Tributes to Bob Irwin MSC and his work in MSC Education
(Some have to wait until they die for eulogies. Some have to wait for their causes for canonisation are introduced to have their virtues extolled. Now Bob does not have to wait.)
Tribute by John Mulrooney MSC
Bob Irwin often says he is a Missionary of the Sacred Heart from the top of his head to his boot straps.
We know he is incredibly talented: a man whose great love is people; a man who is a gifted administrator; a man with vision who has the courage, tenacity and wisdom to bring those visions to fruition; a man with the great skill of bringing people with him; a man who can always be relied upon with practical wisdom and common sense; a man with good humour and sense of fun; a natural born leader and a great friend to many people. So many superlatives we can use and all good and true.
With all these gifts and talents of course comes a man with great warmth and heart. If the inner and outward true ‘marks’ of a Missionary of the Sacred Heart are love, kindness, compassion, tenderness, mercy, concern for all, – one ‘who loves with a human heart’ – then we have a very special one in Bob Irwin!
I was very fortunate to follow on from Bob in several roles. The foundations of the school retreat team were well established by Bob. My time as Principal at Chevalier College found a school ‘humming’ with good will, great spirit and strong sense of being an MSC school at its heart. He dragged me kicking and screaming to be his assistant at Treand House when he was in the role of Provincial (and ignored an 1100 student petition to have me remain at Chev!) but what a privilege it was to be guided by him and to be part of those initiatives such as Vietnam and the Chevalier Institute. Our lives have ‘criss-crossed’ through the MSC Education ministry at meetings, conferences, holidays, conversations, bottles of wine, phone calls, e-mails etc over five decades.
Bob simply loved the staff and parents he worked with. He simply loved the young people in our schools and other places and never tired of being with them, challenging them, calling them to be better than they thought they were. As Provincial he saw his most important and primary role was the individual care of the MSC men. I was there when he encouraged them; when he affirmed them and built up their confidence; when he challenged them; when he laughed with them; when he wept with them and when he buried them. He was acutely aware of his responsibilities in this as he knew the role he was in had both the capacity to affirm and to build up as well as the capacity to hurt.
I could say a lot more but enough superlatives lest he get a big head!
It’s enough to say that each community he lived in and worked with was enriched and strengthened by him and was left in a better place after his leaving.
Many, many thanks and blessings Bob.
Speech delivered by Rita Daniels - MSC Education Committee AGM -16 May 2021
I have been asked to speak tonight about Fr Bob from an education perspective and I am privileged to do this having met him more than 40 years ago. I had the pleasure of working for him when I was a teacher and later the Principal of Daramalan College when he was in the role of Headmaster, Provincial Superior and later Director of MSC Education.
When Bob arrived at Daramalan College as Headmaster (which was the terminology used then) it was like a tornado had hit the school. In my opinion, he was very much the right person for the job at that time. He brought:
- renewed energy and vision
- an amazing capacity to engage with the whole school community,
- a strong commitment to promote and embed MSC spirituality more deeply within the school community
- as well as a desire to spruce up the appearance of the school, amongst other things.
Although not everyone within the school was looking for the volume or speed of the changes that occurred, that did not deter Bob. He was a man on a mission for the full six years.
This was his first appointment as a Head and he used his intellect, his energy and his love of people to change the school. The overwhelming majority of changes he led were very well received and this, as you know, is not that at all easy to achieve! He was articulate in stating why a change was going to be made and he ensured that the planning had been done to enable the implementation to occur reasonably smoothly.
Bob was always focussed on how things could be improved:
- relationships between staff,
- relationships with students and their families,
- the physical environment
- but most importantly the MSC identity of the school.
It was not change for the sake of change but change for the overall good of the school that drove him to put his heart and soul into his work. Nothing Bob did was ever done in a half-hearted way.
As a Headmaster, Bob was not someone who spent his days shut up in his office. Instead, he was out and about looking to see what was happening in different places and talking to people. He would often share his lunch with some of the staff in the staff lounge before going out to talk with the students and staff in the courtyards or on the oval. This helped the staff to get to know him in a relaxed setting and he rarely missed much of what was happening within the staff due to his sharp capacity to observe and question.
One of my stand-out recollections from these six years is how much the students loved Bob. He got to know many of them by name as well as things about their family and their interests and they knew he genuinely cared about them. He made himself very accessible to them, he jollied them along when he thought they needed it and the lolly machine he placed in his office was well utilised over the six years Bob spent at Daramalan.
Bob was always straight and very fair with the students and they knew and appreciated this. He took time with them and tried to instil in them a strong sense of their self-worth and goodness. Whenever he spoke to them as a group, he was really positive, encouraging and reinforcing the message that they were unconditionally loved by God. His homilies always included wonderful stories that students could relate to in some way and so they listened to him and, I suspect, absorbed much more than they realised at the time.
Bob spent a lot of time and energy on encouraging people and really supporting them to be the best they could be. For example, he gave opportunities to those staff he saw as having strong potential rather than to those who expected to be offered a position simply because they had served their time waiting for it.
He was prepared to try new things, including for example, Outdoor Education which was offered for some years with varying degrees of success but always a lot of expense.
Bob got very involved in the local education community and was regarded highly by his fellow school leaders across the three sectors of education in the ACT. They knew he was always focussed on having the education system work as fairly and transparently as possible for the students. He was happy to speak his mind (and did so from time to time on issues he felt strongly about) but it was always done in a considered and respectful manner.
One of the outstanding things Bob did during his time as Headmaster was he introduced to Daramalan the practice of having family masses and they were huge events that drew the community together. Bob’s dynamism as a leader and as a priest brought large numbers of families to the college, sometimes on very cold winter evenings such as tonight. People joined in the singing that he led so enthusiastically and the Masses were very special occasions that are remembered fondly by many people.
During my time as Principal of Daramalan, I enjoyed watching the daughters and sons of students who were at Daramalan in the 1980s when Bob ran the school, much like their parents did, get enthused by Bob’s singing at the end of Sacred Heart Day Masses – and I know that some of the students used to go home and tell their parents about what had happened at Mass as it was so special for them. This capacity to get people involved and to take up the challenge Bob put to them is a great gift that Bob has and he has used it incredibly well in his work in schools.
Bob organised the Silver Jubilee celebrations of Daramalan in 1987 which really marked a coming of age for the college within the Canberra community. There was a beautiful mass at the Cathedral which was attended by a very large number of people as well as events at the college. Bob says from time to time that almost everything he built at Daramalan was knocked down and replaced by Barry at a later stage but one enduring thing Bob initiated as part of the Silver Jubilee celebrations was naming the buildings after significant people, mainly MSCs, in the history of the college and I doubt that this will ever be changed, especially by Barry.
Bob also led the college through the aftermath of the great fire of July 1986 which was quite a traumatic and disruptive time but, looking on the bright side, it led to some new facilities being built which is never a bad thing. I might add as an aside that none these facilities still exist – Barry replaced them!
When Bob left Daramalan at the end of 1988, it was a very different school to the one he found when he arrived in 1983. He then went on to achieve many equally wonderful things at Chevalier College and then in Darwin at St John’s College which presented its own special challenges. He showed in his time in schools that he was, indeed, a natural leader.
In his role of Director of MSC Education, Bob maintained his strong interest in education and he was a fantastic support to all the MSC Principals. Bob understood the need to implement changes in how the schools were governed in order to set them up for the future when fewer MSCs would available to be active in the schools and he promoted strongly the importance of spiritual formation for all staff, not just the Principals. The embedding of the Chevalier Institute Team’s work as an integral part of formation in all the MSC schools has been an outstanding part of his very significant contribution to MSC Education.
I have worked with Bob on quite a number of panels to review or select people for school leadership roles and when I did this, I saw that Bob would always strive to be scrupulously fair and kind towards all those involved. He understood that the experience of being reviewed or applying for a senior role was often very challenging, so he worked hard to make people in these situations feel as relaxed and comfortable as possible.
As you would know, Bob also has a delightful sense of fun and he has perfected the art of dissolving tension or lightening the mood of the room with a smile or a humorous comment or story. He is a wonderful person to spent time with and he enjoys the company of others. When Bob visits any of the MSC schools you can see many people who know him in each of the schools gravitate towards him to catch up. He is certainly very well-known and loved in each of the four MSC schools.
When Bob was very sick some years ago, it was a significant wake up call for all of us who had assumed Bob was someone who would always be around. Fortunately for us he overcame his illness and he remains as someone who is incredibly important in the history of MSC education. He is a man who has a deep love and affection for MSC schools and their students, in particular; and he is a man of great faith and love as well as boundless optimism and joy in life.
Bob, on behalf of all of us here and those who have been part of this group in the past, I thank you for the extraordinary contributions you have made to MSC education and for being the wonderful person that you are. We have been greatly blessed by your work, by your friendship and by your presence among us and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all that you have done and been for us.