Remembering Brother Ramon

Brother Ramon, lately known as Brother Francisco Martin, passed away on March 11, 2008. He died in Adventist Hospital, Tacoma Park, Maryland. He was 80 years old. This is being written not to mourn him, but - as no doubt he prefers - to celebrate his life and remember him through pleasant reminiscences.








Brother Ramon joined the De La Salle Order in the early 50s and taught at La Salle, Vedado neighborhood district, in Havana, Cuba from 1955 to 1961. Some of our classmates were instructed by him in Cuba.

La Salle, Havana Yearbook cover - courtesy your author's childhood friend Mario Garriga, who attended La Salle until the school was closed and taken over by the castroites in 1961. That unfortunate event brought Brother Ramon to our school in 1963. Fortunately for us!

At least one of our classmates, Iñaki, or as we knew him in La Salle of Miami days, Ignacio or "Iggy" Saizarbitoria was privileged to have had Brother Ramon as one of his teachers at La Salle of Havana - in the Vedado neighborhood; there was another location in the Miramar district.

Brother taught here...

The school building is the one inside the white circle; a more detailed view can be seen right under the Cuban flag. Anyone else in our group attend La Salle of Havana? As a matter of fact, yes, as Blogmeister discovered, despite his myopic-bifocally impaired eyes, while examining this page from the La Salle Havana 1958-59 yearbook, where Iñaki also appears, in the 3rd row from the top, right in the middle.

And if you look carefully at the next row, below "Iggy," you will see another young man, wearing glasses. He is Rube Pardo, another of our 1968 La Salle Alumni. Small world, this is!

Iñaki (Ignacio) Saizarbitoria - Signum '68

Rube Jose Pardo - Signum '68

Question, Rube - so as not to assume - were you also instructed by Brother?

In case you are wondering how these La Salle Havana yearbook images were "procured," the source yearbooks are in the fortunate hands of the editor's long-time friend - we're talking a half century of friendship here - Mario Garriga, former La Salle of Havana student. He graciously provided the scanned pages after being pestered by his La Salle of Miami compadre; having put up with his short and short-fused amigo all these years has no doubt earned him a fully-furnished mansion in Heaven. Thank you, most excellent friend! As a former La Salle kindred spirit, he was extended an invitation to attend our Reunion as an Honored Guest, but unfortunately prior commitments prevent his appearance for the rest of us to make his acquaintance. He is a great guy, who knows no strangers. But then, that is what we expect from our La Salle brothers, right?

Here he is, in the La Salle Havana 1960 yearbook, with the kind of eyeglasses he and yours truly hated to wear back then - stylish the frames were...NOT!


Regretfully, despite our efforts to find Brother Ramon in the 1959 and 1960 yearbooks, neither Mario nor his irritating sidekick succeeded. Unlike our Immaculata-La Salle Signum, there were no separate sections featuring faculty members in the La Salle of Havana's publications. Should we find him in those pages, he will make an encore appearance here.

The guys of '68 made Brother's acquaintance in our freshman year, '64-'65. He taught science and physics. His lectures were always fun, at least to most of us. Brother could hardly get a point across about some interesting chemical or physical action/reaction without liberal gesturing and other creative ways of using body language. This definitely livened up his classes.

His teaching technique is well illustrated in this graphic from Signum '66. One could literally visualize chemical reactions based on Brother's hand-and-body language.

Pack-rat Quiroga even managed to hold on to one of the textbooks we used in his science class - a testament either to sweet nostalgia or superlative insanity; the later being the more likely explanation, more so if someone were to take a poll on the subject in the Quiroga household.


Some interesting anectodes survive from experiences in his class back in those days. The first one comes courtesy Brother Raymond, who taught biology for a few months during our sophomore year. He is now known as John Baker. Here is his reminiscence of Brother Ramon, quoted directly from his email message to your Infernal Editor.


Signum '66

"HI ALBERTO

I TOO AM SADDENED BY BRO. RAMON'S DEATH. HE WAS A BEAUTIFUL MAN WITH A GENTLE DISPOSITION. PERHAPS A HUMOROUS INCIDENT WILL LIGHTEN THINGS UP.

WE WERE IN LAB LOOKING AT POND WATER THROUGH THE MICROSCOPES. THERE WERE MYRIADS (THAT MEANS A LOT) OF MICROSCOPIC ORGANISMS SWIMMING AROUND. MUST HAVE BEEN A FIRST FOR MOST, 'CAUSE THERE WAS A LOT OF EXCITEMENT. BROTHER RAMON STOPPED BY TO SEE WHAT WAS CAUSING THE NOISE. SOME OF THE GUYS WERE YELLING THE 'C' WORD. BROTHER SAID, 'DO NOT LET THEM SAY THAT. IT IS A VERY BAD WORD.' NOT WANTING TO DAMPEN YOUR ENTHUSIASM, I REPLIED, ' I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT MEANS, AND I DON'T WANT TO KNOW'. LATER I ASKED MARIO MARTINEZ WHAT IT MEANT, AND HE TOLD ME. WHO CAN DENY THAT 'IGNORANCE IS BLISS'.

I HAVE SEEN BROTHER ON AND OFF OVER THE YEARS. HE WAS STILL A GREAT GUY. THE ONLY CHANGE WAS A GRAYING OF THE HAIR.

REQUIESCAT IN PACE, RAMON.

JOHN"

We thank you for sharing this, John! And pray tell...what was the offending "c" word? Does it include "n" with the tilde...as we suspect?

Allow your editor to now bore you with a personal anectote involving Brother Ramon. It could be appropriately titled "The Bunsen Burner Incident." This was during freshman year; there were times we would go in the lab and do experiments, or watch Brother do them as he colorfully explained the various actions, reactions, and such taking place. One afternoon, the experiment required heating something - what the "something" was by now long-buried somewhere in the wasteland of Albert's mind - using a Bunsen burner. This device produced a nice, steady flame and was standard laboratory equipment.

Those were the days there grew copious hair on the head of the inept freshman scientist. And he liked it long on top; he would have liked to have Elvis' hair. Nevertheless, the length was sufficient for purposes of the unplanned experiment which followed; while attempting to heat the mysterious substance, he inadvertently allowed his hair to get too close to the Bunsen. Not atypically, he was oblivious to that fact. He noticed a funny smell, a smell not unlike burning fabric. Suddenly, a classmate - believe it was Joaquin Fraxedas - yelled "Hey! Your hair is on fire!" Finally, the Accidental Scientist woke up, and pulled away - and was pulled too - as Fraxedas brushed his hand through his bumbling classmate's head. Foul-smelling, singed and burned pieces of hair floated down to the top of the lab table, as the freshman "Rocket Scientist" stared at the ashy remains already decorating the surface.

Brother Ramon rushed over to see what the commotion was about; on being told about the incident, he locked a disapproving look onto the wannabe scientist's eyes, and pronounced his verdict on his student's bumbling Bunsen performance: "Too much hair!"

Your bloggin' friend does not remember ever again getting close to a Bunsen burner...


The fumbling experimenter, on the left, as he appeared on the pages of the 1965 Signum. He should have trimmed his head like his cousin Oscar Quiroga, on the right, who also attended La Salle but only for our freshman year, '64-'65. Oscar and Brother Ramon may, even as this is being written, be having a humorous exchange in a Better Place about this incident; that may be sad to contemplate, but suspect neither of them is unhappy. Here I ask you to remember them both in your prayers.

Perhaps it would have been even better for the Little Experimenter That Couldn't to adopt the hair style he sported for last year's Man Camp Adventure with brother-friends Nelson and Mario - the same Mario Garriga of the Havana La Salle yearbooks.

The motley crew, Burbank WA, July 2007 - after traversing the Columbia, Snake, and Willamette rivers; "Captain" Mario in the background. Three fourths of the crew were La Salle students - a mini-reunion of sorts.

Methinks Brother Ramon would have thought the haircut much more suitable for experimental purposes. He was practical and sensible. He is also very fondly remembered. God bless you and keep you, Brother!