Bro. Vincent Kozak - Down the Memory Lane – Lasallians Remembered

Brother Vincent Kozak, FSC, of La Salle College, Kowloon, died on Friday, 15 June 1990, aged 81. He had been suffering pain and discomfort for some time and had been hospitalized several times. On 14 June he fell gravely ill and was admitted to St. Teresa’s Hospital. He died early in the following morning. Brother Vincent was born in what is now Czechoslovakia on 8 June 1909. He joined the De La Salle Brothers on the Feast of the Assumption, 1925. Three years later he went to Burma, where he was to serve in the Brothers’ institutions for almost 39 years, spending long periods in St. Patrick’s High School, Moulmein, and St. Peter’s High School, Mandalay. He was principal of St. Theresa’s School, Rangoon, in 1965, when all the Brothers’ schools were nationalized. He and many other Brothers were forced to leave the country. He came to Hong Kong in 1966 and spent the rest of his life in La Salle College, Kowloon. The salient facts about any great teacher’s achievement are found, not in lists of dates and places, but in the life of the students he helped to form. Thousands of Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, Confucianists, Hindus and others in Burma and Hong Kong and in many lands oversea bear in their careers and their characters the stamp of Brother Vincent’s training. In the homily preached at his Funeral Mass, he was described as preeminently a Boys’ Brother. He gave himself wholly to the service of those he was teaching. Many of them, now middle-aged or elderly, still salute the memory of what he gave them. Brother Vincent retired from teaching in 1973. Among the various activities of his years of retirement, he took the post of Sacristan. His community recall with affection and gratitude the care with which he provided all possible helps to devotion, small and great. In retirement, as in his years of labour, he took delight in community life, enjoying to the full the consolation of his Brothers’ companionship. They will miss him, but they will always rely on the help of his prayers. Information obtained from http://archives.catholic.org.hk/memory/V-Kozak.htm