Word: diman
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Died. The Rev. Dom John Hugh Diman, O.S.B., 85, founder and longtime headmaster of Rhode Island's famed St. George's (Episcopal) School and of Portsmouth Priory (Roman Catholic) School; after a heart attack; in Portsmouth, R.I. A onetime Episcopal clergyman, Father Diman joined the Catholic church at 54, entered a Benedictine abbey in Scotland, returned to the U.S. to found (in 1926) the School of St. Gregory the Great (Portsmouth Priory...
...many of his walks at St. George's, Diman searched his soul for answers to some private questions of faith. An appendicitis attack decided him. He summoned a Roman Catholic priest, told him: "If I'm going to die, I'd rather die in the Catholic Church than out of it." After World War I service as a captain (with the Red Cross), he headed for Rome and the priesthood. At 63, Father Diman entered a Benedictine abbey in Scotland, where he cleaned corridors, dug ditches and performed penances with novices...
...School of St. Gregory the Great (Portsmouth Priory), Father Hugh proved he could do for Catholics what he had done for Protestants. The school now has 120 boys, 20 masters (more than half of them monks). Though he retired as headmaster in 1942, until recently Father Diman taught the course in "Christian Doctrine...
Most Powerful Instrument. Today, in black Benedictine habit, with clipped white hair and wrinkled face, Father Diman still strolls The Priory grounds, looks over Narragansett Bay to the sun setting red behind Prudence Island. The boys stand in awe of the old man; and he, who sees less of them than he used to, thinks boys have changed. "They turn the radio on as soon as they go to their rooms. There isn't half as much reading as there used to be," he says sadly...
...Father Diman looks back on St. George's and The Priory with an old man's pride. Says he: "Religion as a living force in deepening and enriching personality has been almost completely eliminated from [the public schools, and with it] the most powerful instrument for the development of character. . . . The greatest disappointment of my school career has been that [my" schools are] 'expensive schools.' I have never ceased to hope that they might become schools for the rank and file...