Page 11 - The Gonzaga Record 1988
P. 11
school reports with him in the late sixties, I marvelled at his sense of how
our words could impinge on the family, to build up or to destroy; how
they would affect the depression of a mother, the driving ambition of a
father, the vitality of a boy. The document finally put into the envelope
was not just an objective assessment, but a communication to a family
that was known, with a clear sense of how it would be used.
He ran a tight ship, and wielded the biffer in the fashion of the time,
but with a fairness that is still remembered. Two small boys were heard
discussing which teacher they liked best. 'I like Fr White best' said Peter.
'But he biffs you!' protested his friend. 'Yes, but that's his duty' said
young Sutherland, with that sense of order that makes him a formidable
European Commissioner. In fact it was often the wayward who sensed
most vividly the largeness of Bill's heart. More than once he stood under
the great copper beech on the front lawn calling young X, a fugitive from
the classroom, to come down out of that - and X has now joined the
forces of law as a thriving solicitor.
To those who have, more will be given, says the Gospel, ironically, and
Gonzaga's early pupils were manifestly blessed in the Dublin of their
time. Fr White succeeded in saving these fortunate ones from an
enervating sense of privilege. He challenged the clever to be more than
clever: to be good. It is the task for every teacher, to build up children
without pandering to narcissistic illusions, to confront their selfishness
without destroying or depressing them, to forge an alliance with the good
-in them. This was a central theme in Bill's work with boys: to reach the
truth in them, and not allow them to take their blessings for granted.
Every school principal knows the four a.m. feeling that there is a
serious chink in his armour, some point where the dyke can be breached
and chaos break out. Bill's chink lay in the formalities of administration.
He ran his files on what we called the deep litter system, then a popular
method of poultry farming. Bill dropped letters, application forms,
telephone messages, reports, departmental documents to form a carpet,
sometimes ankle-deep, on the ample floor of his room. He was confident
that he knew where things were, and we marvelled to find that this was
sometimes true. But at a time when paper-work was multiplying and
applications for a place in the school were often made from the nursing-
home as soon as the baby was identified as a boy, it was inevitable that
the deep litter system sometimes let him down, with often painful
consequences. In general he was ill at ease with the administrative aids
that are now taken for granted: secretaries (he never had one),
typewriters, cars, files, computers, VDUs, all the paraphernalia of
yuppiedom, that shield one person from another. For him the only
essential 20th-century appliance (apart from the bicycle - but his
machine was more redolent of the nineteenth century) was the telephone.
If Fr White is ever portrayed or sculpted, it must be with a telephone
to his ear, listening, murmuring, reassuring, cheering, and as the minutes
lengthen saying 'Goodbye .... goodbye again' (even on one occasion,

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