I Gave Two Acres for a Church and a Schoolhouse. My Children Still Ask Me Why

A reader writes:

Sir or Madam,

I am a retired headmaster of eighty-seven years, and I have been a reader of your pages since my grandson set up the tablet for me. I write because of a question my eldest daughter asked me last Easter, sitting on the gallery after lunch. She asked, not unkindly, “Papa, do you ever regret giving away the land?” I told her I would think about it properly and give her a proper answer. This letter is my attempt.

In the early 1970s I inherited eleven acres from my father on a ridge above our village. It was good land: cocoa and nutmeg on the upper slope, bananas lower down, and a flat piece near the road where my father kept his donkey and where, as boys, we played cricket with a coconut bough for a bat. At the time, our congregation was meeting in a rented room above a rum shop. You may imagine the difficulty of preaching temperance on a Sunday morning over the smell of Saturday night. The children of the village, meanwhile, walked nearly two miles each way to the nearest infant school, and the smallest ones often simply did not go.

I was a young teacher then, newly married, and I had what my wife called “a dangerous amount of conviction”. After many months of prayer and many more of arguments, I gave the flat piece by the road, two acres of the eleven, to the church trustees, on condition that part of it be used for a basic school. The men of the congregation built the church over three years, mostly on Saturdays, with block and sand paid for by fundraising teas and a harvest that I still remember as the best we ever had. The schoolhouse followed. My wife taught in it for nineteen years.

I will tell you honestly what it cost, because I think those who write about generosity often leave that part out.

It cost me my brother’s goodwill for many years. He believed, with some justification, that our father had meant the land to stay with the family, and that I had no right to give away what was, in his view, partly his inheritance, even if the papers were in my name. We did not speak for almost a decade. He came to the church only once, for our mother’s funeral, and sat at the very back.

It cost my own children as well, in a quieter way. When they came of age and wished to build, there was less land to divide among four of them. My second son went to Brooklyn partly, I think, because there was no flat piece left for him to build on. He has never said this to me. He has not needed to.

And I was not always wise in how I did it. I was so eager that I did not take proper legal advice about the conditions of the gift. When, many years later, the government built a larger primary school in the next village and our basic school closed, there was a painful dispute about what should happen to the schoolhouse. It sat empty and was used for storage, which grieved my wife terribly. It is now, I am glad to say, a community centre with a small library, but that took years of committee meetings to arrange, and it would have been simpler if I had set things down more carefully at the start.

So, do I regret it?

I have thought about this for some months now, as I promised my daughter. The answer is no, but it is not a simple no.

I do not regret it because I have lived long enough to see the fruit. Over the years, several hundred children learned their letters in that schoolhouse. Some of them are nurses and mechanics and teachers now. One is a magistrate. Every few months someone stops me in town and says, “Sir, I was in Mrs A.’s class,” and tells me what they remember, usually the singing and the smell of the cassava bread she made on Fridays. The church has held baptisms, weddings and funerals for fifty years. After the great hurricane, when so many roofs were lost, it sheltered families for weeks. You cannot put a price on that in acres.

But I do regret some things. I regret that I did not sit down with my brother before I did it and hear him out properly. I think I was so sure I was doing God’s work that I did not see that he had a legitimate grief. I regret that I did not make provision in writing for what should happen if the school ever closed. And I regret that my children bore some of the cost of a decision they had no part in making.

My brother and I were reconciled before he died, I should add. He came to me when he was ill and said, “The church is a good building, you know.” That was all. For him it was a great deal.

The psalm I have most often read over this land is Psalm 84, where it says, “For the Lord God is a sun and shield.” I have taken it as a promise that God does not let generosity go unseen, though He may not repay it in the currency we expect. Most of my land has gone to my children now. The two acres by the road have gone to everybody.

To anyone considering such a gift: I would say, do it if God is leading you, but do it slowly, with your family at the table, and with a good lawyer at your elbow. Generosity does not excuse carelessness.

Yours faithfully,
— C.A., St Andrew’s, Grenada

Editor’s note

Mr A.’s letter is unusually honest about the cost of a generous act. His gift of land has blessed a whole community for half a century, and he does not regret it. But he also names what he would do differently: involving his family before deciding, and setting out clearly in writing what should happen to the land if circumstances changed. Anyone thinking of giving land or property to a church, school or charity would do well to follow his advice: talk to the family, take independent legal advice, and put the terms of the gift in writing.

Reader letters may be edited for length and clarity, and names and identifying details are changed.

This article is general information only and is not financial, legal, tax or other professional advice. Please speak to a qualified professional about your own circumstances.

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