Fr Oswald died of leukaemia very quietly and peacefully without any fuss at about 8 o'clock on Saturday morning, 1st June, in the Purey Cust Nursing Home at York. He had been ill for only a little over a week - so far as anybody knew. It was the first serious illness of his life - and the last. Fr Oswald could be kind and sympathetic to others when they were ill, but he himself seemed to have little time to be ill: it would have interrupted too much that life of regular duty, regular work which he had lived all his monastic and working years.
Edward Oswald Vanheems was born on the 1st April 1903 at Richmond, Surrey. The family later moved to Ealing to the parish which was to become the parish of Ealing Abbey and with which his family have always continued to be connected. He was the elder son of Mr. Sidney Vanheems, who was head of the family business whose name is a household word in all clerical circles. He was sent north to Ampleforth to school at the age of 11 and it did not seem surprising, with his staunch Catholic background, that he entered the novitiate straight from the school in 1921 in one of the first novitiates after the first World War. He was professed as a monk the following year.
Fr Oswald was, therefore, two months over 65 years old when he died and he had been a monk for 47 of them. All that time, except for three or four years spent as an undergraduate at St Benet's Hall, Oxford, he had lived and worked at Ampleforth - and indeed for longer than that if his school days are counted in. He was, therefore, an Ampleforth monk through and through. Ampleforth had shaped him and stamped him as her own, Hic habitabo, quoniam elegi eam could be said of him as it was said by Ronald Knox when he preached the funeral sermon of that great Ampleforth monk Abbot Edmund Matthews.
There was more to Fr Oswald's life than just that - though he would have rejoiced in being just that. When he returned from Oxford in 1937 he started to teach Physics in the school, later becoming senior Science master: up till a week before his death he was still teaching Physics in the school. In 1935 he became the first housemaster of the newly formed St Dunstan's House: when he died he was still its first housemaster. He became the General Secretary of the Ampleforth Society in 1940: he remained its hard-working General Secretary up to his death. His fine singing voice at a very early date in his monastic life marked him out to be First Cantor in the Monastic Schola and so he remained until his death. One could go on recounting the monastic duties which he was given and the works which he was asked to undertake and one would find that he always continued in them to the end: that he was always obedient to the principle, monks never resign. The same qualities of continuity and perseverance ran through his whole life and can be seen even in the number of little, pleasant customs which he formed and to which he was always faithful, whether it was leading the juniors on an annual cross-country walk and picnic during the Christmas holidays or taking the boys through the caves at Sutton Bank on Goremire Day (of course, he always walked to and from Goremire). The diary which was found in his desk after his death is another example of this characteristic of Fr Oswald; it contained the name of every boy who had ever been in his House entered under the date of his birthday, his marriage and other important events of his career.
In the Benedictine way of life there is a word for this kind of faithful, abiding and enduring perseverance in the spirit and work of a monastic community: it is called stability and it is of the very essence of the Benedictine vocation. Fr Oswald had this characteristic gift in abundance and it was this that made him not only an Ampleforth monk but a good monk.
One hears so often that this is a Permissive Age: Fr Oswald, one can say with some conviction, was not of the permissive type and with even greater conviction that if he had been, his influence over others, in the school and especially as a housemaster, would have been a great deal less than it was. He had standards and he insisted on them and it was precisely the recognition of the uncompromising character of his judgments and reactions which won him immediate respect, and, in the end, affection. But it was a respect and affection which would not have been his if those who worked with him and under him had not realised that if he was often something less than permissive with others, he was never at all permissive with himself. Such a realisation might not come all at once and it would probably be true to say that it was after a boy left school that he came fully to appreciate Fr Oswald. And so it was among the Old Boys of the school, and of his House in particular, that he was always at his best, just as it was mainly his own brethren who knew his special sense of humour, his not infrequent and, in fact, chatty gaiety and that sense of occasion which, although he disliked speaking in public and perhaps did not do it very well, so often in conversation made him choose exactly the right word or the right phrase to hit off persons or things.
In July 1930 Fr Oswald was ordained a priest. One must admit in the present climate of monastic opinion that the vocation to be a monk and the vocation to be a priest are two distinct things, but one may perhaps be forgiven for believing that where they are found united they enrich and cross-fertilise each other, and in the current phrase that they add a new dimension to each other. So surely it was in Fr. Oswald's case: it would not be possible to think of him as other than a Monk-Priest. He did not wear his heart on his sleeve, and his diary, as has been pointed out, was for other purposes than to recount the story of his soul; but what his priesthood meant to him, someone who served his Mass would instinctively know, and perhaps the boy who served his last Mass a week before he died had some inkling of it and will remember it, for it was not merely that his Mass, like everything that Fr. Oswald did, was a model of exactitude, neatness and dispatch: there was an inner quality to it.
Fr Oswald's active life was wholly absorbed in the school and he had little or no experience of the expressly pastoral side of the community's work, but he made up for that by his long years of devotion to the boys of St Dunstan's and that wider apostolate which he was able to develop as General Secretary of the Ampleforth Society. These two forms of service were in a very real sense his life's work and the proof and justification of their being so were the affection and loyalty of those who were thus brought into contact with him, whether as boys or as Old Boys. What better memorial could a Monk-Priest-Schoolmaster want than their memories of him; memories which will sometimes be legendary but always kindly.
To his family his monastic brethren extend their sympathy: for themselves they mourn one who served the community well.
EDWARD OSWALD VANHEEMS 1 June 1968
1903 1 Apr Born Richmond Surrey
1912-15 Educ Ealing Prior School
1915-21 Educ Ampleforth
1920-21 Head Monitor
1921 Clothed at Ampleforth
1922 Temporary Vows
1925 Solemn Vows
1923-27 Read Mathematical Modevations & Physics Finals at St Benet's Hall
1928 Subdeacon
1929 Deacon
1930 20 Jul Priest
1928-68 Taught in the school
1928 Librarian
1935 First Housemaster of St Dunstan's House, an office which he held for the remainder of his life
1935-68 General Secretary of the Ampleforth Society
1968 1 Jun Died at York
Buried at Ampleforth