By Thea Jarvis

Ninety years ago this May, a red-headed Irishman laid claim to life amid the salty breezes of Newport, Rhode Island. For 36 of those 90 years, Brother Hugh Reardon has graced the Monastery of the Holy Sprit with his friendly, thoughtful presence.

“Most people say they want to be home for Christmas,” said Brother Hugh in the monastery parlor a few weeks before his birthday. But on that Christmas day 36 years ago, “I wanted to be here.”

Actually, he explained, he had to settle for the day after Christmas, 1945, to enter the monastery as the foundation’s first candidate for the brotherhood.

“We were two hours late leaving Penn Station and a sleet storm in the Carolinas put us another seven hours behind. But I was ‘the first one who came who stood here,’ as they say in Brooklyn,” he recalled, cherishing his notoriety as the monastery’s first postulant.

Brother Hugh, who entered religious life at the age of 54, had visited the South during World War I and liked what he saw.

“They treated us (the soldiers) so well. When I read that they were beginning a Trappist foundation in Georgia, I was interested. I felt they needed the Catholic Church down here,” he said.

What is needed and what is welcomed may not always be the same thing.

“There were only 300 people living in Conyers when we first came, and our neighbors, the Cleve Morrisons, were the only Catholic family around,” said Brother Hugh.

“There was a law in the state that any institution such as ours was subject to an annual investigation by the authorities. Once a year, they would come and look us over.”

While the local community was satisfying its curiosity about the strangely-dressed men who had taken over Rockdale’s old Honey Creek Plantation, Brother Hugh and his brethren turned to the task of putting the young monastery of its feet.

“The monks were housed in the old wooden monastery that had replaced the original barn. It worked when his own monastery lacked one. It was there he met that most famous of contemporary Cistercians, Father m. Louis – Thomas Merton.

“I looked at him and he looked at me – we didn’t have speaking privileges. The only thing I can say about him is that he seemed to have an extra inch above his forehead!” said Brother Hugh, struck by the memory.

But Brother Hugh Reardon is perhaps best known as Holy Spirit’s gatekeeper. This job he held from 1948, when the Conyers foundation became an abbey, until his sight failed him 11 years ago. As official welcomer, he had the opportunity to greet visitors from all over the country and around the world.

“It was quite a job,” recalled Brother Hugh. “But before I came to the monastery I had been up and down the country doing contract work. And when the Depression came I had gone to work for the Railway Mail Service in Penn Station in New York where I had plenty of experience meeting people. So I was the man for the job!”

Brother Hugh’s memories of his gatekeeper days are warm and vivid. Children were a great part of his life. “My friend Mrs. Peacock came over one day from Covington with some friends. She had her three young children with her – one was just an infant who rested on my shoulder. She asked if I would take the children over to church to be blessed,” he remembered.

“Of course, I did, and asked the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament to watch over them. Mrs. Peacock was so grateful. I told her not to think so much of me – I was just part of the furniture.”

Mrs. Peacock, like so many friends of Brother Hugh, is not a Catholic.

After his eyesight began to fail, Brother Hugh was able to maintain some duties at the gatehouse. She asked me if I wanted a coke,” he said, a smile playing on his lips.

“I told her I didn’t care for one, but knowing how smart little girls are, I asked if she would like one. She said sadly that she would but she didn’t have any money. I told her I would see if I could find a dime in the cash register. When I was reaching for the dime, she told me ‘Get three. I have two friends who’d like a coke too!’”

Children weren’t the only ones to pass through Brother Hugh’s open gate.

“Monks from our order came from all over the world,” he said with enthusiasm. “And visitors came from all over, too – some important ones. Elena de Give brought many prominent people. Her daughter Therese is my little baby – we had a wonderful get together after the Christmas Mass last year.”

“People of great holiness, who were doing all they could for Our Lord, came to the monastery. As gatekeeper, I met them all. It was wonderful!”

Earlier in his career, Brother Hugh had the opportunity to change his status from brother to priest.

“For a long time, the religious brother was essentially a servant of the priest. The order was living back in the eleventh century,” explained Brother Hugh. “When I first came to the monastery, a brother couldn’t become a priest. But Abbot Gabriel Sortais, who had been in the war in Europe, saw that we needed to bring the order up to date in this regard. Brothers were then allowed to become priests. A few chose to remain brothers.”

Brother Hugh was one of those who retained his status as a brother, one who makes simple or solemn vows but does not intend to receive Holy Orders.

But not before he had tried on the garment of the priest and found it didn’t quite fit.

“When we first had the chance to become priests, I signed a paper stating that I wanted to do so. But after a year’s experience, I asked the abbot to tear it up,” he said. “Being a brother was my idea of what I was to do – and ‘I done it,’ as they say in Ireland.”

Brother Hugh’s latest base of operations is the monastery infirmary, where he has lived since total blindness curtailed his activities. He is almost completely deaf, having suffered hearing impairment since childhood, but an ingenious mini-machine enables him to hear and readily communicate with the visitors who come to reminisce and bring him up to date on family news.

Brother Hugh uses his knowledge of braille to avail himself of the many publications produced for the visually handicapped. He is well-read and full of interest in current trends of thought.

“I was just reading an article on centering prayer by Basil Pennington,” he related enthusiastically, his red-tipped walking cane laid carefully on the parlor sofa.

His legs are a bit of a bother to him now. “Arteriosclerosis is clogging the arteries to my feet – we thought we’d lost them a couple of times,” he said. Walking isn’t’ easy for Brother Hugh now, and his fellow monks are quick to help him get around.

“Fortitude brings people to like you,” Brother Hugh reflected, “and I always try to do a little more than I necessarily have to. I keep on keeping on.”

In Conyers, at the ripe age of 90 years, Brother Hugh “keeps on.” The birthday celebration May 13 is not only a great day for him, but also a first for the Monastery of the Holy Sprit – no other monk has reached this advanced age.

“Some have come close,” said Abbot Augustine Moore, but none has achieved it.

Many years ago, an old friend of Brother Hugh from the New York Post Office Holy Name Society came to visit at the monastery.

“He was out there talking to me and told me what a holy man I was,” related Brother Hugh. “I said I’m no good. You don’t have to be good – you just have to TRY to be good.’”

Congratulations, Brother Hugh, on a very good try.

And happy birthday.