On a chilly day in 1902, Ignatius Aloysius O'Shaughnessy was, quite literally, at a crossroads.

It had been a rough couple of days, first getting expelled from St. John's University for sneaking off to the woods with some buddies to quaff beer instead of going to vespers, then taking a dreary train ride to St. Paul before transferring to one heading to Stillwater and the wrath of his parents. Putting off that unpleasantness, he instead took a very long walk that January, finding himself at what was then the College of St. Thomas.

There, he chanced to meet Father John Dolphin, college president, who took in young I.A. O'Shaughnessy — physically and emotionally — from the cold. He heard the young man's story, was touched by his contrition, and admitted him.

Little could the good father have known that the second chance he offered to that bedraggled young man would be transformative for what is now the University of St. Thomas and nearby St. Catherine University, St. Thomas Academy, the University of Notre Dame, a renowned religious institute in Jerusalem and countless other benefactors of the self-made millionaire that O'Shaughnessy would become.

It's an enduring and vibrant legacy for the youngest of 13 kids of a shoemaker, now told in a new biography, "That Great Heart: The Life of I.A. O'Shaughnessy, Oilman and Philanthropist," by Doug Hennes. A St. Thomas alum very familiar with the campus buildings and stadium that now bear O'Shaughnessy's name, Hennes is the school's vice president of university and government relations.

After bouncing around after graduation, Hennes said, O'Shaughnessy struck it rich in the oil business. "He had good times and bad, but he always made money," Hennes said, even in the depths of the Depression, when his benevolence extended to workers he kept employed and with then-rare benefits.

It was a philosophy he learned from his parents, who had little but shared what they had. His legacy is as spiritual as it is physical and financial. He never intended the buildings he donated to be monuments to himself, but to serve as visible reminders to do the same: share.