Rardie Mills Birthday 102
Rardie Mills
New Zealand
Brother Gerard (Rardie) de Sales Mills
10.3.1907 – 8.1.2011
While World War One was raging on the other side of the world a little boy from Palmerston was facing his own terrifying experience in Dunedin. The youngest of twelve children of John and Mary Mills and sent to board so that he could attend Christian Brothers' School, little Gerard Mills arrived at the house where his sister had boarded. It was a Saturday afternoon and arrangements were concluded for a daughter of the non-Catholic family to escort young Rardie to the Cathedral for Mass the following morning, which she did and then returned home. The boy from the tiny country village stared up the steps at a building the size of which nothing had ever prepared him for, with its hordes of people none of whom he knew. He climbed the steps but couldn't bring himself to go inside and so he hid and waited for his escort to return to take him home. Almost ninety years and more than 30000 masses later that decision still haunted the old man Rardie who, in the midst of a bout of scruples, worried about that missed Mass. That this and the worry that he may have been too strict as a teacher were his most pressing concerns of conscience gives testimony to a century of years spent in faithfulness, goodness and service.
Four of Rardie's sisters became sisters of Our Lady of the Missions and so Mary Mills, widowed just before Rardie was born, was not totally unprepared when he informed her that he wanted to become a Christian Brother. At 16 years old, in 1923, he sailed to Sydney to train as a Brother - that was before any of the other Brothers still alive in NZ were even born. In 1925 he was given his first ever pair of long trousers and sent out to teach in the country NSW town of Albury. As Rardie told the story, the Provincial of the time took pity on this young man and said he should be home with his mother and, in 1927, Rardie was sent just 100 miles up the road from her home, now in Dunedin, to the College the Christian Brothers were opening that year in Oamaru, St Kevin's.
It was about thirty years later when I first met the now "old" man of 50 when he taught us primary school maths and English at St Edmunds in South Dunedin. He was a teacher you didn't want to disappoint, a good and memorable teacher who was really interested in and encouraging of his students. He had spent all the intervening years in Oamaru, Dunedin or Auckland teaching mainly in primary classes but was soon to return to country NSW for ten years at Wagga. In 1968 he returned to finish his teaching days at St Edmunds until he retired to Christchurch in 1985, to be the roustabout, he said. A stroke in 2002 saw him move to this last part of his life at Nazareth House where he died last Saturday two months shy of his 104th birthday.
What sort of a man was this Brother Gerard de Sales Mills?
In the week before he died Rardie attended masses where the evangelist John was talking about him. John was explaining how Jesus was the embodiment of God in human form and that God dwells deeply within us too, if we love one another. And that has been Rardie's life-long gift to us. He thought people were what was important and he loved them. Often in a mischievous playful way, but he loved them. He was not a man who built schools or ran them but he was the heart of them. So much so that in Auckland he was given the enviable nickname - "the little gentleman". He was only once superior of a community but was the glue of every community he was in with his impish humour, his enthusiasm, his readiness to help. Especially was he the friend of the young Brothers who found in him encouragement, support, humour, wisdom and an ability to live with the foibles of others. Paul Robertson writes: I lived with Rardy for my first three years in New Zealand – at St Edmunds. I would have been 21 Rardy 72 and Tony Sullivan 62. I thought of him as physically old but not old in spirit or heart. I was always struck by his humility – he always put others first – never himself. He was one of those people who made you feel that what you were doing was important and that you were doing it so well. Paul Robertson illustrates this in an incident: One day Tony, Rardy and myself were sitting at the lunch table eating lunch when a student from the local state school screamed out from the school gate "Ollie, Ollie". Ollie being Tony's taboo nickname, Tony asked Rardy, "What did he say?" Rardy who had heard exactly what had been said and who did not want to offend Tony, quickly said, "Someone was calling out Gurley, Gurley". Paul Gurley was a Form 2 student who seemed to be often in trouble with Tony. "Gurley, oh that Paul Gurley is troublesome chap". Rardy looked knowingly to me.
He never criticized or expressed disapproval or spoke badly of anybody. The role he took was to encourage, to be enthusiastic about what you were doing, and to pray. And did he pray! It seemed that he was on his way to the Chapel when some of the late revelers were just on their way to bed. And we knew that if he wasn't digging in the garden he was most likely to be in the Chapel. As one person put it, Rardie seemed to have captured a marvelous balance between kindness and piety.
In some ways Rardie was a man ahead of his time, a conservation pioneer, for instance. He often spoke of his Utopian dream that: every New Zealander have a 10 acre block to live sustainably from. That would solve many of the world's problems. He used to bury any rubbish – in at least two places he had been, the construction workers on later buildings were convinced they had found an archeological site! He grew his own potatoes and other vegies, glorious gladioli and roses and the best crop of garlic I have ever seen when he learnt that they kept aphids away from his roses. He made simplicity of living an art form and embarrassed the Brothers at the holiness of his attire – he would simply never buy himself anything. He even convinced everyone that his birthday was three days earlier than it really was so that it would coincide with that of another community member and thus save having two celebrations. He was sent to the Cook Islands for three months – his luggage all fitted into a school bag. This frugality did sometimes cause some problems as a further memory of Paul illustrates: While I was at South Dunedin, Rardy was responsible for the community car which was a Vauxhall viva, It probably had seen its days and was not too good at starting in the cold mornings. Tony Sullivan was keen to get it fixed or to replace it with a new car. Rardy would have nothing to do with this – the car was perfectly good. So in order to get it to start perfectly in each morning, Rardy would place an electric blanket each night over the engine under the bonnet and plug it in. The heat from the electric blanket worked. The car sat each night in the garage.
One day Tony Sullivan was in a hurry to go somewhere and I was a little late in getting to the car. When I walked outside the house, there was Tony behind the wheel looking something Toad from Toad Hall calling out – "What is this, What is this!!!". He had hurriedly backed he car out and in the process the electric chords were hanging out the front of the car from beneath the bonnet flying all over the place. Tony was not to impressed with what Rard had done.
About a month later the electric blanket caught fire as it was so soaked with oil. The car was repaired and eventually replaced.
But though he was frugal he gave austerity a good name, for his teetotalism was never a disapproval of those who did drink, he always showed interest in the films he would never go to see, he exulted in a good gaudeamus or party.
And he was a fitness fanatic. From his farm upbringing he had always been keen on and gifted at sport. That physical ability continued into his older years when we knew him. At the beach in Westport while the rest of us, on leaving the surf, staggered off to sunbathe he would set out on a long distance run to the far end of the beach, and this as an 80 yo! I do remember him being stopped by the police also as an 80 yo at 4.00am when he was out on his morning run. But maybe he was just in training for his more recent attempts to walk with his walker from Nazareth House to Oamaru without telling anyone. But his concern for others showed through in his exercising as well, I learnt last night. When he went for his 4am runs as a younger man of 60 or so he would climb in and out of his bedroom window so as not to wake the others in the house with the squeaky floorboards. I wonder what the police would have made of that if they'd seen him!
And he had the capacity to exult in the present. He could really look at things and see the detail. He was always so interested in what was going on, a book he had read, the beauty of a tree – anyone visiting him at Nazareth House will have heard him describe rapturously the beauty of the trees there. His hunger for new knowledge was insatiable – he taught himself book-binding and pottery; in his mid-90's he attended lectures on the Eucharist by Frank Andersen and excitedly queried why "they" hadn't told us this years ago.
Why did he live so long, especially when he repeatedly said since his stroke that he was ready to go. I am sure that it was so that God could show Himself through him as a lover, an acceptor of all people, who delights and whose eyes twinkle at the fun and beauty of creation, especially his human creations. And also so that that same God might show how He loves and cares for us by working in the hands of the carers at Nazareth House.
The Christian Brothers deeply appreciate the love with which he was surrounded at Nazareth House. Rardie thought of himself as in Paradise there and so appreciated the care he was given and we so appreciated that care when he had difficult times. Thank you to the Sisters and to all the staff for these last nine years.
And so we commend to the God he already had come to know so well, Rardie, a loving and lovable man, a pioneer of ecology and healthy living ,a faithful member of the congregation of Christian Brothers, a congregation, which Rardie often quoted as being "one raised up by God to teach poor boys and to pump up footballs".
Joe Lauren
