Photo by Anna Weaver
Brother Venard Ruane in front of Sacred Heart Church on Jan. 31.
Friend and brother
Maryknoll’s Brother Venard Ruane has been an enduring island presence for more than half a century
By Mary Duddy | Special to the Herald
With a little smile and a humble greeting, a short, stocky man with grey hair and a wooden cane welcomes you to the rectory at Sacred Heart Parish on Wilder Street in Honolulu. He’s Maryknoll Brother Venard Ruane, a human landmark in Hawaii — an island presence for more than half a century, 60 years a religious, 80 years young.
He leaves Honolulu to retire in California at the end of this month, 55 years after he first arrived, taking with him a trunkful of crisp memories and the love of the thousands he’s touched over the decades.
“Brother Venard is a delightful, very open person,” said Father Joseph A. Grimaldi, former pastor of Sacred Heart Parish. “He is ready to listen. There is always a little laughter.”
According to Father Grimaldi, the Maryknoll brother is a living record book of the parish and its school, Maryknoll.
“He receives people graciously and he knows the history,” he said, “including names and dates of people and events in the parish. He has been a blessing for Sacred Heart Parish and Maryknoll School. He is a strong thread that holds things together through the years.”
Fellow Maryknoller Father Robert W. Donnelly validated Father Grimaldi’s assessment.
Brother Venard is “very friendly,” he said. “He has a good sense of humor and is good company. He is a good conversationalist as his memory is very good.”
Spend a few minutes with Brother Venard and it’s evident the priests had it right. His memory is exceptional. He recalls vividly and clearly dates and names from over the span of his life, which is quickly approaching 80 years.
Early missionary spirit
By chance, Brother Venard had a Honolulu connection before he was born. His father had immigrated to the United States from Ireland in 1910, joined the U.S. Army and was stationed at Schofield Barracks until he was discharged in 1912. He then settled in Iowa, where he was a fireman for 35 years and where Venard’s history began.
Brother Venard was born Thomas F. Ruane on April 4, 1927, in Iowa, one of eight children. His mother was a schoolteacher.
Thomas became interested in the religious life and missionary work in high school. He belonged to a group called the Catholic Students Mission. Every month different missionaries would visit and talk to the students.
Thomas personally knew a Maryknoll nun, Sister Miriam Thomas Thorton, who was an early influence.
“She went to the Philippines before the war [World War II], and her father was our family doctor,” he said. “I also went to school with one of her sisters.”
Thomas enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in March, 1944, at age 17. While on an eight-month deployment in Tientsien, China, he met some missionaries who impressed him a great deal. He remembers, in particular, a priest with whom he used to visit almost weekly and talk about missionary work.
After two years with the Marines, Thomas returned to Iowa. Six months later, on March 1, 1947, he signed up with Maryknoll. He was 19.
He took the religious name Venard, after Blessed Theophane Venard, a French missionary beheaded for the faith in Tonkon, China, in 1861.
“I had read a book about him called A Modern Martyr, and I was quite impressed by that,” Brother Venard said. “We already had a Brother Theophane, so I took the name Venard.”
Blessed Theophane Venard was later declared a saint by Pope John Paul II in 1988 and named among the Vietnamese Martyrs.
Upon joining Maryknoll, Brother Venard chose to be a brother rather than a priest.
“Priests are ordained. Brothers are not,” he said. “We don’t take vows; we take oaths, which are just as binding as a vow. Some of the brothers assist the priests in the missions doing catechetical work, working as registered nurses or mechanics, and supervising farms.”
“So it’s a different vocation than a priest,” he said.
Mainland, Hawaii assignments
Brother Venard’s first assignment was in 1948 at the Maryknoll seminary in Bedford, Mass. It was for one year.
“I did clerical work in the Development office,” he said. “Once a week I did shopping for the seminarians, priests and brothers.”
He and another Maryknoll brother then drove two school buses across the country to his second assignment at a Maryknoll-run Japanese mission school in Los Angeles.
He spent the next two years as a bus driver, driving children to and from school.
His last assignment before coming to Hawaii was at a junior seminary in Clarks Summit, outside of Scranton, Pa.
Then, except for two years in the 1970s, he has lived and worked in Hawaii. Brother Venard arrived at Sacred Heart Parish on Aug. 5, 1952.
“Sacred Heart parish has changed a lot since I came here in 1952,” Brother Venard said. “We had five Maryknoll priests living here then. The parish boundaries were the Diamond Head side of Pensacola down to Kapiolani up to the bridge past the East West Center on Dole Center. It took in all of Manoa and Tantalus.”
Brother Venard saw Sacred Heart Parish divided three times to accommodate a multiplying Honolulu population. The first split created Pius X Parish in Manoa. The second division occurred with the establishment of Sts. Peter and Paul Parish near Ala Moana. The third time took place with the building of the University of Hawaii’s Newman Center/Holy Spirit Parish.
For his first 18 years in Sacred Hearts Parish, Brother Venard worked with youth and in the parish school. He was the scoutmaster for Troop 42, Maryknoll High School’s first athletic director, and founder of the Maryknoll Drum and Bugle Corps, known as the Maryknollers.
He also performed maintenance work in both the grade school and the high school.
‘He was a tough hombre!’
Brother Venard particularly enjoyed working with the young people. He especially liked taking the Boy Scouts to the neighbor islands.
“I took them down to Haleakala Crater and we camped three nights there. We did that four or five times,” he said. “And I took them to the Big Island.”
Former Troop 42 scout Bill Souza recalled those good old days.
“He was a tough hombre!” Souza exclaimed.
The Maryknoller’s military training showed through when he marched his troop from Sacred Heart Church to a Boy Scout jamboree at Hanauma Bay, about 10 miles away. Other troops had had their parents drop them off.
“We were the only ones who marched,” Souza recalled, “and we marched like soldiers, arriving like a landing force of Marines.”
Then, a couple of days later, Troop 42 packed up and marched back.
Brother Venard also taught catechism.
“I taught religious education to the Punahou [School] children on Saturday mornings. Then, on Mondays I used to drive the school bus down to Washington Intermediate School,” he said.
“They had release time in those days, where they released the students for Catholic education the last period of school. So I would bring them here by bus and would teach the eighth grade catechism, and I would drive them back to Washington School.”
On another day of the week he would pick up the children at Lunalilo School and bring them to religion class.
In 1970, Brother Venard was assigned to the Maryknoll Center Home on Dole Street behind Maryknoll Elementary School. For the next five years, he drove, shopped, did whatever was needed to keep the Maryknoll Fathers headquarters running.
From 1975 to 1977, Brother Venard returned to the mainland to work at a Maryknoll house in New York City. He returned to Dole Street in 1977, serving as the business manager for the next 23 years.
Five and a half years ago, he retired and moved a couple hundred yards back to where he started in 1952, the rectory of Sacred Heart Parish.
“When I retired, [then pastor] Father Marc Alexander invited me to live here, which I’ve been doing. One of my duties is to close the church at night, and lock the rectory.”
The brother also continues his service as an extraordinary minister of the Eucharist at Shriners Hospital for Children in Honolulu, a ministry he started more than 20 years ago.
Time to move on
Now the time has come for beloved Brother Venard to move on.
“The Maryknoll fathers and brothers have a retirement center at Los Altos, Calif., so I’ve decided to go live there,” he said.
“I have some health problems; that’s the reason. So I’m going there on March 30 to live.”
About 20 priests and 10 brothers live in Los Altos. About seven or eight of them served in Hawaii. Brother Venard knows them all.
Brother Venard celebrates his 60th anniversary as a Maryknoll brother in August 2008.
“There were 15 of us at the time,” he said of his original class of 1948. “Now there are only three of us left, and one of them is 96 years old.”
In the past 50 years, compared to the 125 Maryknoll Fathers who have served in Hawaii, there have been only nine Maryknoll brothers.
“I’ll probably be the last!” Brother Venard chuckled.
“These have been very happy years for me,” Brother Venard concluded, now choked with emotion, “but it’s time to move on.”
Aloha, stalwart soldier of Christ!