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Volume 38, Number 1 |
Richardton, ND 58652 |
January 2010 |
Abbot Robert West
ABBOT ROBERT WEST
1914-2009
1914-
Fr. Terrence Kardong O.S.B.
Robert West died on August 30, 2009 at the age of 95 years. Joseph West was born in Outlook, Montana, the son of Robert and Grace West. He was the oldest of ten children, eight of whom were boys. He received his elementary education in Outlook and came to the Abbey in 1934 for college. He made first profession on July 11, 1937, and was ordained May 26, 1942.
Fr. Robert’s first years as a monk were much involved with the construction of our buildings. He supervised the building of the laundry building and the gymnasium in the years 1947-52. To prepare him for this work, he studied at the Stout Institute in Menomonie, Wisconsin. He taught shop classes, as well as other subjects, in the Abbey school during this period.
For most of the years 1954-1967, Fr. Robert worked as a parish priest in the various churches that the Abbey served. He was pastor of St. Joseph’s Church, Devils Lake (1962-67) at the time he was elected abbot by his confreres, and he served in this capacity until early 1979. After his resignation as abbot, he mostly lived at the monastery, where he was active in the promotion of our wines. At all times, he was a paragon of hospitality.
Of course, bald facts do not tell the whole story of a man who lived 95 years, and they are especially inadequate to describe such a unique personality as Robert West. As a Roman prelate once said to the author, “Say, your abbot is quite a fella!” Indeed, he was. But in order to flesh out that assessment, one risks descending into colorful anecdotes. Yet I will attempt to convey something of this man by doing precisely that: telling a “Robert Story.”
When he came home from Circle, Montana, where he was pastor from 1994 to 1998, we situated him in a nice apartment on the first floor. He had two rooms and a private bathroom. But he was not entirely happy with his digs since he did not like the position of the door between the bedroom and the office. He asked the abbot and the maintenance department to cut a new door, but his request was denied. The long-range plan was to remodel the place, so a change like that was deemed superfluous.
Weren’t we surprised then when we heard the whine and roar of a power saw coming from his room! It soon became clear what he was up to: cutting out a new door! Not only did he make a new hole; he framed the new door up in good fashion like the trained carpenter he was. At the age of 84 years, the man was still a force of nature, and he continued to do rather amazing things the rest of his life. But what are we to make of this incident? What does it reveal about the man Robert West?
Probably the roots of such behavior lie far in his past. He was, after all, a son of the frontier, a pioneer who grew up in the remote stretches of Montana when it was still pioneer territory. Out there on the frontier, people did not wait around for other people to do things for them; they took things in their own hands. That applied to the myriad details of running a ranch and also to the rest of life. Like the early missionaries all over the wild west, Robert was accustomed to make decisions for himself. Bureaucratic permissions were mostly a nuisance.
No doubt the alert reader is scratching her head by this point. How could such a free spirit function as abbot? After all, the abbot is the CEO of the monastery, the one who has to look to the administration of a large, complex social organism. In order to explain the election of Robert West to this position in 1967, we have to remember the historical context. The key thing to note is that Vatican II had just happened, and like many people, the monks were looking for a change of direction in their religious lives.
When we were young! Fr. Robert (left) is pictured with a threshing crew in the 1930s that included Fr. Francis Wood (right), and Fr. Maurice Jaeger (center).
During the 1940s and 1950s, Fr. Robert spent much of his time and energy subervising construction projects hereabouts. This included the library, garage and gymnasium buildings.
In the case of Assumption Abbey, there was a felt need for a loosening of some of the constraints that had characterized our communal life. We were a conservative bunch of Germans, with a fairly heavy authority structure. This worked well enough for many years, but after Vatican II many of the younger monks felt they needed a bit more breathing room to work out their role in church and society. Certainly that was the way the present writer felt about things. And Fr. Robert was perceived as a person who was at least open to rethink things and also listen to the ideas and aspirations of other people.
He certainly brought a new atmosphere to the house. There was an immediate lessening of formality and secrecy. Things were now out in the open, for everyone to see. If you had an idea or a point of view, you marched into his office and spoke your mind. He listened ‒ and spoke his mind back. The basic message, at least to my mind, was that we were grown men, not children. He would supply us with a good deal of rope. What we did with it was up to us. Robert was a very unsuspicious man. He seemed to assume the best in everybody. Sometimes he was disappointed, but that never soured his basic optimism about mankind in general and his monks in particular.
Now obviously that kind of trust and confidence can be enormously satisfying to people after a long period of something else. In this atmosphere some people blossomed, but some did not. Some people found the new freedom frightening and even dangerous. Some needed psychiatric help; some simply left the monastery. This latter outcome seemed to bring out the worst in Abbot Robert, and he behaved rather harshly toward those who chose to discontinue their monastic life. But all in all, Assumption Abbey badly needed a period of relaxation in which to achieve a new orientation.
When Fr. Robert was elected Abbot of Assumption Abbey in 1967, he was pastor of St. Joseph’s Church in Devils Lake.
He is pictured here at the going-away party held for him in the parish.
He is pictured here at the going-
Abbot Robert’s loose style of administration also brought with it some negative other side-effects. He was not good at decision making, so the other officials sometimes had to step in to help him in unusual ways. Worse than that, he sometimes made spectacularly odd moves that left everybody flabbergasted. One time he bought a truckload of oak railroad ties that he meant to saw up into boards for a parquet floor. Unfortunately, these ties were coated with creosote and they stunk to high heaven. They were completely useless for flooring, but he refused to move the pile to an out-of-the-way place. So the procurator had to take the situation into his own hands.
If it seems odd for an abbot to be dabbling in such things, it should be noted that he continued to be active in the carpenter shop. That seemed to be a place where he was totally happy and at ease. Of course, it was a place where he really knew what he was doing. He spent a lot of time adjusting the machines rather than producing anything, but production was never his strong suit. Basically, he was a people-person.
This was quite obvious from the way he spent time in his office. In our Abbey, the abbot’s office is right near the front door and therefore very accessible to visitors. For his part, Abbot Robert always kept his door wide open, thereby inviting visitors to stop in. Since he never seemed very busy with desk work, people felt very welcome in his presence. In fact, he was an extremely hospitable man. If the Rule of Benedict emphasizes that value, then Robert took the program a long step further. Like Abraham who welcomed the three angels in Genesis 18, Robert would drop everything and minister to the guests as if they were a gift of God.
These visits usually lead down to the wine cellar, which is right below the abbot’s office. Down there the guests would be plied with a taste of this and a taste of that, along with a lengthy spiel that could take all afternoon. For some reason, the whole subject of wine brought out the depths of Robert’s personality, his love of conviviality, his curiosity about arcane details and his delight in pronouncing French words (not a success). Actually, he once took a wine tasting class in France that involved a tour of some of the most famous wine cellars in the world. This was a subject he could master and also one that meshed well with his ministry of hospitality.
Not only was Robert hospitable, he was generous. One time when I was novice master, I went to his office to ask for an armchair for one of the novices. The Abbot immediately arose and took me into his bedroom. “Take that one!” he commanded, pointing to the only chair in the room. “But where will you sit?” I stammered. “Never mind, take that one!” So I did. Another time I went to ask permission for an overcoat, so he marched me in to his closet and pulled out a coat. “Take this one, it’s too loud for me,” he barked. I wasn’t overjoyed, but I had to admit the man was openhanded.
One group that seemed to especially like Robert’s hospitality were the Lutheran ministers of the area. In the 1970s and 1980s, they held many of their theology meetings at the Abbey, and many of those meetings featured a wine-tasting by His Nibs. But beyond that, Robert loved to sit and listen to the excellent speakers that Lutherans brought in here for conferences. He seemed to relish this opportunity to update his theological education, which was frankly spotty. And he would argue with them with great delight.
Of course, people reacted differently to Robert’s palaver. Some of them were truly awestruck by his elaborate rhetoric and use of arcane vocabulary. Others thought it was pretentious and slightly ridiculous. In his sermons, he usually came up with at least one word that nobody had ever heard of before. The problem, as I saw it, was that he really did not have the education that his good mind deserved. The reason for that was the sheer poverty of our community in his formative years. On the other hand, he was so disorganized that even a good education would probably not have made him a good teacher.
Indeed, his disorganization was legendary in the community. As a busy pastor, he would sometimes schedule three different couples for counseling at the same time. He said he was even too disorganized to make use of a secretary. His office rivaled one of those brownstone houses in New York where things pile up for 50 years and finally bury the inhabitants. He once assigned a monk to try to put the place in order while he traveled to the Congress of Abbots in Rome. When he returned, he complained bitterly that he could find nothing!
Another example of his chaotic approach to administration occurred when he was basketball coach in 1953. That year he managed to take his team (on two separate occasions) to road games on the wrong day! We would come to town and there would be no light in the school. We would have to search out the coach, who would have to assemble his team, which would then proceed to beat the pants off us. Somehow this kind of thing was acceptable in those days.
But it would not be right or proper to allow this memoir to become a string of bizarre “Robert Stories.” Right after his death, at the end of yet another confab of monks remembering hilarious details about Robert, one of them summed up: “Despite all this crazy stuff, this was a beautiful man!” Yes, he really was a beautiful man. And I think that one of his finest traits was his deep kindness. For all the years I lived with Robert, I cannot remember him badmouthing a confrere, or anybody else for that matter. He simply did not have a mean bone in his body.
Granted, he could be difficult to deal with at times. But he never carried grudges and he certainly never stabbed you in the back. If he had a complaint with you, he would have it out in the open and let the chips fall where they may. Sometimes this could take a difficult form as when he would disagree with the choir director during music practices. Apparently forgetting that he had appointed the man, he would contradict him in public. By and large, he preferred being right to being in synch with other people. But that did not make him a bitter loner. In fact, he loved to be with the confreres and always seemed to be in good spirits. But he was a bundle of contradictions!
Maybe that was what made him so interesting and such fun. He could somehow combine traits that normally do not go together. For example, he was extremely conservative in politics, but quite liberal in theology. He loved guns and kept several in his room (one loaded!), but he rarely hunted and he certainly wasn’t violent. He could be extremely free-handed with money, but then turn around and imitate Simon Legree. He was simply—Robert! We probably won’t see an abbot like him ever again. No, take that back: we won’t see anybody remotely like Robert West again. May he rest in peace!
One of Abbot Robert’s favorite occupations in later life was his stewardship of our wine cellar.
