Transitions – Page 2 – Where’s Fran?

Nick Rahoy, My First Island Friend and Mentor

It was in August 1963, shortly after my arrival to begin teaching at Xavier, that I met first met Nick, along with John Rulmal, on the Gunner’s Knot. Nick was one of several Yapese students who had boarded at Yap for the voyage to Chuuk. Air flights were few and planes were small in those days. Over the next four or five days as we crept eastward, Nick began exposing me to the new world of Micronesia. It began with demonstrating how monkeymen were carved from wood, and it went on to other things—how spirits of the dead take possession of people, and why island women once had to stay in special huts during their menstrual period. By the end of the trip, we were good friends. Nick was not just a personal mentor on island life, but one of my very first Micronesian friends.

The photo of Juan that is unforgettable, at least for me, is the 1987 shot of him seated between his two fellow novices and their novice director, Fr. Felix Yaoch. in the rectory in Palau. They all have beaming smiles on their faces, as well they should. They were making history in an island group that had long been a mission served by other countries. Now Micronesia had its own Jesuit novitiate, its own Palauan novice master, and three island seminarians. It was a key event on the path toward the truly Micronesian church that we had all hoped for.

We were all shocked at the news that Bill Rakowicz, a long-time missionary in the islands, died on Dec 13 at the age of 73. He was working in a Jesuit retreat house in Maryland at the time.

About 50 years ago–it must have been in the early 1970s–I first met Angken Rapun on Tol, the westernmost island in Chuuk. Angken was hard to miss. He was a rugged, good-looking young man who told me he had played football on Guam during his high school days. That was easy to believe, given his size. In 1968, not long after his return to Chuuk, he married Kintina. They had several children–most of them as well-built as their dad–and the couple would have celebrated their golden wedding anniversary next year if Angken had lived.

“Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.” Douglas McArthur used this saying to describe himself after his removal from the Korean War in the 1950s, but it could just as easily apply to Jack Curran. Jack did die, on January 4 this year, but only after a long decade of fading away due to his Alzheimer’s. He may not have intended it to happen that way, but Jack certainly made good on his promise to surrender to the Lord his “mind and memory” along with life and liberty. Not only that, but he did it with his characteristic good grace. His caretakers at Murray-Weigel loved him, people there say.

She was one of the pioneers of the “new Xavier” in the early 70s when she arrived from the Philippines. Since the school’s founding 20 years earlier, nearly all on the staff had been Jesuits. Upon Rosa’s arrival in 1972, she was still one of a very small number of staff who didn’t have “SJ” at the end of their names.

Everyone used to call him Nico, but I preferred using first names. So I asked him one day why his parents had named him Adolfo. He smiled as he reminded me that Spain was involved in a violent civil war when he was born, and that the leader of one of the nations strongest in its support of the “Catholic side” of the war was a guy by the name of Adolf.

Nico, Adolfo, or whatever you want to call him, was the provincial of Japan about the same time I was superior in Micronesia. That was how we became friends. At the weekly semi-annual meetings of the superiors in the assistancy, I came to know and like him more and more during our time together.

Attending Xavier High School in the early 1970s was John Hagileiram’s introduction to the wider world. For those of us who got to know this friendly young man with the mischievous twinkle in his eye, it was our only introduction to Eauripik–a tiny islet with a population of barely a hundred that made that rest of the Outer Islands of Yap look like downtown.

Francis X. Hezel, SJ, is a Jesuit priest who has lived and worked in Micronesia since 1963. At different times he has served as high school teacher, school administrator, pastor, and regional superior to the Jesuits of Micronesia. He spent thirty years directing the Micronesian Seminar, a non-profit, non-governmental organization based in Pohnpei, Micronesia.

He has written and spoken widely about social change and its impact on island societies. He has also written several books on Micronesian history, including The First Taint of Civilization, Strangers in Their Own Land, and The New Shape of Old Island Cultures. His most recent book, Making Sense of Micronesia: The Logic of Pacific Island Culture, is available through University of Hawaii Press.

Category - Transitions

Nick Rahoy, My First Island Friend and Mentor

Juan Ngiraibuuch: A Life Too Short

Bill Rakowicz, Famed Horror Movies Fan and Much More

Angken Rapun: Deacon and Friend

Jack Curran: The Fading of an Old Trooper

Farewell to Rosa Mormad

Farewell, Nico

The Mischievous Kid from Eauripik