met his wife, Joan, while doing research at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. Dr. Mantil came to Kettering Medical Center in 1982 after completing medical school and his residency at Wright State University and the University of Cincinnati.

Joan and Joseph Mantil attended the inauguration ceremony with their two daughters and several other family members. Also in attendance were Mantil’s partner, Dr. Charles Peterson; Robert Willett, former President of KMC; and Wally Sackett, vice president, KMC Clinical Services. “The dollars go a long way there,” Sackett said. “Dr. Mantil was able to contribute essentially a new physical plant that is up to date with American standards, including internet access, computers and furnishings. For the students that will go there, this was a very significant change.”

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