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This blog has passed 210,000 pageviews! Your readership is appreciated. Please leave your comments or contact your blogger direct at teppermarlin @ aol.com. This blog's most-read posts in March 2020 were topped by the story of Tilly den Tex van Hall, wife of the great Resistance Banker Wally van Hall. They were: WW2 | Tilly den Tex van Hall (1907-1988) Jul 28, 2015

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BENEDICTINE REUNIONS | Vero Beach, Florida

Denis at our house in Vero. He calls this our national security
strategy meeting. He was born in India. His father was a
British Army Brigadier. Denis served in the U.S. Army.

Products of the English Benedictine Congregation had several mini-reunions in Vero Beach, Florida this past week.

First we had a formal lunch reunion, about 30 people, at the Moorings Club, south of Vero Beach, kindly sponsored by alumni members of the club. 

Several representatives of Portsmouth Abbey School visited, including the incumbent headmaster, as part of an annual tour of retired Portsmouth alumni in Florida. The tour usually takes in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach as well as Vero Beach.  

We were joined by the family dog, Hachikō.
Denis holds on to a palm leaf to restrict its growth.

I attended the event in 2015 and again last year when relatives of the late Fr. Damian Kearney were there who reside in the Vero Beach area.  

A few days later, I had a visit from Robert Denis Ambrose, who was known as Bob at Portsmouth and as Denis at home and currently. 

Denis was at Portsmouth for the two academic years 1953-1955, first in the Barn, headed then by Fr Bede, and then at St Bede's House, where the housemaster was Fr Hilary. Denis says he has fond memories of these years. He remembers also Fr Aelred ("Barney") Wall and the Associate Headmaster, Cecil Acheson, from Ampleforth.

We looked over the potential attendance list for the Portsmouth
Class of 1958 60th Reunion, planned for Newport, Sept. 28.

Denis then transferred to Ampleforth College, at St Wilfred's House. He told me it was a bit of a shock to go from the more laid-back environment of Portsmouth to Ampleforth. 

Denis recalls many moments of his time at Ampleforth, and personalities such as Regimental Sergeant Major Hennessy, Father Julian, the swimming coach and the teas after swimming meets, especially the away matches where the teas were a schoolboy's dream. 

Denis was taken aback by the number of rules at Ampleforth, many more than at Portsmouth, and the fact that they were effectively enforced. Boys were not allowed to eat candy bars on public streets, for example, and were forbidden to sit on radiators.

He has strong memories of his study of history at Ampleforth. He says that one theme that recurred was: "England's foreign policy is and has been about maintaining the 'balance of power'." 

(My own recollection is studying the Wars of the Roses to death. I learned that a red rose of Lancaster does not smell as sweet as a white one of Yorkshire.)

England may no longer rule the waves, but that doesn't mean it will now Waive the Rules. The central heating in British schools and universities, he thinks, is still not turned on till late November. He likes a book by Jeremy Paxman, The English. 

Despite the rigors of the English classroom and plumbing, Denis believes, both Ampleforth and Portsmouth hold out a model of peace and tolerance, the Benedictine way of life, that is a worthy one to follow.

L to R: Denis, John, Bill.

After three years serving in the US Army, Denis trained as a civil engineer, spending several years designing bridges and obtaining a Professional Engineering License. 

Subsequently he obtained a bachelors degree in business from the University of Pittsburgh and an MBA from Lebanon Valley College. He was engaged in economic feasibility studies and valuation studies for water and wastewater projects including certifications for bond issues and rate covenants and presentation of testimony before regulatory agencies.  He still provides consulting services on a limited basis. 

The same summer of 1955 in which Denis was heading across the Atlantic from Portsmouth to Ampleforth, I was going the other way. 

I found the transition relatively painless. I had been at Gilling Castle and the Junior House at Ampleforth College for three years. The academic environment at Ampleforth was austere, Old School... My brother was in the upper school and used to visit me with the late Johnny Encombe, who also had a younger brother at Gilling.

L to R: John (pushing back on a fast-growing Bougainvillea), Bill and Denis.

I started learning Greek at Gilling Castle as well as continuing Latin and French. Our ancient history teacher, Fr Bruno, gave us vivid descriptions, which have stayed with me more than 60 years, of the Battles of Marathon, Salamis and Thermopylae.

Denis stayed with us in Vero for a few days, during which time we paid a visit nearby to Bill (Gregory) Floyd, Portsmouth '57 and former Abbey headmaster. 

PORTSMOUTH | Priory/Abbey School 1958 and Today (Updated Apr 11, 2017)

Portsmouth Priory (as it then was called) had a community of 24 Benedictine monks when I was there in 1955-58. All but two of the monks are in the photo above. The year before, Fr Aelred ("Barney") Wall, Headmaster, was in the photo; he switched to a more contemplative monastery in my senior year. The strength of the monastery may have peaked a few years later when Luke, Paul, Anselm and Gregory became novices.

The lay faculty numbered 16 in 1958, as indicated in the photo below. So of a total teaching pool of 30 (24 monks and 16 lay), three-fifths was monastic.

As vocations to monastic life have fallen off, and older monks have gone to their eternal reward, the ratio of monks to lay staff has reversed. The lay faculty today outnumbers the monks. On the Abbey web site five monks are shown as actively involved in the school, while the Portsmouth directory shows 116 on staff.

Since 1958, the number of seniors has grown from 35 to 94 in the Class of 2017. The teaching faculty has grown from 30 to 50, supported now by, it appears, 66 listed non-teaching staff.

Similar trends are observable in other monastic institutions. Ampleforth Abbey and College in England is one of the houses of the English Benedictine Congregation (along with Downside) that founded Portsmouth. Ampleforth is one of the largest religious college-preparatory schools in the country. The number of monks has fallen at Ampleforth, from more than 100 when I was there in 1952-55 to about 30 today. 

At Ampleforth today, according to its Headmaster Fr Wulstan, who was in New York City this past week, monks are placed in roles where they can have a maximum influence on the spiritual life of the boys and girls at the school. Almost all of the teaching is now assigned to people who recruited for their teaching skills and academic background.

RIP | Damian A. Kearney, OSB

Rev. Dom Damian Kearney, OSB (1928-2016)

Rev. Dom Damian A. Kearney, O.S.B. has been a fixture of Portsmouth Abbey School for so long that his death did not fully register with me. 

I heard news of it while I was traveling in England, but I somehow expected to see him this week at the annual New York City Portsmouth reception. He died at 87 on Sept. 8, 2016 and his funeral Mass was on Sept. 14 in the Portsmouth Abbey Church in Portsmouth, R.I. He is buried in the Abbey’s cemetery.

Born Allan Peter Kearney on Nov. 28, 1928, in Rockville Center, Long Island, N.Y, he was the son of Edward and Louise Keefe Kearney. Fr. Damian had five brothers and a sister, of whom his brothers David and Andrew survive him, along with many nephews and nieces. I met his younger brother David Q. Kearney at the Vero Beach, Fla. Portsmouth reception in the spring of 2016.

Portsmouth Abbey Cemetery

Fr. Damian entered Portsmouth Abbey (then Priory) School in the First Form in 1940, graduating early as a Fifth Former in 1945 because of the war. He earned a B.A. degree from Yale University in 1949 and entered the monastery in 1950. Fr. Damian was ordained to the priesthood on May 26, 1956. I believe I was the first at Portsmouth to be Fr. Damian’s altar boy in 1956. The monks said mass early on a weekday morning and, as I recollect, one signed up to be the altar boy.

Fr. Damian taught in the English Department for more than 50 years and chaired the department ion 1974-88. I took his English course in the Fifth Form and was impressed with his dedication to teaching, to the English language, and to Portsmouth:

• When I wrote to him about some great calligraphy I found in Estonia, he reminded me of the great calligraphers over the years at Portsmouth.
• When I told him that I had written an article about heraldry at Oxford, he reminded me that Fr. Wilfred Bayne at Portsmouth must have kindled my interest–quite possibly true. 

He was the house master of the largest boys' dormitory, St. Benet's, in 1960-74. I was at St. Benet’s in 1955-58 when his predecessor Cecil Acheson was the house master.

Fr. Damian was Prior of the monastery and thus acting Superior whenever the Abbot was away during the 1974-90 period. He was a member of the Abbot's advisory Council starting in 1964, with hardly a break. He directed the monastic education of the Novices and Junior monks, and toward the end of his life was Director of Oblates.

Fr. Damian was the Abbey’s historian and archivist. He was strong in his teaching of Shakespeare’s plays. He met my mother on one of her visits; she has published two dozen books for children at Viking and Farrar Straus, under the name Hilda van Stockum. She argued strongly with Fr. Damian for the case that the Earl of Oxford was the real writer of the Shakespeare plays, making the point that Shakespeare didn’t travel and could not have known about foreign countries and their  manners. Fr. Damian initially dismissed the idea, but then found the subject interesting and pursued it, although he continued to support the authenticity of the Shakespeare authorship.

His ordination card reads: “One thing have I asked the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the House of the Lord all the days of my life.” He surely found what he was seeking. May he dwell now with the Lord now that the days of his life have ended.

Sources: Patch R.I., Funeral Home
Related stories: Wilfred Bayne, OSB, Leo van Winkle, OSB
Possibly related story: Barack Obama's mother's Moneygall Irish relatives, the Kearneys and the Healys

PORTSMOUTH | Rev. Dom Leo van Winkle, Headmaster

Rev. Dom Leo van Winkle, who became Headmaster
of Portsmouth Abbey (then Priory) School in 1957,
the fall of my senior year.

A Portsmouth lunch in Vero Beach last week made me think about the headmaster who took over at Portsmouth in 1957, the beginning of my senior year.

He came in to his Physics 2 class–I think there were four of us in a single row–in the first week and announced that he had been made headmaster and was quite clear about not being happy about it.

He replaced Dom Aelred ("Barney") Wall, who was worn out by his years as headmaster and was given leave to pursue a more contemplative life, first at the Mt Savior Monastery in Pine City, near Elmira, N.Y and then at the Benedictine monastery of Christ in the Desert in California.

Rev. Dom Thomas Leo van Winkle, or "Father Leo" as I knew him, was the son of Professor Cortlandt van Winkle, a Princeton graduate (AB, MA, Ph.D.) who with his wife converted to Roman Catholicism during the interwar years when Ronald Knox and others were showing the way. Knox, of course, was Anglican Chaplain of Trinity College, Oxford (where I was in 1962-64) during the Great War, and gave up the Chaplaincy when he converted to Catholicism in 1917.

Born in New Haven, Thomas van Winkle–as he was called until he became a monk–attended Portsmouth (Class of 1939) and received his undergraduate and doctoral degrees in chemical engineering at Yale. He then went to work on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, N.M. He told his students in his Physics 2 class that in the early tests of the atomic bomb the scientists were not sure how destructive the chain reaction they were setting up would be, and that some feared it would be even more destructive than in the first tests and in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

After the war, Thomas joined the Brookhaven National Lab to focus on disposal of radioactive waste, continuing the development of an air-scrubber at the University of Pennsylvania. The system he worked on was used to control pollution on the subsequently developed nuclear submarines. So a cousin of mine who commanded a nuclear submarine was a beneficiary of his work.

In 1949, now by legend suffering from angst at the destructiveness of the bomb he had helped unleash on the world, Thomas entered the Portsmouth Monastery, then a Priory, taking the name Leo. Seven years later he was ordained a priest. The students at Portsmouth were in awe of the stresses that Father Leo must have been subjected to in putting together the bomb and then seeing what it did in Japan.

The Portsmouth Abbey Cemetery
where Fr. Leo is buried.

Fr. Leo believed the nuclear arms race was ''the great moral dilemma of the closing years of the 20th century.''

In 1973, after 16 years presiding over a major expansion of Portsmouth Abbey, Dom Leo van Winkle returned to Yale as visiting lecturer in engineering and applied sciences. His successor as Headmaster was Dom Gregory Floyd '57, who served for 10 years.

In 1975, Fr. Leo joined the faculty at Catholic University in Washington, teaching chemical engineering and chairing the department in 1981. He returned to Portsmouth Abbey in 1983 and was reappointed headmaster in 1986. He died two years later of cancer of the lymphatic system, at Jane Brown Hospital in Providence, at 65 years old. He is buried in the Portsmouth Abbey Cemetery, No. PO030 in the online listing of grave sites in Portsmouth, R.I.

Gravestone of Fr. Leo's niece, who died at
15. His brother Cortlandt van Winkle 
is buried with her.

Fr. Leo was survived by two siblings - a brother, Cortlandt van Winkle of Salem, Ore., and a sister, Mother Teresa, Prioress of the Carmel of Mary Immaculate in Flemington, N.J.

Cortlandt, a Pacific Theater veteran of World War II, died in 2010 and was buried in the Holyrood Cemetery in Seattle, Wash. with his daughter Carolyn, who died at 15, predeceasing him by 36 years. There seems to be only one tombstone for both father and daughter.

Fr. Leo's obituary by Glenn Fowler was published in The New York Times on May 3, 1988. A thoughtful article about Fr. Leo was published in the Portsmouth Bulletin in 2012 by Fr. Damian Kearney '45, who prepared for the priesthood at the same time as Fr. Leo and taught me English. Fr. Damian's brother (to close the loop) was at the Portsmouth luncheon on Monday.