Paul Richard Joseph Wilkas was born on October 9, 1926 to Joseph and Sophie Wilkas in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Paul was six years old when his father died. His brother, John, took on a parental role, and his mother, who had immigrated to the United States from Lithuania at the age of sixteen, drew on a community of other Lithuanian widows for support. Paul attended the Boston Latin School (then Boy's Latin School), graduating in 1944. He studied English at Boston College.

In the summer of 1946, Wilkas joined fellow BC student H. Leonard Valway to attend a conference hosted in Spain by Pax Romana, a Catholic youth and scholarly organization. The two spent the three months surrounding the conference traveling around Spain, interviewing individuals, and sending reports of their experiences back to the Boston Globe, the Pilot, and the Heights for publication. He graduated from BC with his B.A. in 1948.

Wilkas returned to BC to begin his master's studies in English, working on a thesis about childhood imagery in Graham Greene's writing. However, he was prevented from completing his degree because his brother John became ill, and Paul needed to earn money. Paul tried freelance writing as a career, without much success. Instead, he went to work for Jordan Marsh as a department manager. In 1964, Paul married Mary Wilkas, a visual artist. Sometime after 1970, he moved to computer programming and system administration at Jordan Marsh. He retired shortly after 1990.

Paul Wilkas died on July 30, 2011.

Henry Leonard Valway was born in 1921 to Henry Leonard Valway and Sarah Adelade Farren, and was raised in the Boston area. He had three brothers, Robert George (Bob), Donald, and Daniel. He attended Boston College and graduated in 1949. In the summer of 1946, Valway joined fellow BC student Paul Wilkas to attend a conference hosted in Spain by Pax Romana, a Catholic youth and scholarly organization. The two spent the three months surrounding the conference traveling around Spain, interviewing individuals, and sending reports of their experiences back to the Boston Globe, the Pilot, and the Heights for publication. In 1947, Valway traveled to Prague to attend the World Youth Festival, and remained there through the beginning of 1948 researching youth organizations in eastern Europe. In 1959, he completed his master's degree in English at Boston College, with a thesis about Thomas Wolfe. H. Leonard Valway died in 1983 in Royal Oak, Michigan.

Source:

"Robert George Valway," Lambert Funeral Home and Crematory, August 2018. https://obits.lambertfuneralhome.com/robert-valway