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Cover: Harry Seggu with Louis Rozario Doss, and Louis Rozario Doss outside St Michael's Institution, Ipoh; background: the St Michael's Institution building, cropped and darkened (all photos: Harry Seggu).
He was a schoolboy actor and debater at St Michael's in the 1960s. In 1998/1999, he walked back through its gates as principal.
Some teachers leave a school. The school never leaves them.
In 1966, a young debater and actor left St Michael's Institution, the white Gothic-style school on Jalan SP Seenivasagam (once Clayton Road) in Ipoh.
More than three decades later, in 1998/1999, he came back to run it.
His name is Louis Rozario Doss.
In this series, we usually tell you about tin barons, Kapitans and heritage buildings. Today's story is about something every school is built on: the teachers who stay with you for life, and the students who decide to become one.
Who Is Louis Rozario Doss?
Louis Rozario Doss is a Perak educator who was principal of St Michael's Institution (SMI), Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia, from 1998/1999 to 2005.
By his own account, and that of the SMI centenary history he has published online, he was the first old boy of St Michael's to become its principal.
He was not, though, the first principal who was not a La Salle Brother. After Brother Vincent Corkery retired as Brother Director in 1988, Mr Chong Suan Ee took over in 1989 as the school's first lay principal in decades, followed by Mr K. Balasubramaniam and Mr Teh Chor Aun. (SMI's very first headmaster, Mr PJ Morsingh, in 1912, was not a Brother either.)
A Boy of Two Schools: St Michael's, Ipoh and St Anthony's, Teluk Intan
Louis Rozario Doss is a son of two La Salle schools.
By his own account, he began at St Michael's in Ipoh in the 1950s, spent Forms One to Three at St Anthony's School in Teluk Intan, Perak (then Teluk Anson), and returned to St Michael's to finish his secondary schooling, leaving in 1966. (His own write-ups give slightly different years, so we keep to the outline.)
He calls himself "a very simple, ordinary Ipoh boy". In a video filmed by our founder at St Michael's, he recalled being born at 30 Jalan Connolly, about two kilometres from the school, and walking to class across the railway lines.
The railway ran in the family. His grandparents and uncles, who traced their roots to Pondicherry, then a French colony in India, came to work on the Malayan Railways as station masters, clerks and signalmen. All told, he said, he spent 11 years at St Michael's as a student, and eight more as its principal.
"Next to my parents, my two schools have the strongest claim to everything that has made what I am today," he wrote.
At St Michael's, he was, in Form Four in 1964, in his words, "suddenly plucked out of obscurity" by Brother Casimir Hannon and "propelled onto the arena of drama and debates".
He played elves in "The Magic Key", directed by Brother Vincent Corkery. In 1965, he played Sir Robert Morton in Terence Rattigan's "The Winslow Boy".
According to the SMI centenary history, in 1966 he captained the school debating team that became Perak state champions in a competition organised by the Jaycees, and was President of the Fifth Form Society.
The teachers he names as his heroes are Brother Ultan Paul, Brother Vincent Corkery, Brother Casimir Hannon, Brother Damian Oliver and Mr Eric Gomez. "What stands out in all of them was a selfless zeal for the education of young people," he wrote.
Literature, he said, was "the rocket which propelled me in my professional life as an English teacher, as a principal, as a public speaker, as a debate trainer". At St Michael's, every boy in Forms Four and Five studied it, science stream or arts. He read "The Merchant of Venice", Shaw and Rattigan, and the Form Four and Five boys staged a play over three nights for parents and the public. Brother Casimir was his literature master and drama coach; Mr Eric Gomez, his debate trainer, was "a master of the art of rebuttal"; and Brother Damian Oliver was "a magnetic public speaker" he hoped to speak like one day.
From Student to Teacher
After school, he read for a degree in English at the University of Malaya, where he remembers two of his professors, Prof Lloyd Fernando and Prof Syed Nazir Raza Kazmi. He later studied at the University of Manchester.
He then served, in his words, "at various schools in Perak as teacher, senior assistant and principal".
In the video, he filled in the details: 18 years as an English teacher and head of English at his first school, then senior assistant for student affairs at SMK Iskandar Shah, Parit, and afternoon supervisor at two more schools, the second of them SMK Jalan Pasir Puteh in Ipoh, before his first post as a principal.
Principal of St Anthony's, Teluk Intan
Before Ipoh, he went back to his other old school.
He was principal of SMK St Anthony, Teluk Intan, in the mid-1990s, until 1998. His own write-ups give the start as 1996 in some places and 1995 in another.
The St Anthony's history blog he runs describes him as the first old boy to become principal of both schools.
Principal of St Michael's Institution, Ipoh (1998/1999–2005)
In 1998/1999, he succeeded Mr Teh Chor Aun as principal of St Michael's Institution. He recalls being "gladly welcomed" by Brother Paul, Brother Vincent and Mr Adrian Tsen, then President of the Old Michaelians Association.
He is quick to share the credit. Anything that "comes under the heading of achievements should not be attributed to me alone," he said in a video filmed by our founder. "There was a magnificent team of administrators here at St Michael's before me and during my time."
Here is what the records of those years say.
By one account, the school carried out many structural improvements in his time, funded mainly by money raised through the school plays: a new school toilet, the conversion of the Brothers' quarters into classrooms, a renovated lecture theatre and resurfaced basketball courts.
The same account lists the annual school drama for every year from 1998 to 2005, from "My Fair Lady" (1998) to "Mulan" (2005).
The debaters did well too. The same account records Perak state Rotary titles in 2001, 2003 and 2004, and national runner-up places in the Tan Sri Datuk Wira Abdul Rahman Arshad Debate Cup in 2002 and the HELP National Debate Competition in 2005. "Much of this success is attributed to former principal, Mr. Louis Rozario Doss, who was himself a former debater for the school," it said.
The SMI centenary history credits his years with a covered pathway and new paving of the inner roads, done with the support of the Old Michaelians Association and the Board of Governors, and with "a powerful synergy" with the alumni in Ipoh and the Klang Valley.
Walking our founder through the school, he named three projects. The pot-holed service roads, which flooded in the rain, were paved with the help of the Old Michaelians' Association and its president, Mr Adrian Tsen. A covered pathway spared pupils the long run in the rain from the gate on the main road; he credited the parent-teacher association (PIBG), led at the time by Dato' Seri Darshan Singh Gill, with sponsoring it. And because hundreds of afternoon-session boys, waiting in the canteen for the morning session to end, were "creating the Tower of Babel on earth" next to the classrooms, a pavilion was built for them. It is named after the OMA president: the Adrian Tsen Pavilion, opened in 2001.
In the classroom, he said, St Michael's and SMK Sultan Yussuf, Batu Gajah, were the first two schools in Perak approved to offer computer studies as an SPM subject, as pilot schools for the education department, and St Michael's went on to offer computing in the sixth form and engineering drawing, then found mostly in vocational schools. He thanked the teachers who led them, Puan Leela and Cikgu Zahari.
What he cared about most, though, was the school's spirit. Brother Vincent, he said, inspired him to give it a sharper focus, summed up in three words: faith, zeal and service. Faith meant the Lasallian emblem Signum Fidei, "a living sign of faith": a Muslim, Christian, Buddhist or Hindu student should live out his own faith sincerely. Zeal meant doing your very best, and caring for "the last, the least and the lost". And service became a rule. In his eight years, every class and every club, from the prefects to the rugby team, had to carry out at least two community service projects a year, often paid for from the pupils' own pocket money.
"We, as I said earlier, seek to know more in order to be more."
Louis Rozario Doss
Mission schools like St Michael's, he said, "are our national assets which we cannot afford to lose". Among the old Michaelians he named were John Thivy, founding president of the Malayan Indian Congress, and Dato' Seri Ahmad Husni Hanadzlah, a former Second Finance Minister.
It also says he was often the first to arrive before dawn and seldom left before sunset.
One former student, writing on an SMI old boys' blog in 2009, remembered him as a principal who could be "strict and your friend at the same time".
Two of his mentors were still close by. Brother Paul died in 2000. Brother Vincent, he wrote, then "wore the mantle of the patriarch of the Michaelian community".
The Building He Came Home To
The school itself is one of Ipoh's landmarks.
St Michael's opened on 4 December 1912 with fewer than 40 boys (accounts give 37 or 39) in a bungalow on Clayton Road. Its main building, designed by a La Salle Brother, Brother Vernier Augustus, in a Gothic style, had its foundation stone laid on 17 June 1922 and was blessed on 15 May 1923.
During the Japanese Occupation, the school became the headquarters of the Japanese government of Perak. It reopened on 24 September 1945.
"There Is No Such Thing as a Useless Child"
In a video our founder, Harry, filmed at St Michael's, Louis stands beside a tall metal sculpture of one figure embracing a smaller one.
It is called Pater Familias. "Pater, or father, or teacher, and Familias is family," Louis said. "This embodies the spirit of this school and of all good schools throughout the world."
Its maker was Brother Joseph McNally, an Irish La Salle Brother who taught in the order's Malaysian schools and later founded the Singapore art school that became LASALLE College of the Arts. He died in 2002.
By Louis's account, McNally built it from the bumpers and other metal parts of accident cars that no one wanted, found in a second-hand dump in Penang.
Why rejected metal? "He said he wants to express the idea that there is no such thing as a rejected or useless child. Every child has great talent and ability. And the task of the teacher is to discover this talent and to enable the child to discover itself," Louis said.
That, for Louis, is the heart of a good school: "There is no such thing as a useless child. Every child is born with great value in itself."
He brought the same belief to discipline. Lasallian schools, he said, use the parable of the Good Shepherd, and the key to changing a troubled student "is in touching their hearts and minds. It is not in a culture of threats." Discipline should be handled quietly, not by shaming boys at assembly. He admitted that he had caned students. "When the caning is done, in my heart I have cried and I have prayed for the students," he said, and he always followed their progress afterwards.
His answer for the boys at the back of the hall is to give every one of them a stage: praise them at assembly, give them a useful role. "Make them all school personalities," he said. "Not unknowns in the school." Ideally, he added, a school should be small enough, around 500 pupils, for the principal to know every student by name.
After St Michael's: Tenby, Shakespeare and the Story of His School
He did not stop after St Michael's.
By his own account, he was pioneer principal of SM Tenby, Ipoh, in 2006, and from 2010 pioneer principal of the Tenby Sixth Form at Tenby International School, Ipoh.
By 2015 he was Principal of Sixth Form, overseeing the school's Shakespearean Theatre Club. By then, the sixth formers had staged at least seven Shakespeare plays, including "Julius Caesar", "Macbeth", "Hamlet" and "The Merchant of Venice".
"It widens the scope of the students to go beyond their comfort zones and to feel how other people felt in other circumstances," he said of the club.
In 2019, he was reportedly teacher-in-charge of a Tenby student visit to the Simee home, where his students were surprised to hear him sing Mandarin songs from the 1960s.
That visit was one of many. He told our founder about the partnership his Ipoh schools built with Orang Asli villages at Simpang Pulai, around the 18th kilometre of the road from Ipoh to the Cameron Highlands; the Global Perspectives debates the Tenby sixth form organised; a travelling Shakespeare troupe that took the plays to other schools in simple modern English with local names, so that King Lear became "Abang Lear"; and years of fellowship visits with St Michael's and Tenby pupils to the home for the aged in Kampung Simee.
He also became a keeper of his schools' memories. He has written about his old teachers for the Dictionary of Christian Biography in Asia, runs blogs on the history of St Michael's and St Anthony's, and in 2023 wrote a published tribute to the SMI hockey master Noel Francis d'Oliveiro.
In 2014, he was Vice President of the Old Michaelians' Association and wrote that he was producing video clips on the story of St Michael's, in a series called "Valiant and True", after a line of the school rally.
What Louis Rozario Doss Teaches Our Students and Teachers
First lesson: one teacher can change a life.
A Brother picked a Form Four boy "out of obscurity", in his words, for the stage. Decades later, that boy was running the school, and then leading a sixth form whose students performed Shakespeare.
Second lesson: speak up, and learn to argue well.
Debate and drama gave him his voice. Under him, St Michael's debaters were national runners-up, twice (2002 and 2005).
Third lesson: come back and give back.
He returned to lead both of his old schools, and handed on what he had been given.
Fourth lesson: a school is more than its buildings.
The plays raised money for classrooms. But what lasted was the spirit: in his words, "a selfless zeal for the education of young people".
Fifth lesson: never stop learning.
From the University of Malaya to Manchester, from SMI to the Tenby Sixth Form, he kept learning, and kept teaching.
And if he had to sum up success in one word? He spelled it out for our founder: F-I-R-E. Fire, he explained, means burning away what blocks your way, giving light to others, and the inspiration of God.
"Only a life lived for others is worth living."
Louis Rozario Doss, after Albert Einstein
A Name on the List
St Michael's list of Brother Directors and principals goes back to 1912.
One of the names on it belongs to a boy who once played Sir Robert Morton on the school stage.
Our founder, Harry, presented Louis with the Ipoh the City of Millionaires Leadership Award.
Shaped in Ipoh. Giving back to Ipoh.
Who was the teacher or principal who changed your life? Tell us their name and their school
This story is part of Ipoh Connections, our City of Millionaires heritage series. At EdQuest International School in Ipoh, we believe history, character and critical thinking are best learned through real stories, including the stories of our own city.
Stories in this series are shared for informational and educational purposes. Where accounts differ, we say so. We respect all races, religions and cultures, and we do not represent or endorse any political party or movement.
