"STORK" TWINE

 

OId Georgians of the later 1940s will be saddened to hear of the death of "Stork" Twine, who founded and ran the school's Sea Scouts and taught on the staff for a brief spell.

 

Dennis Twine grew up in Muizenberg. After war service in North Africa during the desert war he had intended to train in medicine at UCT but dropped out of his studies there. Having become involved with St George's through his work with the Sea Scouts, he joined the staff in 1948 to help out with the teaching of mathematics. He later trained in accountancy and held a number of positions in business, including working on a large citrus estate in the Eastern Transvaal. His upbringing had been Methodist, but his previous wartime contact with Fr. Runge of the Mirfield Fathers inspired him at this point to consider the idea of the religious life, and he went over to Yorkshire to test his vocation with the Community of the Resurrection, into which he was professed as a lay (i.e. non-ordained) brother in 1963. He took the name "Brother Michael". (It was at Mirfield that our headmaster from 1944, PE Cuckow, had as a young man considered being ordained.)

 

Here he showed valuable skills of organisation and management which were put to good use both within his Community and in missions to parishes and schools outside it. Work with young people led many young people to consider undertaking some form of religious commitment, in some cases ordination to the ministry, and he retained a long list of contacts with people whom he had influenced or just befriended.

 

In 1968 he was one of a small team from Mirfield who tried to establish a new religious house - a priory attached to a parish in Stellenbosch. The illness and death of one of their number were followed by a government crackdown on what was seen as a subversive cell, leading to their recall to England, after which Brother Michael regarded himself as in exile from his native

 

From 1971 to his death he held a number of responsible posts at Mirfield, including that of infirmarian (i.e. in charge of the mini-hospital) and monk in charge of the grounds, where he did extensive work with trees and plants which may be his most notable and lasting memorial.

 

He had been my teacher at St George's before I left after Std 8. in 1948 and was an influence on many of my generation, but Iost touch with him after that. Later I heard a rumour that he had become a monk, but there were no details. My next contact with him was not until September 1978 and this was by chance. Travelling down from Durham to instal two of my children in new home in Cambridge, we stopped off at a roadside restaurant and at an adjoining table was a group of what turned out to be Mirfield monks. One of them looked amazingly like Dennis Twine and the impression was strengthened by sins of his old vice, his taste for a peculiarly disgusting brand of pipe tobacco. I was too shy to accost someone I thought I had last seen their years before, but in the cloakroom I encountered one of his travelling companions from whom I confirmed his identity, and Brother Michael came over to greet me and my children and we enjoyed a brief reunion. When a book appeared by me (in paperback) in 1989, I sent a copy to him c/o the Mirfield Community (as a monk vowed to poverty he could not own it himself) and we exchanged friendly messages.

 

I did not learn, until I wrote again to him at Mirfield recently with a copy of my latest book, that he had died in 1995. It appears that his last months were spent in discomfort, weakness and finally pain, struggling against the inset of a cancer not fully diagnosed until very late. The end came on May 24, 1995. He is much missed by his Community, and by many outside it.

 

John Honey (1943-48)