2023-07-01 13:01:00
Event under a radiant sun, recently, in Harre, in the municipality of Manhay: “A place that is so dear to your heart, next to that little church where you have so many childhood memories”, notes Alderman Claudy Huet, addressing Joseph Bonmariage who has just celebrated his centenary. To mark this event, a commemorative stele was inaugurated and an American oak was also planted by a young man from Harre, Arthur Hubert.
A family of 10 children
The jubilee was born in Fays, in a family of ten children. Son of the teacher, he attended his classes and continued his education at the Minor Seminary of Saint-Roch in Ferrières. At 17, he experienced the horrors of war. He is from the exodus to France where he will stay for several months, doing work on the farm and in the vineyards. “A graduate of social work, you exercised the profession of secretary at the Cardinal Mercier technical institute in Schaerbeek. A theological training with the Franciscan fathers opened the door for you to the function of permanent deacon, a position to which you were ordained to Laeken in 1973” calls Claudy Huet.
The secret of Pouhon water?
The jubilee united his destiny with Maria Materne, the couple being enriched by the arrival of 3 children. “You lived in Brussels from 1954 to 1984. In July 1984, retired, you came back to settle in Manhay, more precisely in Fays” adds the alderman who comments: “To be 100 years old is to have known the time before, the ancient times when everything was built with your hands. You have traveled through time, rich in so many memories.” These memories, Joseph Bonmariage will put them on paper. A secret of longevity? Claudy Huet tries to drill it: “In 1948, Fays already knew a centenarian, Victor Bouha. A great consumer of Pouhon, it seems that he owed his longevity to this ferruginous water, of which he would have drunk more than forty thousand liters! Joseph, you also drank a lot of it Perhaps it is he, this elixir, the secret of a long life for the elders of the villages of the commune of Harre?
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