Newsletter for alumni
of The Abbey School, Mt. St. Benedict, Trinidad and Tobago, W.I.
Caracas, 3 of July
2016 No. 765
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Dear Friends,
THE INCOMPARABLE FR. BENEDICT – “VOOSH” TO
US BOYS
He must have had an enviable childhood,
back there in Holland. He must have amused himself continually, with his
continuously inquisitive mind, his indomitable spirit, and his sense of fun. I
can just imagine him at the head of a crowd of his boyhood friends, leading
them on to some new adventure, some new experiment which he had concocted in
his busy mind.
Fr. Benedict, “Voosh” to us Old Boys of
the Abbey School at Mt. St. Benedict, arrived at the Mount as a young cleric
sometime between 1948-49, according to Trevor Evelyn’s recollections. He did not take long to make his mark, and
every boy whose fortune it was to have met the man, can fondly recall the
exuberance, the joy of life, the fun, the excitement which he exuded as he
described in detail the latest adventure or experiment upon which he had
embarked. Seemingly, everything he did seemed to end with an explosion, a high
point somewhere along the line, which he punctuated with an expression of
delight – “Vooooosh” – and that’s how he got his nickname.
I first met this happy wannabe scientist
when he presented us, sometime in 1956, with a beautiful model of a speedboat,
about 2’ long, which he had rigged with remote controls, to be operated from
the upper windows of the Monastery on the hill above our swimming pool, which
might have been a half-mile downhill from his bedroom. He asked us to simply
take the boat down to the pool and deposit it in the water, whereupon he, with
the aid of a telescope and his remote controls, would attempt to operate the
motor from the safety of his mountaintop home. So said, so done. The boat
worked magnificently, and was duly returned to him for storage among his
memories.
Voosh also appointed himself as the School
Photographer, and probably every Old Boy of the Abbey School still retains,
among his souvenirs, the Class Photograph of his buddies and classmates, most
of which were taken by the Great Man himself.
We loved Fr. Benedict and his hair-brained
schemes, and the world will be a little sadder today, at the news of his
passing last night, January 1, 2009 at 6.30 p.m.
The stories abound, where he was the star
actor, extending the bounds of human effort, inspiring us boys to “try
something new”, giving of himself, and I guess, enjoying our company and loving
us into the bargain.
I recall the fact that he would never take
a swim in the clean, chlorinated pool. “There’s no life in it. There’s no
oxygen,” he’d say. But on one occasion at least, I recall, when the
chlorination system had shut down for an extended time and we sat glumly on the
bleachers looking at the dark green, clearly stagnant water with long green
filamentous algae protruding from the walls, he came down, put on his bathing
trunks and dived in. “Come on in, boys. This is healthy for you. Lots of
oxygen.” Crazy man.
On another well-known occasion, Voosh
brought an old seine, which he had either begged or borrowed from a local
fisherman, and to which he had tied a large number of empty Vat 19 and other
bottles. He asked us to help him spread the net-like contraption across the
entire surface of the pool, so that, hopefully, the combined buoyancy of the
bottles would keep the seine afloat. Then, proceeding to the diving board, he
jumped right in, to check, I suppose, whether the net would support his weight.
It didn’t.
It took the combined effort of a lot of us
boys to fish him out of the water, net an all, as he spluttered and gasped for
breath. Another great idea which failed.
Voosh owned a large Australian war
boomerang. Heaven alone knows where he’d got it. But we would often ask him to
show us how it worked, longing to see the magnificent spinning weapon circling
the Mount as we would stand admiringly, watching to see who the lucky boy would
be to catch it on its return swing over our heads.
He resisted our appeals for a long, long
time. But eventually, I suppose, his curiosity got the better of him, and with
great pride in his possession, he approached a group of us one Sunday morning,
after Mass. “Now, listen, boys,” he intoned, “I’m going to let you throw the
boomerang. But I want to make sure it comes back to us. So, I’m going to ask
the strongest boy to throw it for me.” (And here my memory fails me – I’m not certain,
but I believe it was Richard Galt who was the chosen thrower. Please forgive me
if I’m wrong. Time dulls the memory somewhat. I shall assume it was Richard,
anyway.)
“Come, Richard. Take the boomerang. Hold
it like this (and he demonstrated the correct hold), and throw it hard
overhead. If you do it correctly, it will whirl around the school and come
right back to us at this very spot. Voooooosh.”
So said, so done. Richard (I assume it was
he) held the weapon in his mighty hands and swung back as he had been shown.
Letting go of the boomerang at the last second, we watched, entranced, as it
flew out, far over the mountainside and dropped, like a stone, into the trees
and bushes far below us, lost forevermore.
“Ah well”, said Voosh, “I suppose we won’t
see that again, eh boys?”
The day of the hot air paper bag dawned
bright and promisingly. Sunday morning again, the Scouts having marched around
the School a few times to the rhythm of the trumpets, side drums and big bass
drum, Fr. Benedict emerged with his latest contraption – a tin can filled with
kerosene or “pitch oil”, and attached via wires to bits of marline, themselves
attached to the four corners of a large square piece of brown paper on which he
had drawn some cartoon figures and the words “IF FOUND, PLEASE RETURN TO FR.
BENEDICT O.S.B. AT MT. ST. BENEDICT, TUNAPUNA, TRINIDAD”. He came over to us
and announced his plan, to fly the paper bag “balloon” over the hills of
Trinidad, to see how far it would go, and where it would land.
We watched with growing excitement as he
had two boys hold the edges of the paper outstretched, and, drawing a match
from underneath the folds of his white sauterne, he lit the flammable material
in the tin can. Surprisingly, the thing actually worked. The paper swelled with
the rising hot air and slowly, ever so slowly, it began to rise from terra
firma, then over our heads and, amazingly, it took off over our mango trees,
the basketball court, the Mount itself, eventually disappearing from sight. A
few days later, we discovered, the flying paper bag was returned to Fr.
Benedict by a U.S. soldier stationed at the Chaguaramas Base on the NW
peninsula of Trinidad. Voosh had every reason to be proud of his achievement.
We graduated from the Abbey School and
left Voosh to his tricks, to amuse and entertain yet another batch of wide-eyed
youngsters. But the years eventually took their toll, and the old man slowly
succumbed to the weight of his own mortality. A 2001 photograph shows him,
still at the School, apparently demonstrating a microphone and speaker.
And finally, the end came. Or rather, as
his faith would have it, his new life began yesterday. Freed from the infirmity
of old age and the need to use his wheel-chair, the dear old man left us for
the last time, VOOOOOOSH and went to live with his God.
May his soul rest in peace. May he enjoy
his eternity in the presence of all the Old Boys who have gone before us, and
in the presence of Almighty God.
POSTCRIPT:
The following email correspondence took
place on January 2nd, between Jon Golding and Richard “Mousey”
Farah, and I believe it amply demonstrates the fact that I wasn’t kidding with
my stories of the good old priest:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------.
From: jongolding
Sent: Fri Jan 02 19:01:47 2009
Subject: Memories of Fr. Benedict-Science Class
OUR MOST UNFORGETTABLE SCIENCE DEMO
=======================================
1957 - Form 1 class - held in upstairs
large study hall - Science class.
I used to sit next to 'Mousey' (Richard
Farah) - about 3 months before his mango tree accident which cost him his leg.
Brave soul and another Mount Hero!
Fr Benedict was teaching us about
gunpowder that day. To demonstrate, he made gunpowder in the class, a mix of
Carbon, Potassium Nitrate and Sulfur. Mousey and I quickly wrote down the
proportions (which we later bought on a dentist trip to PoS, and tried out in
the bush near the reservoir. But we nearly killed Louis Lacour and my brother
Geoff!!).
Our intrepid science teacher then
produced a small cannon he had made from some lead piping, one end hammered
flat, the other end a lethal open gun barrel anchored firmly onto a chunky
mahogany 2 by 4.
He positioned the weapon at the hall
window aiming it at a mango tree a mile away on the hill across the valley. His
intention was to see if he could hit a mango from this distance.
In went the gunpowder followed by a
ramrod stick from Brother Joseph's woodwork shop to pack it tight. He then
inserted a marble he had confiscated from one the Venezuelans in an earlier
class. (These guys sometimes used to
roll a few marbles onto the floor before the monks came in to teach, hoping
they'd 'buss their ass' on the floor! But so far no hits. Fr B knew the game
and caught one red-handed the week before! Anyway he had his cannon ball for
the demo and told us that is what he'd do with all the marbles he found on the
floor!
Next step, he pulled out a length of
Jetex fuse wire. We all held our breath realising this experiment was getting
reeeel serious!!! You could hear a pin drop. No other monk/ teacher
had ever exhibited such macho bravado in a class that any of us had attended in
the prison on the hill.
He ran the wire along the window sill
and inserted the end into a hole in the pipe cannon near the flattened end. He
drew a sketch on the blackboard to show us what was going to happen and asked
us to write down the chemical equation; C+S+PNi = BANG!!
He then stepped back and pulled out a
cigarette lighter (he'd borrowed from Fr Paul, the walking Chimney!). We all
began to talk loudly and nervously and duck under the desks. It was
pandemonium!! I vividly remember that Mousey and I could not stop laughing -
wide-eyed and in disbelief to relieve our anxiety.
"OK, boys, get down, here comes the
countdown! Ten - nine - eight - seven .... we all chorused the countdown
getting louder and louder. By this time everybody was ducking down below their
desks --------------
" - two - one - ZERO!!!"
-------------------
Dead Silence!
Nothing happened!
Actually it did!!
We looked up from under the desks and
saw he'd just lit the Jetex fuse. I remember some of the guys sitting near the
corridor were so scared they ran into the corridor. Others ducked down into the
walkway between the desks and crawled to the back of the study hall. Mousey and
I were in the second row from the front and we decided to stay put. We kept
looking at the fuse hissing its way quickly towards the cannon and saw that our
Voosh had moved behind the big desk at the front (where they used to sit to
supervise us in study time).
When the fuse sparks were climbing up to
the cannon we ducked down for certain this time and did not have to wait too
long:
!!!!--------- BBBAAAANNNNGGGGGGGGG!!!----------------!!!!
The cannon let out such a loud bang we
could not believe it. Heads slowly began appearing above the desks and we saw a
huge amount of smoke coming from the cannon window- an after effect of the
explosion.
The next thing I heard was someone
starting to clap until we all quickly joined in the rousing applause! Our new
military hero - Fr Benedict!!! We'd go into battle for him immediately,
confident he knew how to blow away the enemy!!
Well the fun did not last long.
Next thing we knew was Fr Bernard coming
rushing down the corridor into the study hall his face as white as a sheet and
eyes wide open searching the room madly - as if to find an assassin hiding
under a desk. He did not notice Fr Benedict at first since he and the big desk
were camouflaged behind the smoke cloud.
Fr Bernard shouted out in near panic:
“What's going on here?"
We all sat frozen as we faced this
unexpected aftershock! Our dear headmaster had never looked so furious and
lethal - as if to prepare himself for the battle that Fr Benedict had signalled
with his opening round of cannon fire.
The tension broke when Fr Benedict,
amazed at his resounding success (sorry about the pun), called out
apologetically, "It's OK, Fr Bernard, it was only an experiment!"
I cannot remember the rest of the
dialogue but it was not pretty. Fr Bernard laid into Fr Benedict about how
irresponsible it was not to inform him and the rest of the school first. We
found out later that the bang was so loud that most of the other classes were
cut short as they all ran out into the corridors to see what had happened.
Eventually, Fr Bernard left in a huff
and Fr Benedict looked sheepishly at his terminated science lesson, ducking his
head down a little with a mischievous grin, but receiving a round of supporting
laughter and light applause from his newly initiated class. Yes, this was an
initiation - into science - that every one of us present that day will never
forget!
From that day on, we all listened intently
to every word in his science classes and I believe we all got record marks,
never to be repeated again. I am sure someone in our class will get a Nobel
Prize for science one day!
For me, it was a true positive
initiation into science which I approached fearlessly from then on - I
eventually got A's all the way through 'A' levels and university and it is to
Fr Benedict I owe my motivation- gaining my BSc (Hons) in the UK eventually.
I know I am joined by all those in the
1957 science class, and beyond, in expressing our utmost affection and
admiration for our unsung hero of science education who put more than his best
efforts into making our classes interesting and memorable. To top it all, he
never needed to get heavy with us for discipline and had a lovely charm and
gentle smile - identifying with the 'boy' in all of us - in a way that only few
of the other teachers could!
The pictures attached, which I was
fortunate to take before he went to be with the Lord, say it all! Let us pray
that one day we also will arrive and see him again at that Heavenly Place where
he must be continuing his curious science experiments- since God most certainly
would have rewarded him with the biggest science lab and endless gunpowder to
shoot down the enemy of our souls.
May God rest our Fr Benedict, a true
Benedictine par excellence, and exemplar for us to emulate while we still have
the time! Well done Fr Benedict and may the angels "Voooooosssssssh"
you straight up into the Heavens like a cannon ball !!
Your grateful and admiring student
Jon Golding (1955 - 1962)
On behalf of all the science class of
1957
(Newer photos will be posted in future
editions, EDITOR)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Richard Farah
Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 7:24 PM
John,
I can remember that
experiment vividly to this day. And I became a gunpowder freak from that day on
to the eternal annoyance of our cascade neighbours at holiday time as they had
to endure bombs and rockets every week, as I used to buy the chemicals at
Albert Phillips Pharmacy at the corner of Queen and Henry Streets. It’s amazing
that priests like father Benedict gave up their lives to pass on their
knowledge gratis.
May God rest his
soul.
Richard.
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EDITED by LadislaoKertesz, kertesz11@yahoo.com, if you would like to be in the circular’s
mailing list or any old boy that you would like to include.
----------------------------------------------
Photos:
01DM0503FBELDS, Fr. Benedict with his loudspeaker
creation
00BG0143BGOFB, Brian Goddard and daughters
15GF0001GFAFB, Gregory Farfan
15MCO9260MCOFB, Maxime de Comarmond, helper of Fr,
Cuthbert
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