I was a radio petty officer. I received and decoded
messages in Morse Code. At that time, there was very little voice
radio. We had some difficulties, even dangerous moments, but these
were usually too far away to cause us real trouble.. . . We finally
returned to Portland, Oregon by the good old Willamette River!
Then we went all the way across to Boston by train. It was at
that moment exactly that I began thinking about a vocation. And
so I applied to the Society and was accepted. Phil McKenna and
I entered Shadowbrook on a special day, May 1, 1946.
I joined Fr. John Peter Sullivan just when he
had purchased eight acres of land in a wealthy suburb of Kingston.
It included a century-old colonial house with wide verandas, red
brick walls, local wood construction, and outside plumbing.
St. George's College was at its peak of success at that time,
while Campion College was in the planning stage. For over a century,
the Jesuits were either pastors of most of the churches or teachers
in their schools.
And so I found out quickly that there were some Jesuits of a different
mind about what Fr. Sullivan was doing. They saw it as something
on the fringe of the work they were doing in Jamaica. This was
largely due to the fact that Jesuit social apostolates were something
relatively new for them. Most didn't really know just what it
was all about.
As soon as the Peoples National Party took over
the government in 1972, I was called in by the Minister of Housing,
Anthony Spaulding, and the future Prime Minister, P. J. Patterson,
to consider a post in the ministry, organizing the lower-level
groups of high-rise housing schemes into cooperatives. I was asked
to assist the ministry in forming future cooperatives. The main
benefit would be to give the occupants private ownership, while
also freeing the ministry of the huge burden of full-time maintenance,
upkeep, and rent collection.
I soon discovered that my task was almost
impossible. It involved telling many people about the proposed
program. And yet we pursued it anyhow and registered some three
condominiums in the upper echelons of some of the poorer areas,
and pushed on with the scheduled plans. I soon became a guru on
condominiums. My advice was sought by many private sector volunteers
and directors, who knew little or nothing about the law.
