The Rev. Dr. Neal Henry Lawrence, OSB
Fr. Lawrence has been a member of the Society for four decades and a member of the Council for most of that time. After a prewar business career and a wartime stint with the U.S. Navy, which took him to Okinawa, he felt his calling to be with the Catholic church, and was trained at St. John's Seminary, Collegeville, Minnesota, and ordained priest in 1960. He served in St. Anselm's Benedictine Priory and Church in Kami-Osaki, Tokyo, from that time until last year, when the Benedictines moved to their present location in Nagano (see the News Notes, ASJ Bulletin, No. 5, May 2000). In 1993 he was decorated with the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, for his long services to this country, and has received many awards from other countries, the most recent being that of "Poet of the Millennium-2000", conferred by the International Poets Academy. One of his accomplishments is the writing of tanka poems in English, of which four volumes have been published, the fourth one just last month. The Tokyo Shimbun and the large regional daily, The Chunichi Shimbun, carried an interview with Fr. Lawrence which appeared on November 13th last year under the title "Kokusaika Susumu TANKA"; the articles gave a long description of his activities in this field and the growth of the popularity of tanka in North America. He last addressed us in February 1998, on his experiences in Okinawa (see the Bulletin for that month for a fuller resume of his career).