This is an article written by Bernard Brooks to commemorate the 150th. birth anniversary of the founder of Dr. Graham's Homes. He was the first Indian Headmaster and Principal of Dr. Graham's Homes, Kalimpong. He retired in 1985, after some 25+ years of outstanding service to the school and lives in Kolkata, India. He remains a well respected educationist in his country and is much loved by his former pupils scattered around the globe.

THANKSGIVING FOR THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN ANDERSON GRAHAM ON THE OCCASION OF HIS 150th. BIRTH ANNIVERSARY, SEPTEMBER 8TH 1861.

Although you will only hear this at your Birthday meeting,  I am writing these notes today –  8th September, the great man’s actual  150th birthday – and will use it for the ‘biographical notes’ I intend sharing with the congregation when  we meet  at St. Andrew’s Church on September 11th 2011 for a Service of Thanksgiving.

I am perfectly aware most of the following is familiar to many of you – and no doubt Eddie Lamb will know all of it – but perhaps this is an occasion to sit back and once again hear the incredible ‘Graham story’.

John Anderson Graham was born of Scottish parents in a little town of West Hackney, England.  Shortly after, the family moved back to Scotland and settled on a farm in Cardross.   Exactly one hundred years later, Mrs. Minto drove me to see the farm house, but the grumpy old owner wouldn’t allow us in and so I took photographs of the house and farm land from the gate.  Graham went to the local school, but his serious education took place when he moved to Edinburgh.  At the age of 24 he obtained an M.A. from Edinburgh University, and for the next four years studied theology and related subjects in preparation for the ministry.

He was ordained on 13th January 1889, and from that moment onwards seems to have been a man in a hurry.  Just two days later, he married Katherine his soul mate who bore him six children in the next twelve years.   Two months after their wedding, the Grahams arrived at the Mission Station in Kalimpong.  Although it was called a ‘mission station’ it consisted of a solitary building which contained the residence and office of the administrator, Rev. Sutherland.   The school, later to be the SUMI, was an open shed providing some 20 boys instruction in the three R’s. 

In the relatively brief period of just six years, Graham was to transform the landscape of the entire mission station.  He was instrumental in raising funds for the building of the first Church in Kalimpong – the magnificent Macfarlane Church which resembles a cathedral and accommodates more than a thousand souls. The Charteris Hospital – the first and only hospital in Kalimpong for the next eighty years - the leprosarium, and the school for over 150 boys with two regular teachers, followed soon after. Then the ‘Industries’, a workshop which engaged only women, was opened. Handmade materials manufactured there were made into various articles which were sold locally.  From this income, the womenfolk received money - the first time women were ever paid a wage for working.

In 1895, the Grahams returned to Scotland on furlough.  One would have thought he needed a rest after all he had done in the previous six years, but instead he visited and spoke at 214 towns and villages throughout Scotland of the need to support the work of the mission.  Somehow he also found time to write and publish his first book: ‘On the Threshold of the Three Closed Lands’.  By now he had another ‘obsession’: the tea garden children as they were loosely described; children unacceptable to the father’s community and not always accepted by the mothers because of the stigma of mixed blood and illegitimacy.  Graham tried desperately to get his Mission in Scotland to fund a home for these children, but they refused – not because the project was without merit, but because they believed he had enough on his plate.

What did Graham have on his plate when he returned in 1898?  He was the Headmaster of the School, Superintendent of the Charteris Hospital and Leprosarium, sales supervisor at the Industries (Mrs. Graham as in charge), and full time Pastor of the Church.  By now Rev. Sutherland had retired and so he was appointed Administrator of the Mission – a post he was to hold faithfully for the next 35 years.

Bitterly disappointed with his home Mission, he was later to say it was a blessing in disguise as this enabled him to tap any and every available source.  He founded the Homes by taking into care six children in a rented house in Tripai village on September 24th 1900.  In the next six weeks he had a request to take in another 26 children and so having leased from government 100 acres of land (he was to lease another 300 acres soon after), he gave orders for the first cottage to be built.  The date: 8th November, 1900. 

It took exactly a year to build the first cottage and during that time Graham opened the farm, appointed a farm Manager from Scotland, established a small but effective Board of Management and had the President of the Board lay the foundation stone of the Bourdillon School – in front of where the Jarvie hall is today.  In November 1901 the first cottage was ready and no one will ever know how Graham managed to get the Governor of Bengal, Sir John Woodburn, to make the arduous journey on horseback from Gaelkhola to cut a ribbon outside a solitary building on a barren hillside!   Sir John also cut the first sod of Graham’s second cottage - Elliott - before returning to Calcutta.

In the first twenty years (1900-1920) Graham constructed 44 buildings averaging a shade over two buildings a year.  In the day to day running of the Homes, he was greatly helped by the Headmaster, Mr. James Simpson (who arrived in 1902 and served for three decades) and Mr. James Purdie who joined the Homes in 1908 and served as Secretary till 1950. Graham’s wife Katherine died in 1919, and it was after this he revived his dream of building a Chapel on the compound.  This was completed in 1925 and dedicated as the Katherine Graham Memorial Chapel on the Birthday (24/9) that year which was also the Homes Silver Jubilee.

Graham received numerous ‘awards’ throughout his lifetime.  Both Edinburgh and Aberdeen Universities awarded him Doctorates in Divinity. The recognition of his services by the then Government in India  took the form of the Kaiser-I-Hind Gold Medal in 1903, the Companion of the Indian Empire (CIE) in 1911, and a Bar to the original Gold Medal in 1935.  However it was in 1931 he was to receive the highest honour his church could confer on him: Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland – the only missionary ever to be honoured in this way. 

On completing his tenure as Moderator, Graham retired from the Mission in 1933 and only then moved up to the Homes to stay in ‘Superintendent’s House’, later renamed Graham House.  Unbelievably Graham had been totally faithful to the Mission he had come out to serve in 1889, and even after  founding the Homes in 1900, remained till this point in the Administrator’s bungalow on the Mission Compound in town.

The depression years of the 1930s were a difficult period but Graham constructed his last building in 1938.  This was the Kindergarten in order to separate the youngest group from the main school which continued to function from the Queen Mary block.  The complex was opened by Lord Brabourne while Lady Brabourne planted three oak saplings which OGBs will no doubt remember as massive trees in the K.G. compound.

1939 was Dr. Graham’s Golden Jubilee year (1889-1939).  Board members, staff - past and present, OGBs and Overseas Committees were all anxious to contribute towards a present, but what does one give the great man by way of a present on such an occasion?  And then some genius came up with the idea that as Graham had been a builder all his life, another building would be the most appropriate gift.  Accordingly, Jubilee House became the gift and this was blessed by Bishop Foss Westcott, Metropolitan of India, Burma and Ceylon at the time.

Dr. Graham passed away on the 15th May 1942 and is buried in the Garden of Remembrance along side his beloved Katherine.   On looking at the compound today,  a casual observer may describe him as a ‘Master Builder’ of the Children’s City, but to the vast majority of OGBs, he is better known as a builder of lives,  and  the provider of a new ‘dream’ which may not have been theirs but for this man who loved children.

Bernard Brooks.  8th September, 2011

 

 

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