Issue Nº337 – In Memoriam

On July 8th, Damien L. Hedley left his body at the age of 67 in Canberra, Australia, after a struggle with cancer. His funeral was held on July 13th at the Australian National Botanic Gardens.

Damien joined Auroville in 2009 and was a resident of Creativity. He was a popular teacher. He taught at Future School, Last School and, most recently, The Learning Community, where he taught a sex education series along with his Aurovilian partner, Paula Murphy.

Damien had studied the I Ching, the Enneagram and first read Sri Aurobindo in 1971. He gave this advice, “Tell the Truth to yourself. Be true to yourself. Then you might have a chance to be truthful with others.”

One June 24th, Yolande Lemoine, one of Auroville’s strong supporters in the early days, left her body in Paris.

Yolande had been a close friend and aide of Satprem and Sujata, and liaised the important contacts between J.R.D. Tata, Satprem and Auroville.

It was thanks to the effort of J.R.D. Tata and Yolande that Satprem’s manuscripts and audio cassettes of L’Agenda de Mère (Mother’s Agenda) made it to France to be published there. In 2014, she published her correspondence with Satprem in the book “Satprem: Lettres à Yolande.”

On June 6th, Tekeste B.G. Kidan Zerhanes left his body in his apartment in Courage. He was 79.

Tekeste, who in the late sixties came from Ethiopia to Ashram and Auroville and to whom Mother gave the adesh to “spread the light to Africa”, always kept the Mother’s words and love as the guiding principle of his life. Tekeste wrote to both the Emperor Haile Selassie and to Father Dioskoros, Archbishop in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, about The Mother and the creation of Auroville. As a result of this, Emperor Haile Selassie and Bishop Dioskoros were, after India, the first Head of Sate and religious leader to express in writing their respects to The Mother and support for Auroville and the ideals it stands for.

Backed by firm spiritual connections with the Ashram and Ethiopia, he strongly endeavoured to create an Africa centre and, after joining Auroville in 2001, connected with the Unity Pavilion and Auroville International with the same intent. One of the results was a week-long conference on developing an integral approach to collaboration between Auroville and African countries in Addis Ababa in October 2011. He also helped bring professors and students of architecture from Addis Ababa University to Auroville to work on the Africa House project.

Tekeste’s burial at the Adventure Burial and Cremation grounds on June 9th was followed a day later with a bonfire in his honour by the young people of the Africa House.

Michael Neville, a long-term Ashramite, passed away on 22nd January. Michael, known as ‘Michael Redbeard’, ran the early Auroville transport service and taught in the first Auroville school. He was an inspirational teacher, much-loved by his young students. Here some of his former students remember those times.