DAVID CUFFY

There was a time when a branch of the Catholic Youth Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CYO) could be found in al­most every Parish in Trinidad and To­ba­go. The CYO was an agency of the Ro­man Catholic Church or­gan­ised at the lev­el of the dio­cese and serv­ing youth in its re­li­gious, recre­ation­al, cul­tur­al and so­cial needs. The first CYO, a boys' ath­let­ic pro­gramme, was found­ed in Chica­go in 1930 by Bish­op Bernard Sheil. Dio­ce­ses in oth­er cities, pri­mar­i­ly in the Unit­ed States, found­ed their own CYOs dur­ing the fol­low­ing decades, of­fer­ing sports and a wide-rang­ing sys­tem of so­cial ser­vices, com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres and va­ca­tion schools. But the CYO's great­est pub­lic­i­ty, at the time, re­sult­ed from an ex­ten­sive and com­pre­hen­sive sports pro­gramme that claimed the world's largest bas­ket­ball league (430 teams) and an in­ter­na­tion­al box­ing team. Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the CYO was in­tro­duced in Trinidad in 1942, and over the years branch­es were es­tab­lished in many Parish­es. Those I re­call were Bel­mont, Cathe­dral, Rosary, San Juan, Mt St Bene­dict, South Oropouche and Bourg Mu­la­tresse. I am cer­tain there were oth­er branch­es peo­ple can re­mem­ber. Dur­ing my teen years, I be­came a mem­ber of the Rosary branch lo­cat­ed at 91A Fred­er­ick Street, next to Ro­driguez Gro­cery. It was dur­ing the years spent there, un­der the guid­ance and en­cour­age­ment of our spir­i­tu­al di­rec­tor, the late Fr Pas­call Keat­ing, that I (and I as­sume the ma­jor­i­ty of my fel­low mem­bers) learned im­por­tant life lessons that, thank­ful­ly, have re­mained with me through­out the years.

We were ex­posed to the teach­ings of our faith and en­cour­aged to put its virtues in­to prac­tice in every area of our lives. Whether it was play­ing ta­ble ten­nis and bil­liards in­doors; crick­et and foot­ball in the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah; tak­ing danc­ing and ju­do lessons and re­hears­ing for our dra­ma pro­duc­tions in the Hall; at­tend­ing Holy Name So­dal­i­ty meet­ings at Rosary Church on Park Street on Tues­day nights, Days of Rec­ol­lec­tion and week­end Re­treats at Mount St Bene­dict and oth­er Parish­es; camp­ing out at Ma­yaro and oth­er beach­es; host­ing par­ties in our Birth­day Club; vis­it­ing oth­er CYO branch­es; or just hang­ing out with each oth­er. Fr Keat­ing helped us to es­tab­lish a li­brary that en­cour­aged us to de­vel­op a love for read­ing and dis­cussing what we read. It was drilled in­to us boys that we must al­ways show re­spect to and con­sid­er­a­tion for the fe­male mem­bers, and it was our du­ty to en­sure they were all were tak­en home safe­ly af­ter any ac­tiv­i­ty. The in­ter­ac­tive na­ture of our as­so­ci­a­tion did not per­mit us to see race or class dif­fer­ences among us. In short, though we may have been un­aware, we were learn­ing one of life's great­est lessons-how to love and re­spect all our fel­low­men. To­day, in the bi-an­nu­al re­unions we have be­gun host­ing for for­mer CYO mem­bers, the pure joy we ex­pe­ri­ence from be­ing to­geth­er again, even for short pe­ri­ods, mere­ly un­der­scores the depth of the foun­da­tions for life laid so many years ago by our beloved or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Ask any sur­viv­ing mem­ber of the CYO what ben­e­fit was de­rived from be­ing a mem­ber, the an­swer, in­vari­ably, is al­ways: "It helped to shape me in­to the kind of per­son I am to­day." Cathe­dral CYO made a name for it­self through "The Con­ga­chi­tas," a mu­si­cal ag­gre­ga­tion of im­mense po­ten­tial with which we par­tied reg­u­lar­ly. But as a "Rosary mem­ber," I still take pride in our dra­ma pro­duc­tions di­rect­ed by the late George Kan­galee and the very ven­er­a­ble Fred­die Kissoon.

"The Dear De­part­ed" by Stan­ley Houghton and "The Bish­op's Can­dle­sticks" by Vic­tor Hugo staged on Fri­day Sep­tem­ber 24 and Sat­ur­day Sep­tem­ber 25, 1954 at our Hall at 8.30 pm. Ad­mis­sion was 60 cents. "Mas­ter Of His House" and "The Night of his Com­ing" a Na­tiv­i­ty play. In 1956, Kissoon di­rect­ed a full-length play on the life of Blessed Mar­tin de Por­res, ti­tled "Dark Splen­dour" by Rev Fr Hen­ry Gaffney OP. It ran from Fri­day Oc­to­ber 12, to Sun­day Oc­to­ber 14 at 8.30 pm to ca­pac­i­ty au­di­ences. Those were youth­ful days we can all re­flect on with much pride. The CYO might be in­ac­tive to­day, but it lives on in the hearts of those of us priv­i­leged to have con­tributed to its his­to­ry.

Catholic Me­dia Ser­vices Ltd (Cam­sel) is the of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion arm of the Arch­dio­cese of Port-of-Spain.