Gerard Matthew Mills

Broadening education's embrace

Gerard Matthew Mills, priest: Born Wyndham, Southland, January 13, 1931; died Wellington Hospital, July 8, 2008, aged 77.
Gerry Mills was an influential Marist teacher whose horizons were notably broader than a priestly life suggests.

He was cultured, opinionated and worldly, and valued not only among his Marist colleagues but also among the hundreds of students who passed through his classrooms.

His community connections were expansive, and none of them were surprising; he was as well known in music circles of Wellington as he was to his students, congregations he led and his order.

The Marist way neither recognises status nor rewards jobs in a conventional career sense, so though this teacher of English was twice a rector of substantial secondary schools he was also, periodically, a parish priest, an assistant parish priest, a university chaplain and an office dogsbody.

He held the view that life on Earth was to be lived to the full. He enjoyed earthly fruits and its gifts, and gave thanks for them. He debated its failings and eccentrities, and, he said in 1999, "there are times I pray like billy-oh".

Tall and lean, Fr Mills was the antithesis of austere predecessors familiar to many former students of Catholic schools.

He was friendly and approachable, but not in an ingratiatingly blokey way. He didn't pretend to be one of "the boys" in order to court popularity. Rather, he stuck to what he knew and was good at – which was teaching English, especially English literature, and encouraging musical pursuits.

Unlike some of his fellow priests he wasn't a strict disciplinarian, preferring to engage pupils by enthusing them rather than by striking fear into them.

He spent his entire adult life with the Marists. The second son of a Bank of New Zealand manager and his homemaker wife, he joined the priesthood after four years as a boarder at St Patrick's College at Silverstream.

He entered the Greenmeadows seminary, and was ordained in 1954. The rigorous training also taught him the value of scholarship. In 1956, when he got his first Wellington posting to St Patrick's College at its original town site in Cambridge Tce, he also enrolled at Victoria University, graduating eventually with a masters degree with honours in English and a diploma in education.

At St Pat's in the city and at Silverstream, he developed interests that would be points of difference. An accomplished pianist and student of art and literature, he nudged music and art into the mainstream. It was no mean feat in the 1950s and 1960s when sport, rugby in particular, had muscled its way to the head of the culture ladder.

Widening the range raised eyebrows among sectors of the schools' alumni, but they had nothing to fear. He coached sports himself, but was determined to broaden education's embrace. Youngsters sidelined because they were arty or musically-minded soon had an arena in which to perform and, importantly, boys who couldn't hold a tune became singers, and prop forwards, for example, appeared in operettas and recitals.

Youngsters who showed talent even found themselves performing Benjamin Britten's War Requiem with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. None has forgotten their musical initations, nor the revelation of possibilities Fr Mills inspired.

Gerry Mills was twice rector of significant secondary schools: from 1971 till 1976 he was rector and the Marists' superior (or community leader) at St Patrick's College when it was in Cambridge Tce opposite the Basin Reserve. The turf was familiar – he had been on the staff for eight years from 1956 before heading to a similar classroom job at Silverstream for a seven-year spell.

His six-year term as rector in town was followed by a year as a teacher back at Silverstream and then, as the Marists are wont to do, a spell on Marist order duties in Wellington. If he entertained any idea that he was done with boys and blackboards, he was mistaken.

In 1978, the order decided his talents were needed at St Bede's at Christchurch. Apart from 1987 when he spent a sabbatical in Chicago, he spent 13 years at St Bede's, the last two as rector.

In the Marist order, there are no redundancy or severance packages, so it would surprise many non-Catholics that when he had finished up at Christchurch he was posted as a tertiary chaplain to university and training college students at Palmerston North. A couple of residencies followed, after which he began his six-year association with St Mary of the Angels in Boulcott St during which he was a familiar figure in the inner city.

He oversaw a number of changes at the venerable church, among them its restoration programme and the installation in 1997 of glass doors to the confessional room.

Fr Mills admitted he was a reluctant migrant to Whangarei in 2000. He was mistaken as to its attributes. He loved it, and in turn became reluctant to return to Wellington in 2007. He held a grudging respect for retirement, so long as it did not apply to him.

He became an assistant priest doing the equivalent of locum work when needed, and was resident at the Marists' Newtown base. He resumed his connection with music and was a regular patron of symphony orchestra concerts and ensemble performances. After a lifetime's interest in painting, he took lessons.

The Marists were chuffed with Gerry Mills. He had followed his vows and done all the order had asked of him. In their farewells, he was forgiven for two impractical aspects of his life – his inability to stack a dishwasher or operate a TV remote device.

Gerry Mills was awarded a Queen's Service Medal for services to education. He was at an art class at Miramar when he collapsed. He died at Wellington Hospital. He is survived by his younger brother.

Sources: Dominion Post library, P Cody, K du Fresne, G Hogg, M Mills and others; Marist archives.

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