Brother Francis "Scotty" Hughes, F.M.S.
Mount Saint Michael, Bronx, NY

To many, Brother Francis “Scotty” Hughes was the consummate Renaissance man, inspiring many as a teacher, artist, electronics engineer and soldier/interpreter for the British armed forces in World War II. Shortly before his death, Brother Scotty talked about his paintings and one in particular, inspired by a fellow Marist Brother.

This painting, the lighthouse, is about Brother Rene, who was with me for seven years on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota teaching Indians not to drink. That was our job. And to do that was one of the hardest jobs of my life, but one of the best. In the seven years I spent with Brother Rene on the reservation, he was a lighthouse to the Indian tribe. This was symbolic of his life.

It was a wonderful time on the reservation. It was the hardest time of my life because we went there on the basis of living as the Indians. We wouldn’t have air conditioning or any electricity. You had to be really tough to stay on the reservation. But it was a glorious time if you thought about the human contact that you were making. You would go out from the house, for example, and within 10 minutes you’d have 20 kids on horseback riding alongside you because the Brothers’ car was out. And the thunder! On the dirt road it was amazing, and you could hear the hoof beats in the distance.

The loyalty on the reservation was unimaginable. You wouldn’t find it anywhere in the United States or perhaps anywhere in the world — neighbors coming in when they were in dire straits confessing what was wrong and what was not going right, and you sat there if necessary all night talking to them. It was a marvelous time, a very hard time. But marvelous.