Circular No 953

Newsletter for alumni of The Abbey School, Mt. St. Benedict, Trinidad and Tobago, W.I.

Caracas, 8 February 2020 No. 953

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Dear Friends,

Enjoy the pictures.

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From: jankoenraadt@gmail.com

Subject: Re: ABBEY SCHOOL - THE MOVIE AND TV SERIES

Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2013 17:01:37 +0100

I was good in den building, until some old boy discovered us.

Yeah, and you put in those guys who sent the basketball and volleyball way down the hill!

And I have a few cases the prefects pronounced us guilty until proven innocent with no permission to talk.

Jan Koenraadt

'63-'67

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From: jankoenraadt@gmail.com

Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2013 19:04:41 +0100

Ah Attila, 

You were one of the builders?

The old boy said he would be back in one hour.

So we planned to fool him.

Break down the den, put the dirt back, and throw away all the materials at the other side of the hill, rub out all traces and go.

I remember him asking later where the den went to because he couldn't find it.

And an earthquake got you off balance huh?

No Holy Spirit from the chapel feeling sorry for you?

Jan

----- Original Message -----------------------

From: Attila GYURIS

Sent: Thursday, December 19, 2013 5:47 PM

Yeah, Jan,

We built some good "Dens" in the bush, but, eventually they all got discovered by the "enemy" and destroyed.

I think that's where you got your interest in a career in Architecture, right?

As long as we are telling spooky stories.

I have another Mount story that I have never been able to explain to this day ...

This was back in the Autumn Term in 1965, when I was still a small boy, in Form I.  

One Saturday night I and another classmate were banned from the movies up at St. Benet's Hall above the Refectory for not doing our homework or something like that.  

The other boy with me was Michael Korda, from Venezuela, who stayed only for two school years ( 1964-1965, then 1965-1966).   

So we were bored and sitting around the back (the east end) of the big school building, towards where the stairs went down to the Physics and Chemistry lab, next to the small boy's dormitory.

It was already night, around 8:30 pm or so.

If you all remember back then the school had a small Chapel, which was in the small East building, next to the small boys' dormitory, and right above the Chemistry Lab.  

It had white wooden doors that were kept locked. 

There we sat in the darkness talking and looking out on the lights towards the town of St Augustine and the plains below us.

The night sky was clear and starry.  

We were pissed and moaned about the big injustice and how unfair it was that we were not allowed to watch the movies. 

Suddenly, out of the blue, the ground started to rumble and shake, (like an earthquake) and the chapel doors started to shake VIOLENTLY and making a LOT of noise, like they were coming off the hinges.  

The rumbling and shaking lasted for about 5-6 seconds then it stopped.

I remember I lost my balance and I fell to the ground.  

We both were wide eyed and terrified shitless and didn't know what to do.  

So, we started to run towards the little road up to the refectory.  

And just then we began to see the first few boys starting to come down the road because the movie had ended. 

We started to ask our friends if they had felt the earthquake just now, ... and NOT ONE had felt or heard anything, and they thought we were crazy ....  

We could not believe they hadn't felt anything, while we fell down from the shaking. 

Up to this day I can't explain WTF happened that night, ... but it happened.

Attila Gyuris

Mount 1964-1969

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idmitch@anguillanet.com

Sun, 19 Jan, 13:52

Hi, Esmond,

One thought occurs to me. 

Since my notices to you about the weekly Circulars are sent out in the middle of a large batch, your ISP may well be categorizing them as spam. 

You might usefully search your spam folder for messages from me, and if you find them there you could instruct your email to accept future ones as not being spam 

Best,

Don

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From: laszlo kertesz kertesz11@yahoo.com

Date: Sunday, 19 January 2020 at 22:59

To: Esmond Lange esmond@soundingboardaustralia.com.au

Subject: On the Circulars

Hi Esmond

Don must have written to you on how the Circular is being distributed. 

Yes, I have reduced the mailing of the Circular to those who contribute with a subscription to help to differ the costs of producing the Newsletter.

The cost is 52 usd, for a year, because it is at least 52 issues, without counting some extra issues when needed.

I am working on issue 950, and hope to reach 1000. God willing.

Here in Venezuela our economical conditions are dire. The socialist regime has reduced the minimum salary to 5 usd a month, and this is what I get in my retirement fund, hahaha

There are around 13 Oldboys who receive donations from the school´s association in Trinidad. These are managed by Joe Berment, so it is sad and true.

Hope that the fires did not affect you too much, Wonder what can be done in the future to prevent them?

I have a couple of old boys that live in Australia and have lost contact with them, can you help??

God Bless

Ladislao

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idmitch@anguillanet.com

Jan 25 at 11:31 AM

Hi, Esmond,

Thank you for bringing me up to date on your career over the years.  You have achieved a great deal and congratulations are due.  Life has been good to both of us, and for that we must always be grateful.  I like to think that some of the challenges I personally survived in later years were made more manageable by my surviving the unspeakable cruelty of the monks to whom we boys were subjected.  Kneeling for long periods in the hot sun in the gravel outside of the classroom balancing a heavy book in each outstretched hand as punishment for talking in class?  Tough love, I believe they call it now.

We must also be grateful that we were male, and not pregnant Irish girls sent to the Magdalene laundries of the mid to late twentieth century.  Catholic boys all around the world generally seem to have had it so much easier than the girls did.  And, speaking about sex, we boys at Mount were lucky not to be sexually abused, as appears to have been so widespread in other parts of the Catholic world. 

Of course, there is possibly a valid point of view that brutality was the only sure way for the monks to discipline the rabble of West Indian and South American hooligans that we were.  Otherwise, we would doubtless have mercilessly exploited any weakness shown by our custodians.  Besides, to be fair, what other conduct could be expected of the survivors of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands from which our teachers emerged?  Considering what horrors they and their families had survived from the occupation, and the slave labour camps in the Rhur Valley that some of them were sent to and described to us, they were really well-adjusted.  It is only in recent years that the negative consequences of corporal punishment of little children has come to be understood and accepted.

I hope that the vast majority of our schoolmates at Mount had the same positive outcomes in later life that we two have enjoyed.  I know of one or two who didn’t.  The casualties of war, I suppose.  Collateral damage ☹?

I am curious about your continuing Caribbean association.  Did you ever meet any of your old schoolmates in Australia in later years?

Best,

Don

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From: Esmond Lange esfran@poppie.com.au

Sent: Saturday, 25 January 2020 10:41

Hi Don,

Thanks for the detailed reply and so glad to hear that your memory is much better than mine…..

To be honest I only have vague recollections of my time In Trinidad prior to leaving in 1959 and maybe there is some deep Freudian reason for this as in many ways I believe I only started living as an individual when I went to Douai in England. Like you my time at MSB was not filled with remarkable memories and truthfully, I only have vague recollections; e.g. breaking my arm pole vaulting, Fr Chris not being that nice a person and the food being very ordinary! Prior to MSB I “served time” briefly at each of St Joseph Convent, Walters and San Fernando Boys RC until I was banished to Mount, probably because as a pre-teen I was quite insolent and disagreeable though I am sure this was more to do with environment than my personality as from England on I was always a very sociable and successful person and especially with strong leadership qualities at work and in the community. On my return from England I had a good 6 years in T&T working for Texaco and continuing playing a lot of sport; Tennis, Football, Cricket, Golf and especially Rugby at which I successfully represented Trinidad until I left in 1970. In 1969 I had married Frances Ann Gray who I quickly dragged on an adventurous International life consisting of living and working in many countries (Libya, Argentina, Brazil, Brunei, Norway, Malaysia, Ecuador and Singapore) until we finally ended up in Perth, Western Australia in 1995. My whole family (parents and four siblings) had all emigrated here at different times between 1967 and 1974 while Frances Ann’s family all emigrated to Vancouver in Canada in 1970.

As to your observation on work, yes I am still “keeping busy”, though not full time and I attach a couple pdf files which hopefully gives you a synopsis of my career and perhaps explains why I am still working though the simple truth is because it is not work to me but rather a joy and very fulfilling to pass on my experience and knowledge to younger people. I am also still active with sport and play Tennis and Golf every week and interestingly FA is a keen gardener who loves cultivating her Scotch Bonnets and making pepper sauce! I don’t know if you noticed but I am an ex-President of the Caribbean Australian Association (founded 1977) and we continue to be very active catering to about 200 families who mostly hailed from some part of the WI, but Trinidad, Jamaica and Barbados. Finally, both FA and I have always been very involved and active with our parish church community so I guess the many years of monastic education (indoctrination 😀) did have an effect!!

Thanks very much for taking the time for responding to my email and for filling me in on your news….

With fondest regards,

Esmond Lange

Mobile: 0414711082

Home: +61894579570

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From: <idmitch@anguillanet.com>

Date: Saturday, 25 January 2020 at 20:20

Hi, Esmond,

I am so sorry. I meant to respond long ago to yours of 23 January. I guess that it got buried in an avalanche of subsequent emails ☹

I remember you were with me in some of my junior classes, probably Prep B and A, and Form 1. Those were truly awful years for me. Mr Rais was our arithmetic teacher and was responsible for giving me a terrible phobia towards numerals.  His little trick was to come up behind me, and, if he noticed I had done a mistake in the assignment I was working on, he would hit me over the back of my head with the wooden side of the chalk-board duster.  I never got beyond 5 in learning my tables.  To this day I multiply 8 by 8 by adding 5 times 8 to 3 times 8.  The phobia he gave me messed up O-Level chemistry, physics and even biology which took on mathematical proportions by Form 5.

My closest friends were other sports haters like Joel Guy (Toby) Blandin, MJB Deverteuil and Tony Vieira.  I can’t remember what years they were in my class.  In later years, I concentrated on the library and did not develop existing friendships or make new ones.  I was terribly conflicted by the awful religious myths that were pressed on our immature minds.  It was only later I realized how much damage they did to us.  It was with great relief that I learned after going to London to do my A-Levels and law school that Jesus was most probably the code name for the hallucinogenic mushroom Muscaria Amantia consumed by the Essene rebels fighting Roman occupation, a much improved myth I found 😊.  I never went to church again from the age of 18 and have joyfully counted myself as a militant atheist ever since.

Maggie and I are now completely retired, and I busy myself with gardening, planting varieties of hot peppers, and suchlike harmless occupations.  It looks from your signature on your emails like you are still gainfully employed.  However do you find the energy?  And, do you ever meet any West Indians in Western Australia?

Best,

Don

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From: Esmond Lange <esmond@soundingboardaustralia.com.au>

Date: Thursday, 23 January 2020 at 12:59

Hi Don,

Just a quickie….. I have been perusing the blog that you so kindly sent and got down to # 897 and found this dated January 9^th 2019!

While Br Vincent sent me to Bobo every Monday morning for six of the best for refusing to participate in anything that had to do with the sports field for my first few years (starting in 1955 aged 9), Rughead, as we affectionately knew him made me (around the age of 12) his assistant librarian.

Now this tells me that (if I can count) we are around the same age and we must have been at MSB at the same time though to be honest I cannot remember you and I feel sure you also cannot remember me either otherwise you would have mentioned it; am I right? I seem to remember that I left MSB as a junior in 1958 to attend Presentation College in San Fernando where I was supposed to study French for one year before heading to England in 1959; I would have just turned 14 when I got on that boat! – this is how things were done in those days…. I certainly remember Rughead as he and I were never best of friends though in retrospect who can blame him as I can be best described at that age as “being quite difficult”!! I also identify a great deal with getting caned every week and always being in trouble though I was just the opposite and only wanted to play sport rather than study (maybe why our paths did not cross).

Just thought I would share this with you as maybe you have a better memory of me, but to be perfectly honest MSB was not a place I enjoyed that much, though boarding school in England was much better.

Warm regards,

Esmond J. Lange

Managing Director

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David Ames <davidames1@suddenlink.net>

Jan 19 at 7:53 PM

Isaias,

Your memories of Fr Bernard prompt me to write. 

I agree with you -  “a teacher has ways of teaching, without recurring to punishment of any sort…just by intelligence, and personal insight of the one who feels guilty....” 

Fr Bernard was such a man – intelligent, kind and considerate. 

He could correct you without damaging your self-esteem. (This from a psychiatrist) – I think you share some of his qualities Isaias.

Thank you for bringing back good memories.

PS. Charles Laughton was great!

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EDITED by Ladislao Kertesz,  kertesz11@yahoo.com,  if you would like to collaborate with the finance of the circular please contact me.

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Photos:

65UN0016SWIMMING,

48TE0012TEV, Trevor Evelyn

60LK8174FBRDRWFE, Richard Driver´s wife

16LK9856FBNSAWFE, Nathaniel Sampath and wife