Originally published in The Gateway Issue No. 27 (February 2012)
Brother Hugh was Irish, and was born on the 4th April 1912 near the pleasant town of Clonmel, Co. Tipperary. The town of Clonmel is situated in a valley, on the banks of the River Suir, surrounded by mountains and hills. It was built up in medieval times as a walled town and many remnants of the past can still be found there.
Brother Hugh entered the Senior Novitiate of the Brothers at Castletown in 1930 which was followed by three years of scholastic training in Co Waterford. He had volunteered for work in the Far East and set sail for Singapore, arriving there in 1934.
He was first assigned to teach at St. Joseph's Institution, Singapore, and afterwards to several of our Lasallian schools in what was then called Malaya, now called Malaysia. His main subjects were Languages, English Literature and Mathematics. He had a particular passion for English Literature and wrote poetry. The only sample to hand is a piece he wrote for the 1952-1953 school magazine of La Salle College entitled “My Dreams”. One verse goes as follows:
And then my soul had yearnings
For things both old and true,
And all my dreams were centered
On Beauty ever new.
His other main love was for music and singing and he could play the accordion and mandolin with ease. He and his good friend, Brother Patricius O’Donovan, would strum and sing-along, as part of their recreation.
What appeared to be one of Brother Hugh's most remarkable qualities was his capacity for work. He was a man of tremendous energy, and he expended it lavishly both in the classroom and on private tuition. He seemed to be happy only when working. He didn't believe in periods of rest or relaxation or in aimless sauntering around. He had always some specific task on hand. If it wasn't extra tuition for some of his backward pupils, it was study in preparation for his own examinations. By his devotion to work, especial¬ly the work of teaching and study, he was a model to all.
During the Second World War, Brother Hugh was attached to St. Francis’ Institution, Malacca. When the Japanese arrived he was afraid he would be transported to a camp in Japan. To avoid this less than pleasant prospect, Hugh decided to “woo” the Japanese, to convince them that he and his country were not anti-Japanese and that Ireland was still at war with Britain. This strategy worked and Hugh was allowed to remain in the Brothers’ Community.
As soon as the war ended, however, Brother Hugh felt his presence in the Community could be troublesome and embarrassing, that some might even regard him as a ‘traitor’ for co-operating with the Japanese. On the spur of the moment he made up his mind to leave Malacca. He managed to get a bus or rail ticket to Singapore and arrived there almost penniless. He slept in an open car park not far from St. Joseph’s Institution and probably looked for leftover food from the nearby Cathay Hotel. This state of affairs could not go on. One day he spotted a platoon of British soldiers and asked to speak to their commanding officer who turned out to be from Dublin, Ireland. The officer enrolled Hugh as an army reservist and had him fitted out. He was put in charge of collecting trucks and other vehicles used by the Japanese. The vehicles were now lying around, mostly in poor shape. However Brother Hugh managed to make a few dollars selling off some of the better preserved ‘wrecks’.
One day he happened to call into the “Portuguese” Church and spoke to the parish priest. When the priest discovered that Hugh was, or at least had been, a De La Salle Brother, he was delighted to offer him the job of Headmaster of the school attached to the Church and also found him rented quarters.
In the meantime two old friends, Brothers Patricius O’Donovan and Herman Fenton came to know of Brother Hugh’s situation and would visit him regularly, keeping him up to date about what was happening among the Brothers.
When it was learned that Brother Assistant, Lawrence O’Toole, was on his way to visit the Brothers in Singapore, Brothers Patricius and Herman were determined to let him know of Hugh’s whereabouts. A meeting was arranged. Nobody was really sure if Brother Hugh was still a Brother or not but the upshot of the meeting was that he was given a flight ticket to Hong Kong and told to report there to Brother John Lynam, Director of St. Joseph’s College. Brother Hugh followed instructions and arrived in Hong Kong in October 1946. All was well again. He was back where he belonged. After teaching for only a few months the Brothers decided to send him to Cambridge for further studies.
Two years later he returned to Hong Kong and joined La Salle College in February 1948. Brother Hugh did not take long to get back to class teaching. By all accounts he was a workaholic, taking and giving extra courses and lessons. As a teacher Brother Hugh was known to be somewhat stern. He inspired in his pupils a healthy degree of awe and respect. Shirkers soon discovered that their best chance of survival was to settle down to painstaking effort. But con¬sidering that senior pupils in general who are preparing for a serious examination appreciate push and earnestness in their teacher, Brother Hugh was actually popular with most of his pupils, and the more serious-minded of them considered it a privilege to be under his instruc¬tion. His ascendancy over them was further strengthened by the scrupulous care with which he avoided everything savouring of partiality or preferences based on purely natural considera¬tions. If it could be said that he gave more attention to some pupils than to others, it was to the less naturally gifted ones, provided they showed the necessary degree of goodwill and co-operation.
His special aptitude for languages enabled him to render appreciable service to many a student by means of extra coaching. One of his students at the time had this to say about Brother Hugh: “He was a firm, generous, kind, no- monkey-business teacher. He gave me special tuition in Latin as a second language for my Matriculation.”
It must be emphasised that Brother Hugh's admirable zeal for examination success never seems to have diverted his mind from the primary duty of a Religious Teacher, namely, the forma¬tion of his pupils to piety and training them to be true Christians. His daily Reflections were solid and appropriate. And the same earnestness that characterised his lessons in Literature or History was carried over into his Religious Instruction periods. He eschewed mere gush and sentimentality and concentrated on what was concrete, practical, and vital.
Brother Hugh was blessed with a genial, buoyant, and expansive disposition. He was on that account an admirable community man. He was never dull, sour, or morose. He loved a good joke, but never the sort of joke that left a sting. At recreation he was the soul of the party. His hearty laughter had a contagion about it and must often have had the effect of clearing away the clouds in the minds of those who were inclined to worry or be sad.
Then suddenly his name cropped up on a British army list and he was called up again to help counter the threat of Mao Tse Tung on mainland China. This time Hugh was made an auxiliary policeman, was rigged out and had to report to duty two or three evenings a week. He was attached to the Special Constabulary Division at Kowloon City. Soft-spoken and genial, he was popular with all the members of his unit.
Brother Herman remembers him arriving back from those tours of duty almost totally exhausted. At that time, the Brothers’ house was located at No 1 Perth Street because the British Army had requisitioned La Salle College, including the Brother’ quarters. The Perth Street residence was dubbed the ‘White House’ partly, at least, because the external walls were white.
A number of boarders were allowed to live in the Brothers’ house at that time. They looked forward to the presence of Brother Hugh because he would sometimes break into song. He would do this while lying in bed, a book in one hand and a cigarette in the other. The “Spinning Wheel” and a Welsh song were two of his favourites.
Brother Herman recalls a nice anecdote about a visiting French priest from Burma who happened to turn up one day. The Brothers welcomed him to lunch. Now the Director, Brother Patrick Toner, was a quiet man, not given to too much talk. Hugh, as was his wont, was talking volubly! The priest turned at one stage and asked Hugh if he were the Brother Superior. Quick as a flash, Hugh responded, “Actually I am not ‘the’ Superior but I am ‘a’ superior man!”
It seems that all this time Brother Hugh had a heart condition and had pills to take. Apparently he often forgot to take them and when he did remember he would take a handful and swallow the lot. He had also been suffering for some months of a duodenal ulcer.
Come Sunday morning of May 31st 1953. The custom was for Brothers to go to Mass at different churches. At lunch Brother Patrick, Director, enquired whether Hugh was around. Nobody had seen him that morning. The Director then asked Peter, the cook and cleaner, to have a look in Hugh’s room. Peter knocked, but the room door was locked and there was no answer. He looked in through the window and saw Hugh lying on the bed. He was already dead. It was diagnosed that he had died in the early hours of the morning. The cause of his death was diagnosed as coronary thrombosis.
It was Trinity Sunday and the senior boys of La Salle College were poring over their final preparation for the matriculation examination. They were, one by one, informed of the sudden and sad bereavement of Rev. Bro. Hugh, their teacher. With heavy hearts they rushed back to pay their last respects to their master, who was, to all those who had the good fortune to know him, a helpful mentor learned and witty, though at times strict and solemn.
There was a spontaneous presence of the whole school at the funeral Mass in St Teresa’s Church. A majority of the students accompanied the cortege all the way to the cemetery, truly an expression of exceptional attachment to the deceased Brother.
We leave the final tribute to one of his students: “Dear and beloved Brother, we bid you good-bye, with a prayer on our lips, gratitude in our hearts and a firm conviction that yours will be the reward promised by God in Holy Writ: "They that teach many the way of virtue shall shine as the stars for all eternity."
