An Academician on the Water

Several years ago, I visited the archives of Manhattan College in the Riverdale section of the Bronx in order to research the life and career of my great-granduncle, Joseph Lawrence Scanlon.  He was born in Nyack, on the Hudson River in upstate New York, in 1878.  As a teenager in 1893, he entered the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, a religious order less formally known as the Christian Brothers, and he took the name Brother Apelles Jasper.  This pursuit of the consecrated life enabled him to receive an extensive education at Manhattan College, Columbia University, and the Catholic University of America.  This prepared him for a distinguished academic career as professor, dean, president, and trustee at Manhattan College.  In addition, he edited and wrote for several academic and religious journals.  Subsequently, he became a librarian at the LaSalle Military Academy, a Christian Brothers high school in Oakdale, on the South Shore of Long Island.  Finally, he died in New York City in 1944.

In the course of my research, I had the privilege of meeting Brother Luke Salm, a professor emeritus of history and an archivist at Manhattan College.  When he was a young man in the 1930s, Brother Luke knew Brother Jasper, and he remembered him well.  Brother Luke recalled that when he was a college student, he spent his summer vacations at the LaSalle Academy in Oakdale.   During these times, he  observed Brother Jasper setting out on the Great South Bay early every morning in a small motorboat.  Apparently, Brother Jasper enjoyed sailing on salt water!

Of course, this is a very tenuous connection to the sea.  Brother Jasper was not a  merchant seaman, but it would be accurate to call him an amateur bay man.  Besides, in this era before many of the bridges and tunnels in New York were built, he most certainly sailed on ferries across the Hudson River and other waterways.  Thus, Brother Jasper was acquainted at least with the tributaries of the sea.

My interest in Brother Jasper stemmed from our being related.  Getting to know him was facilitated by the lengthy paper trail he left behind,  The archives yielded a storehouse of material written both about him and by him.  In perusing this collection, it became clear to me that Brother Jasper was a very intelligent and very learned man as well as a highly accomplished academician.  This assessment was confirmed by a confrere’s notation that he was “remembered as a teacher for his intimacy with many areas of learning.”[1]  His connection to the Great South Bay came as a bonus.

Among Brother Jasper’s writings was some poetry which illustrated his range of subject matter.  Writing on a religious theme, he incorporated, for example, philosophy and biology, subjects that he taught, into some of his poems.  And while never having been a merchant seaman, he did include the sea in one of them.  Naturally, this one is my favorite:

Though stormy seas about me roll,

And angry waves conceal the goal,

I need not fear.

Though my frail bark is tempest tossed,

And strangers crowd, yea, all seems lost;

I should not fear.

Though friends rebuke and foes malign,

Unholy ones their strength combine;

I will not fear.

For Thou whom winds and sea obey

Will all my pains and grief allay,

When Thou art near.[2]

  

As these verses demonstrate, Brother Jasper was a man of great faith, and he used his literary skills to share this faith with others.  For this, we who read his poetry owe him a debt of gratitude.  I also feel honored that he included the seafaring profession in his work, and I appreciate his use of the metaphor of the storm at sea.

Brother Jasper’s abiding religious faith was evident in all of his poetry and prose.  Also clear was his admiration for the works of charity and acts of selfless service to others that such faith engendered.  He admired holy and Christ-like men who quietly did the Lord’s work without calling attention to themselves.  Furthermore, as a man of quiet contemplation, he recognized that the Lord operated through the still small voice and not the splash of sensationalism, and he asserted, “The divine call to a higher life is a gentle influence.”[3]

Perhaps Brother Jasper experienced some of this “gentle Influence” on the Great South Bay.  The sea and its tributaries have bespoken the existence and genius of God to many of us, and certainly Brother Jasper would recognize such a manifestation of the Deity.  Yet he would also realize that while we live here on the created Earth, we are not entirely a part of it.  As a spiritual man, he understood the human capacity for something higher and greater, and in another poem he exhorted:

O mortal, rise above the clod

That holds thee down so low:

Enjoy the presence of thy God

Wherein all blessings flow.[4]

A colleague wrote that Brother Jasper possessed “a quiet nobility of soul”[5] and had “a remarkable devotion to duty.”[6]  Another stated that he had “a kindness of disposition, an urbanity of manner, an evenness of temper, a goodness of heart, and a never-failing cheerfulness.”[7]  This was in addition to his “more than ordinary intelligence,”[8] which made him “a walking encyclopedia of language, science, mathematics, philosophy, and literature.”[9]  Finally, he was described as “one of the truly great men that every once in a while the Lord sends to the earth.”[10]

It seems to me that the faith and spirituality of such a great man could only have been increased by his experience on the Great South Bay, and it would have been much further magnified if he had actually gone to sea.  I am certain that a transoceanic voyage would have been a truly grand epiphany for him.

Now let us put a face to the name.  I have only four photographs of Brother Jasper, and this is the earliest.  It is believed to have been taken in a studio in New York in the early 1900s when he was in his mid-twenties.

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[1] Br. Casimir Gabriel, F.S.C., The Tree Bore Fruit: Manhattan College 1853-1953, Riverdale, NY: Manhattan College, 1953, p. 71.  This splendid volume recounts the history of Manhattan College in its first century and was a gift to me from Brother Luke. 

[2] Joseph L. Scanlon (Br. Apelles Jasper, F.S.C.), “Fear Not,” in The Manhattan Quarterly, April, 1914, p. 42.

[3] Joseph L. Scanlon (Br. Apelles Jasper, F.S.C.), Life of Venerable Brother Benilde of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, p. 33, unpublished typescript held in the Manhattan College archives and dating from the 1940s.

[4] Joseph L. Scanlon (Br. Apelles Jasper, F.S.C.), “The Flower,” in The Manhattan Quarterly, April, 1914, p. 9.

[5] Manhattan College memorandum on the death of Brother Apelles Jasper on February 20, 1944, and held in the Manhattan College archives.

[6] Ibid.

[7] From a speech given by an unnamed confrere on the occasion of Brother Apelles Jasper’s Golden Jubilee at Manhattan College on December 19, 1943, and held in the Manhattan College archives. 

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Manhattan College memorandum previously cited.