Remembering Bro. Schmidt

For more than three decades, the students of Don Bosco Technical Institute in Victorias, Philippines, knew him as a coach and a friend on the football field. 

On any school day, just after having lunch, students would stand by his room at the dormitory waiting for him to come out with footballs🏀 in hand, and like the Pied Piper, he would lead them to the center of the football field where he would start a football match with a kickoff.  Whoever wanted to play was welcome, and he did not care if there were more than the regulated 22 players on the field. It was a free-for-all game because the intention was not to win, but to have fun🏆. And there were always students who stood as goalies, each one defending the goals at the dormitory side and the school gym side of the field.  Even under the noontime sun, amidst the heat of the tropics, he ran, sweated and yelled with the boys of Don Bosco in Victorias just like what the saint himself did in Turin more than a century before.

Bro. Charles Schmidt was our Trigonometry teacher 📘from Germany. He was stern, robust, and just like any German, had blue eyes. His favorite word in class was "hopeless" - to describe his students who couldn't answer his Trigonometry question (I included!).😂 Most of us probably didn't care about sine, cosine and tangent, much to his disappointment. He must have been very strict in the classroom because, for him, knowledge and education were first, football skills second.  He wanted us to learn more from him inside the classroom than in the football field.

A month ago, after years of being told about his death, I was finally pointed to his grave at the Saint Joseph Memorial garden in Victorias City. His grave was surrounded by tall weeds, his tombstone grayed and his headstone broken. He has been buried here for more than 33 years, and time and the elements have certainly done their part.  Solely occupying a large lot, he is kept company by a tree that welcomes any visitor with a shade. I saw no melted candles or wilted flowers on his grave.

Wanting to do something for Bro. Schmidt, I shared an idea with my batchmates and they generously responded, though the amount needed was not much.

And just weeks before the feast day of Saint John Bosco, Bro. Schmidt's grave was cleaned and painted, the weeds around it cleared, and his headstone repaired and his name reinked, and two candleholders were placed on it to allow any visitor with candles to light a flame for his eternal peace.  The two small benches next to his grave were also repainted so that anyone who wants to stay longer and say a prayer for him can do so in comfort.

We may have heard stories about his origins or about his drinking, but what I would want to remember about Bro. Schmidt, among the good things he had done for us, was how he made the sign of the cross. 

Had you seen him do it, you would have also admired the way he elevated the sanctity of this Catholic ritual: it was done slowly and silently with his right hand taking its time to touch his forehead, his chest and then his shoulders like it was indeed a profession of his faith. And at the end, you'd hear clearly the 'Amen' spoken in his husky voice.

His weekend hiking was legendary. Even under the hot sun, he trekked for kilometers around Victorias and Manapla, covering the distances of the national highway and the dirt roads of the haciendas to the north and south, and even meandering through the highlands of Gawahon while mingling with the locals he met along the way and always carrying a walking stick.

Whoever he was in the past should not matter to us. It was his dedication in helping realize Don Bosco's dream of teaching young minds and molding young characters through his teaching and his football here in Victorias that we, Bosconians, should remember and honor. He might not have been officially a member of the Salesians of Don Bosco, but to us, he was 'Brother Schmidt'. 

On his headstone is written:

  "RIP Karl

   Bro. Schmidt

   BORN:  Aug 22, 1912

   DIED:   July 26, 1990."

"As I light these candles, I pray that you rest in eternal peace."🙏

                                * * * * *

These are the photos of his grave on my first visit:

Bro. Schmidt's grave now looks like he is indeed remembered:

A short clip of the grave:

His grave is at the western end of St. Joseph Memorial Garden, second to the last plot before the closed gate and marked by a tree.🌲

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