They were different, no doubt about it. One of them, Francisco José Arnaiz Zarandona, was born in the Biscayan area of Bilbao, near the shady pools of the Nervión. The other, Leonte Bernard Vásquez, was born in our trembling solar, which has been guarded by an arm of tormented water for more than five centuries.
Pepe Arnaiz, a Jesuit priest, dedicated his life to God and to enhancing the spiritual enjoyment of his creatures. Leonte, an architect and engineer, dedicated his life to improving the material subsistence of those who, without remedy, inhabit this world. The conversation with Pepe had magical resonances. The conversation with Leonte was peaceful and fruitful, full of sudden outbursts and with registers of unexpected wisdom.
I was a close friend of both of them. For years I enjoyed Pepe’s company extensively and intensely. Leonte and I were linked by emotional and professional ties for more than three decades. Leonte died on June 30, 2010; Pepe, on February 14, 2014. On both occasions, grief hindered me from spelling out the intimate farewell to such distinguished comrades.
May those words, now muted and distant, serve as a substitute tribute to the memory of both.
To Leonte Bernard Vasquez
Yesterday, Wednesday June 30, a few minutes before noon, the greatest thinker of Dominican engineering stopped thinking. Because Leonte Bernard Vásquez reached the highest level in the technical knowledge of the structures that architects and civil engineers build for the well-being of humans.
He was a great teacher, a wonderful friend, an illustrious professional, a devoted family man and, above all, a fervent man of kindness. Through those classrooms, which were brightened by Leonte’s presence, paraded myriads of young people: at the University of Santo Domingo, at the Universidad Nacional Pedro Henríquez Ureña and at the Universidad Central del Este. For more than 60 years, Professor Bernard taught Rational Mechanics and Vector Calculus. But, in addition, Leonte, the engineer, the mathematician, the most acute thinker of structural engineering that we have known, participated, in many ways, in all the great works carried out in the country during the 20th century. Our bridges, our docks, our breakwaters, the great buildings of the time, the most complex and unique structures: all of that was born and grew in the forge of that mind that rests before us today.
Life gave me the opportunity to be with him for the last 30 years. We talked about philosophy, politics, history. Through his memory, the great names of this profession that Leonte knew how to honor with his distinguished teaching paraded before me. He spoke to me of precursors such as Ñiño Alfonseca, Mario Penzo Fondeur, Guillermo González, Mario Lluberes, José Antonio Caro Álvarez and Gay Vega Malagón.
I do not feel capable of appreciating the magnitude of the void that Leonte Bernard Vásquez leaves among us today. On behalf of his colleagues at Tecnoamérica, his family, his students and friends, I wish to say goodbye to the old teacher, the wise man who passed slowly among us every day.
Leonte’s physical disappearance is inevitable, there is no doubt about it. His memory and his resonance, however, will be there, in that office filled with books and diplomas and manuscripts. From there we will continue to listen to his advice and his ideas, which will imperturbably make us better and more apt for this arduous task of living.
Let us pray that his example may serve as an intellectual path and an ethical paradigm to guide future generations of Dominicans.
So be it.
To Francisco Jose Arnaiz
My great friend Francisco José Arnaiz, the most radiant head of the Dominican Catholic Church since the distant days of Fernando Arturo de Meriño, has closed his eyes. Born Basque, he was a Renaissance man by trade, humane by profession and perhaps indulgent by fate. He came to us when the first light was appearing after that night of three decades.
With Pepe I was able to understand and value life from various and valuable perspectives. It was always a pleasant experience to talk with him about verses and songs, nostalgia and presences, tobacco and vines. This teacher of theology and psychology, who at his College in Bethlehem also worked as a professor of physics and natural sciences, understood the essence of man with the certainty and fullness, almost, of someone who kneaded the first clay of Creation.
Very little is known about the work of Monsignor Arnaiz in the last fifty years of Dominican biography. He was always a sure support, a reliable guarantor of the emotional calm of our people. Now, and I would like to be wrong, one of the essential supports for that fragile stage on which, day after day, the puppet show of our precarious and thoughtless reality is played out will be missing.
I don’t know if my friend Pepe, like Publius Aelius Hadrian, took the time to write about his death. For him, however, some phrases are valid, which now fly away and fall apart like the corollas of a great tree of sadness:
“Animula, vagula, blandula / Hospes comesque corporis / Quae nunc abibis in loca / Pallidula, rigida, nudula, / Nec, ut soles, dabis iocos”. (“My little soul, tender and floating / guest and companion of my body / you will descend to those pale, rigid and naked places / where you will have to renounce the games of yesteryear”)
- The farewell to Leonte Bernard Vázquez took place in the Camposanto on Tiradentes Avenue, Santo Domingo.
- The farewell to Francisco José Arnaiz was pronounced at the Campus of the Pontifical Catholic University Madre y Maestra (PUCAMAIMA), Santiago de los Caballeros.
The entrance Two absences was first published in elCaribe newspaper.
