Brother Kevin Hoare celebrated his 93rd birthday last week, and this week celebrates 75 years as a Marist.
When Br Kevin Hoare looks back on 75 years as a Marist Brother, there is no grand declaration or dramatic turning point. Instead, there is the quiet satisfaction of a life spent where he believed he was meant to be. Asked whether he would do it all again, his answer comes without hesitation. “Oh yes. I have felt great fulfilment helping young people, the interesting places I've been, the people I've met," he explains simply.
At 93, Br Kevin has become something of a living treasure. His life stretches across almost a century of Australian Catholic education and religious life, from one-teacher country schools of his wartime childhood to teaching in community ‘funded’ classrooms, to ministry in Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Thailand. He has witnessed enormous changes in education, the Church and society, yet his own vocation has remained remarkably constant.
Br Kevin grew up on a farm “on the other side of the river” near Nyah, north-west of Swan Hill, the eldest of 12 children – seven boys and five girls – in a devoted Catholic family. To attend Mass, his family, who were the only Catholics on his side of the river, had to cross the river. “We’d squeeze in,” he laughs. “I remember at one time, we even picked up German and Italian prisoners of War who were fruit-picking and took them to Mass. You can’t imagine anything like that happening today; we would have been regimented.”
His first school had just one teacher, who taught 46 children of every age together in the same classroom. “We had two teachers, but with the War we lost one. That remaining teacher sure learned a lot about teaching,” laughs Br Kevin.
For secondary school, Br Kevin boarded at Assumption College, Kilmore, largely because it was the easiest Catholic school for his family to get him to. "There were about twenty day-students and 300 boarders at the time," he recalls. Assumption College had a reputation for making men who want to be priests, but Br Kevin says he never considered the priesthood.
"Where I grew up, priests were always working alone. When I went to Kilmore, seeing the brothers in their work, not only in teaching but in their relationship with one another – the joy that they seemed to have in community, that really influenced me," he reflects.
He laughs as he remembers a time when he was young. He and one of his younger brothers put their names down to express an interest in joining the Marists, partially to get out of class. "I was somewhat interested, but my brother wasn't interested at all – he just wanted to get out of class," he jokes.
Growing up in a large family had shown him the value of community, and that was what most attracted him to religious life as a Marist Brother.
His profession took place in Mittagong, New South Wales, in 1951, alongside 25 other young men from around Australia. His father and one brother attended, as it was too expensive for his whole family, and his parents and grandmother had been at his Rite of Initiation.
He remembers another detail with characteristic humour.
"In those days, we were given a name by the Order. We could choose three names, but not which of those three names. I was in the last group to be given a name. I remember waiting for my name to be called, hearing all the others being given a name different from their baptismal name. I could hardly believe it when they gave me the name ‘Kevin Brendan’.
"They couldn't have all Kevins," he laughs. "They had to have Kevin Brendan and Kevin Mark. To this day, I’ve never used the Brendan."
Some fifteen years later, the practice ended. "They decided changing someone's name was like losing identity, and not a positive thing."
As a Marist Brother, life meant being ready to move wherever he was needed.
"You never really knew where the placement would go in the early days," he says.
"At the end of the year, you were told where you'd be teaching next. You'd leave your goods all packed up because you might be coming back to pick them up – or they might just be sent on to you. Of course, in those days, there wasn't very much to send on."
"It was just part of life."
That willingness to embrace the unknown became one of the defining characteristics of his ministry.
Over the next seven decades, he taught in every state in Australia (except Tasmania) before serving in Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Thailand. Each new assignment became another adventure.
For the first fifteen years he taught in primary schools before coming to Bendigo to start teaching secondary school students at Marist College (then on Hargreaves Street).
When he was appointed to Wewak in Papua New Guinea, he admits he first had to find it on a map.
His final overseas ministry took him to Thailand, where he worked with migrant children from Myanmar and volunteered in a Bangkok hospital.
Even now, when asked about the highlights of his life, he doesn't mention achievements or milestones.
"It's being with people."
Teaching itself, has changed almost beyond recognition since he first entered the classroom. His first class consisted of around seventy Year 4 and 5 students, despite having very little formal teacher training. Later, he remembers studying subjects at TAFE and then teaching this knowledge to the studentrs the following week at the high school. "I'd learn it one week, and teach it the next."
The experience taught him something that stayed with him for life.
"The best way to learn something is to teach it."
He has also watched Catholic education transform through government funding and increasing professional standards. “I remember way back, working with Aboriginal students; we’d get on the back of a ute, take some rifles and go roo shooting – we couldn’t do that nowadays.”
"When I first started teaching ... our stipend was very low, so the parents and friends would fundraise so we could pay our bills and go to Kilmore for our retreats.
"There was a lot of community stepping in to meet a need. You know, parents would put down tar and cement, all kinds of things, running fetes to make things possible … now there is the government." Schools are also becoming larger, which Br Kevin thinks can make a sense of belonging difficult to achieve. “It’s not just a hundred or two hundred kids in a school, now there can be a thousand,” he says.
While schools have changed, Br Kevin believes something valuable may have been lost. In those early years, families weren't simply customers of a school. They shared responsibility for making it work.
The Marist Brothers have also changed. Br Kevin lived through the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, although he says they arrived just as he was beginning a new chapter of ministry.
"It didn't impact me all that much because it was a new beginning as I was asked to go to Papua New Guinea, where secondary education was just beginning."
What he has noticed more keenly is how much harder it has become for young people to choose religious life.
When he entered the Brothers, career choices were limited and lifelong commitments were more common. Today, young people have almost limitless opportunities and many career changes. Yet he believes faith is still central to young people’s lives today, but it manifests differently. “It’s very much there. People are still concerned about others; how faith plays out really depends on the home life of a person and how much God plays in that, because it’s not as central to family life these days.”
Asked what has sustained him through 75 years of religious life, he doesn't point to sacrifice or discipline.
He points to people, to community, to a life spent alongside others. His vows, he says, "were never a problem."
Today, Br Kevin smiles when people ask about slowing down.
"Well, I've got a lot slower now," he says with a grin.
Perhaps.
But after 75 years of teaching, serving and accompanying generations of young people across Australia and overseas, Br Kevin's greatest lesson is not found in a classroom. It is the witness of a life lived faithfully, joyfully and in community.
A life that, he admits has had its challenges and been very rewarding. When asked if he would choose it again, he replies, "despite difficulties in the first few years – sthe answer is Yes!".
