Remembering Austin Sheridan MSC, John Northey MSC. RIP on the 50th anniversaries of their deaths.
50th anniversaries, Golden jubilees, offer an occasion for remembrance and some thanksgiving.
Some of us remember the occasions themselves – and would like to hand on to those younger some memories.
December sees the 50th anniversaries of the deaths of two of our MSC conferences, John Northey and Austin Sheridan. They both died after long-term cancer.
The editor of the website remembers both.
In 1952, Austin Sheridan was teaching at Chevalier College and in charge of the junior dormitory. He was very earnest. He was a good maths teacher – especially using the device of promising to read one of GK Chesterton’s Fr. Brown stories each time we finished a section of the textbook. (And, on the night of the Old Boys Reunion dance, in the hall near the dormitory, he drowned out some of the music and revelry by reading us excerpts from Miss Pross and Mme Defarge in A Tale of Two Cities.
The end of the year, he was transferred to Hindmarsh Parish. We encountered him again in 1957 at Douglas Park during the novitiate, with choir work.
In the last years of his life, he was transferred to Papua New Guinea, a lifelong desire. However, his cancer became very severe – and I have a special memory of visiting him at his mother’s home in 1970. Always very thin, he looked emaciated, in great pain, having to lie on a mattress on the floor for some ease. He died on December 4, 1970, aged 50.
Those who remember John Northey realise that he looked the opposite of Austin Sheridan. He was big. He was tall. And he had a booming presence. He was well educated, a great reader, chaplain to the drama Society in Adelaide, the Therry Society, a man of wide culture.
When he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he moved, in 1968, to work with Fr. John McMahon as provincial secretary. His previous appointment had been at Daramalan College, Canberra, where he was an intimidating presence. James Bond in Thunderball had been released and the boys called Fr Northey “Thunderguts Guts”. You could hear him roar, “You will obey me” from nearby buildings. His method of objecting to an adjacent class’s noise quotient was to get his class to count from one to ten getting louder and louder (and sending back the boy who came to request quiet on behalf of his teacher with a six).
When some of us went to see films in 1966 and 1967, he referred to us as “ecclesiastical Peeping Toms” and reported us to the provincial many times. However, a personal testimony: when Paul Stenhouse took him to a press preview in 1968, a provocative film and he stayed till the end, I asked him whether I should review it in Annals. He gave me the reassuring and supportive reply, “you should review all controversial films in Annals”. That was in 1968. He died on Boxing Day, 1970 – and, when going to the hospital after his death, he looked very much asleep, at rest, except for his hands, sallow and dead.
Many will have their own memories of Austin and John. They are part of the heritage of the MSC Australian province.
