Fitzgerald with his badminton team at Sacred Heart school in the 1980s.
The music club at Sacred Heart School.
Fitzgerald at his graduation
Fitzgerald in Hong Kong in 2009.
SIBU: Former teacher of SMK Sacred Heart, Rev Bro Hyacinth Fitzgerald, who passed on at the age of 85 in Hong Kong last Sunday, was much more than just a teacher to his students.
Sibu Municipal Council secretary Hii Chang Kee for one recalled how the Irish Brother had been instrumental in getting students to excel in non-academic fields such as badminton and music.
Hii said the school’s badminton players could bear testimony of how much Bro Hyacinth had helped in grooming them for the game.
“Harmonica was his forte. His passion for the harmonica inspired me to take up this mouth organ. And I had learned much from him,” recalled Hii who now teaches harmonica at the church he goes to.
Bro Hyacinth hailed from Rathcoole, County Dublin, Ireland.
He taught Economics and Commerce at Sacred Heart Secondary School in Sibu from 1974 to 1984.
He entered the Juniorate at Castletown in 1944 and joined the Novitiate the following year.
He spent his Scholasticate in Mallow from 1946 to 1947.
His first assignment in the East was St Xavier’s Institution in 1949.
He spent much of his teaching life in Malaysia, particularly in Sarawak.
Upon his retirement at the age of 55 in Malaysia, he went to Hong Kong to teach English and Religious Studies in Chan Sui Ki (La Salle) College until 1993.
In his later years, he was down with Alzheimer’s disease.
John Yong, another of his students, remembered Bro Hyacinth as an affable teacher who had fine taste for music, passionate love for badminton and for durian.
“He registered a very successful experimentation of the combo of guitar and harmonica.
“I can still remember during his first year in Sacred Heart, he took a pivotal role in the school’s operetta entitled ‘The Island of Doom’ which was a colossal success,” recalled Yong, who is currently the orchestra director at Goose Creek School District in Baytown, Texas, USA.
He said in 1980, Bro Hyacinth started the school’s music club.
“Every student’s teen years at Sacred Heart were occupied with mainly three areas: academics, sports and school clubs. Bro Hyacinth excelled in badminton and the Music Club – harmonica and choir coaching.
“I was too ‘bulky’ for his badminton but musical enough for his Music Club. Sibu community undeniably knew Bro Hyacinth’s achievement in badminton coaching,” Yong said.
He also remembered the years Bro Hyacinth introduced a resourceful amount of Irish folk songs to the Music Club and helped organise the school’s first concert in 1984.
SMK Sacred Heart is making arrangements to have one of its classrooms named after Rev Bro Hyacinth Fitzgerald.