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.
----------------------------------------
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
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 9th 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
