Mary Noel Menezes: One of the greats of civilisation

Sep 05, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – There are some who you owe your psychological life to and they become a permanent fixture in your psychology. This is the case with me and Sister Mary Noel Menezes, Sister of Mercy in the Catholic Church and Professor of History.

There is one essential thing to note about two Catholic giants – Father Andrew Morrison and Sister – although they were White, they did not belong or want to belong to the Portuguese elites. None of these two giants in the Guyanese DNA, ever showed the elitism that so dominated the Portuguese race in Guyana (Father was not Portuguese but Anglo-Saxon).

Mary Noel Menezes remained one of the most unique humans when she was alive. Unique in the sense that there have been few humans in the history of the world in which all who knew them had not one negative thing to say about them and all who knew them loved and admired them.

From the time I entered UG as a freshman, I developed a love for Sister because she was a phenomenal professor. Our relation began when I received back from her my first essay in the course, the Philosophy of History.

My research was on Nazi Germany and I looked at the thoughts and instincts that drive people to see how their race is superior to others. I had a background in philosophy before I entered UG because I worked as a 16-year-old at the Michael Forde Book Store below Freedom House, the head office of the PPP on Robb Street. It was there I devoured Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Marx, Bertrand Russell and other philosophers.

Sister gave me an A grade and told me she saw prospects in me and I should never let myself down. For the four years I was a student at UG, I spent enormous time with her even paying frequent visits to the Saint John Bosco Convent in Plaisance which she was in charge of.

At the end of my studies, Sister gave me what every young person needed – the opportunity to have a future. I had topped UG with my grades and should have been awarded the President’s Medal. But UG and Guyana at that time were dominated by Forbes Burnham, Hamilton Green and the PNC.

At the Academic Board meeting to award the medal, the board dictated to by the ruling politicians gave the award to Brigadier Norman McLean. He did not have the grade point average I had. He would have received it but then a superb and phenomenal human intervened.

Sister told the meeting that if McLean was assigned the medal, it would be her last day at UG. In a moving speech laced with philosophical references, she said she would not be part of such debased thinking.

I don’t know if Burnham knew what was taking place at the meeting or was told of Sister’s intervention, but the board fell silent. No one had the courage to say another word about McLean getting the medal. I was given the medal but refused to attend the graduation ceremony. I was present with my future wife, sat in a corner, heard my name announced and thought of how good people like Sister can change the world.

Sister’s intervention saved my future. I doubt I would have received that scholarship to MacMaster University in Canada if I did not graduate as UG’s best student. In this context, I owed Sister a debt I never had the capacity to repay.

When I was leaving to go to MacMaster, she gave me a little book that I have right in front of me as I type. It is titled, “Great Thoughts of Freedom.” Here is what she wrote on the first page: “To Freddie – May the spirit of freedom continue to motivate you in all you do.”

If there is anyone out there who will start a Mary Noel Menezes library collection, I would be happy to donate this item so researchers can have access to it. After I came home from the University of Toronto, I could not get a job at UG because of a fatwa Burnham instituted against me.

She was sad at that turn of events and asked me what I would like her to do. But I felt she had done enough for me. I am deeply hurt that this wonderful human who will forever remain one of the best Guyana has produced has died. You have to be associated with her to see her ethereal and celestial qualities.

These are humans who once you share a friendship with them, they change your life forever. I am a better human than when I first entered UG in 1974. She made me into a good human.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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Mary Noel Menezes: One of the greats of civilisation

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