Fr. Dominic DeBlase

D Vautier
4/2023

My life was a kaleidoscope of images after vows.  From the quiet seclusion and contemplative peace on the hill, the novitiate class of 60-61 was suddenly thrust into all kinds of fantastic activities; camp, hikes to Lake Awasting, Diana’s Pool, Ellenburg, until finally we all came to a comfortable landing down at the college in Fr. Stegman’s orientation class where he seamed to lecture ad infinitum upon the beauty of a gradual matriculation into mental and spiritual maturity.  It is not to say at this time I particularly objected to being bodily and souly swept along upon the currents of Salesian life but I had my own zones of comfort however clumsy and short-sighted they were.  These zones were mine, however.  One was a feeling of subliminal superiority of the science students to the “effete” majority of humanities students.  The science students were just five in number out of a total of 40 in my freshmen class and we were ungraciously thrown in with the sophomores that year and assigned to math class, and of course having to compete with the brilliant sophomore Ray Gabler.  Believe me there was not a whole lot of difference between the science guys and the humanities guys anyway because all of us had certain required courses in biology and botany but I must say the math and physics were totally my thing and well in my comfort zone especially under the capable tutelage of the magnificent Fr. Dominic DeBlase.

He seemed to teach math as if life itself depended on it, even though you could clearly see that the man certainly had other interests, and was only there because nobody else was.  Not that theroms and formulae and equations made sense anyway, but because he was a dedicated educator to the core, and this was an amazing facet of his style.

I did well in the sciences at DBC, not so much for math but in physics I was an absolute champion (at least I thought so).  I was naturally selected to be the physics assistant and to this day I still feel a twinge of guilt at my guileless disregard and disrespect for any rules.  Just as at Richmond with my wild experiments into nitroglycerine and explosives, I proceeded with a flagrant abandon in the role to which I had been assigned, that is, setting up experiments.  All physics lab experiments that I had set up were tinged with a bit of mischief and even now the idea still escapes me as to why I acted in such a careless and carefree fashion.  Was it my inherent desire to prove something?  Was it my distain for my fellow Salesian conferrers at DBC who were less interested in absorption spectra and gravity acceleration tests, and “a thrill for the unexpected?  I don’t know really what was going on In my head but such thoughts continue to haunt me to this day.  Why was I so cruel to prey upon the good intentions of Fr. DeBlase and the rest of an excellent faculty at the college in those early years?

So on one wet and humid afternoon I collected my thoughts and approached Fr. Deblase with a series of penetrating questions.

What is all this stuff for anyway?  Will it really matter a bit to me as I continue with my life, Salesian or otherwise?  Will I even want to or even care to remember all these seemingly worthless exercises in mathematical obscurity?  By the way these concerns did in fact reoccur when I did masters work at Portland State University.  I had all sorts of prep studies in math, OR (Operations Research which I loved), and production management, but wound up using very little of it in grad school.

DeBlase talked to me candidly.  He didn’t expect anyone to use very much of this material.  It was the mental training that was important, the ability to understand and assimilate concepts that made it all work.  These principals remain the same, whether it be a Shakespearian drama, a cooking recipe, or a football strategy.  Man’s ability to think permeates all disciplines, albeit math, or cooking, or rugby.  He said that in 20 or 30 or 40 years I and my world will have changed greatly, but the way I put things together will not change.  The fundamental operations of the human mind do not much vary but they do get better.