On Catholic School, Education and "Leisure"

I can't deny that I received a good education at St. Thomas' School but I can't help wonder if it was the same for all of my classmates.  Long before the nation recognized dyslexia or ADD or any sort of learning disability, St. T's recognized 'slow learners' in their own way - namely, by public humiliation and ridicule.  If you were called upon in class and didn't know the correct answer, there were repercussions, rather severe ones, and the harshest of them all were bestowed by the "Brides of Christ", although certain lay teachers weren't far behind.  It wasn't unusual to be punished by banishment to the cloakroom for an hour or so; this was one of more lenient methods.  It was de rigueur to be called to the head of the class, told to extend your hand, and have said hand smacked by a metal-edged ruler or yard-long pointer.  In the heat of the moment, the pointer might be employed on a miscreant's back or rump or even, in several memorable instances, about the head and shoulders.  Our public school counterparts, so far as I know, were spared the corporal punishment but the adults in Catholic schools generally had the support and blessings of the parents.  If you caught hell in the classroom, you caught double-hell at home, no questions asked, no excuses accepted.

I was informed in second grade that "girls aren't good at math".  I had been, up until then, pretty good in math.  Until that point.

But there were advantages to Catholic school...

We had "Catholic Only" holidays.  Yes, the word "holiday" springs from "Holy Day" and we had "Holy Days of Obligation" sprinkled liberally throughout the school calendar.  We had the Ascension in the spring, All Saints Day (very conveniently, the day after Halloween) in November, the Immaculate Conception in December (and oh!  to have a recording of these chaste nuns trying to explain THAT concept to us!) and several others.  To rub it in, we would take informal field trips to the public schools, where our friends were sure to see us walking by their classroom windows, waving merrily until we were chased off the grounds, generally by the janitor or a free teacher, but on several memorable occasions, by the principal.  Of course, our publicly educated friends returned the favor on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  To us, there were few sights funnier than a nun flying out the classroom door in the hopes of catching a heathen kid (for all public school children were heathen) by the ear and dragging them in to set an example of them.  It never happened; St. T's was surrounded by swamps and we were all well-versed in jumping over Ash Creek to escape, but it always livened up a classroom to be left unattended for a period of time.

Sister Jean Marie and the 5th grade class...Diana Romano, bottom row right, was covering a bandage on her knee.  From bottom left:  Laura Cherney, Rebecca (forget her last name but she lived on Cummings Ave.), Lisa Johnson, Alain Kelly, Ellen Bolger, Loretta Johnson, Diana Romano.  Middle row from left:  Sister Jean Marie Lynch, Pat Sullivan, John Levasseur, Peggy Rawley, Maureen Mulcahy, Maggie Hyde, Mary Trupp, Mary Fox, Ann ("Cookie") Felner, Paul Skalkos, Brad Melius, Sean Neary.  Top Row:  Jim Pleszko, Gary Corbett, Pat Boland, John Higginbotham, Mike Philbin, Bill O'Brien, John Curran, Seamus ("Jamie") Walsh, Frank Sullivan, Tom Wargo, Scott Fabry, Mike Morrissey.

Third and fourth grades were taught by Mrs. Rossignol and Mrs. Bannon respectively; Mrs. Rossignol was young and fresh and pretty and fun but Mrs. Bannon was a grizzled veteran (she had a beard, by God!) of many classes and was accorded the respect she demanded.   By this time, the class caste was well established; there were the 'popular' kids, the 'smart' kids, and the rest.  The law of the jungle ruled both the classroom and the playground and none of us were fully released from our cliques until high school.  The outcasts were picked on mercilessly; the popular kids were fawned over, and the smart kids...well, that was dependent on whether you were willing to let the popular kids copy off your paper.  There was some degree of fluidity amongst the boys; if the boy in question was able to pull off a particularly breathtaking prank, such as the M-80 in the toilet of the boy's bathroom, he was granted 'popular' status for a period of time, but such was not the case amongst the girls. 


When we arrived in Sister Jean Marie's fifth grade classroom, our reputation was set in stone.  We were, without a doubt, the "worst class that ever passed through these doors" and we were "all bound for the hot place without a hope of heaven".  We were unruly; we were a bunch of monkeys; we were wasting our teacher's time.  In an attempt to soothe the savage beasts, Sister Norberta was called out of retirement to teach us music; that lasted three months.  She taught us "Santa Lucia", renamed by the boys "Santa Screw-chia"; Sister Norberta's hearing was failing and I don't think she ever caught on.  She taught us "Above The Plain".  She taught us "Adore Te Devote".  I can still sing every verse and refrain, but cannot hear "Santa Lucia" without recalling our alternate lyrics.


Sixth grade was Miss Dugas.  Miss Dugas was a single woman whose lunch always consisted of tuna fish and a banana.  It was in Miss Dugas' class I learned about Doric, Ionic and Corinthian columns; I can vividly recall driving through Southport by the Yacht Club, and excitedly informing my father about Roman architecture, which columns were which, and searching in vain for flying buttresses.  There weren't many flying buttresses in Fairfield County, we discovered.

Ionic Columns!

Corinthian Columns!

Doric Columns!

Seventh grade - at a time when our public school friends had "graduated" to Junior High School at Tomlinson - the girls were accorded the great honor of no longer having to wear the jumper uniform.  We were now allowed to wear skirts instead.  But if the nuns suspected that our skirt was not regulation, we were made to kneel on the cold hard marble to demonstrate that it did or didn't.  And if it didn't, we could be sent home until our mothers corrected the issue.  With hormones starting to rage, and odd hairs and bumps showing up in strange places, the girls were sequestered away for a series of movies - "health" class!  And the boys had their equally strange sojourn, learning about how they must treat all girls as sisters.  It's a wonder to me that Catholics ever reproduced after these classes.  It was about this time that the boys would be excused for bathroom breaks, and squirm out the bathroom window for their cigarette breaks.  The nuns didn't dare venture into the boy's room; I can only guess what they thought was going on at the time.  But 7th grade brought us our favorite teacher as well.

Mrs. Dorothy Gogol was a wise-cracking, no-nonsense, experienced teacher who knew how to go with the flow.  It was she who christened us the "Sweathogs", after the incorrigible group of students featured in "Welcome Back Kotter".  If you wised off to Mrs. Gogol, you only did it once.  Or twice, if she laughed the first time.  She was one of two teachers who possessed a healthy sense of humor, and somehow was able to maintain some semblance of order while still teaching better than perhaps any other teacher I've ever had.  In Mrs. Gogol's classroom, we learned about Science by doing experiments and using microscopes, instead of just reading about it.  Or should I say "microscope"; we didn't have the equipment of the public schools and had to make do.  It was from Mrs. Gogol we learned about Darwin and the theory of evolution; I'm still not sure if those particular lessons were condoned by the priests but nothing held Mrs. Gogol back.  Perhaps they were known, as it was at this time that Father Raymond Petrucci came in to teach us religion.  Most of the priests we interacted with were either feared (for good reason as it turns out) or respected without question, but Father Petrucci was the only one who was actually loved.  Generally even-tempered, we were still successful at getting a rise out of him on occasion - at one point he was so livid he threw a globe at one of the boys - but for the most part, it was Father P. who tried his best to make saints out of the class of sinners.  And if you were on the softball team, which he coached, he'd take the team to Dairy Queen for ice cream to celebrate a win.  None of us ever got fat, suffice it to say, and his wallet remained largely unscathed.

Our eighth and final year together at St. Thomas was a challenge for our principal.  We were still the largest class and our destructive collective herd mentality was apparently unparalleled throughout school history.  And I mean ANY school, anywhere on earth. The drastic measure was taken to separate us into two classes; Sister Ignatia Marie, being a sheltered woman and perilously close to retirement age, would take the less challenging class (aka the "good kids") and Sister Mary Robert, the principal, would take the troublemakers.  She threw in a few 'good kids' to serve as an example (has that EVER worked?) and she totally skewed the grading curve by including a selection of 'smart' girls.  Our classroom was the school library, as it was right next door to her office so she could monitor the affairs of the school while she taught us.  She was a brave, brave woman and very smart; it was extremely rare to pull on over on Sister Mary Robert.  Which made the effort all the more worthwhile.  Sister Mary Robert was the only nun lacking a rude nickname; you really didn't mess with her, at least where she could see you.  She stood 4'8" from sensible shoes to the top of her wimple so she was in no way physically imposing, but like Napoleon, she had a presence and authority.  One of her favorite methods of assuring a boy's full attention was to grab his necktie and pull his face right down to hers.  This lead to the majority of boys in my class to wear clip-ons, in the hopes of 'getting' her.  It may have happened once or twice, but certainly not three times.  Her academic instruction method was unusual; at one point she decided we need to learn Latin, and armed with workbooks dug out from some dusty storeroom, we learned Latin.  Sister took great joy in having us read aloud while she graded papers or saw to some other administrative task and the only time I saw her look up at a reader was the memorable occasion of "The Great Gaffe of John Higginbotham 1975".  Poor John was reading about Africa during Social Studies and was cruising along quite well until that fateful word.  The younger classes swore, during recess, that they could hear our class laughing from all the way down the hall, and upstairs to the 1921 part of the building where the third and fourth grade classrooms were located.


The word was "underfed".  As in, under fed.  But poor John read it as "un-derf-ed".

School Days, School Days...

Kindergarten was to be my only public school experience until I got to high school, and my memories of kindergarten are still fresh enough to be recalled.  Old Field School was within walking distance; Mom would walk me across the street in front of our house and send me on my way, milk money clutched in a handkerchief.  There was only one session of kindergarten at the time, I believe, and that was the morning session.  It may have only been three or four hours, but it sure seemed like an eternity to a little mind.  We painted (always wearing smocks) and we played and we were read to and we napped and we snacked and were sent on our way around noon time.  As Mom and Dad were both working full time, my afternoons were supervised by Margaret Rawson, who lived across the street from us in a rambling, dilapidated four-story house which looked perpetually haunted.  Her kitchen was in the basement, and the support beams were entire tree trunks, which I would peel whenever she wasn't looking.  There was a tremendous wood-and-coal-fired cook stove in the corner, a deep double tub porcelain sink, a wringer washer and a round oak table with lion's paws clutching balls for feet, tipped in brass.  The room always smelled strongly of cigarette smoke, as Margaret's brother Joe and niece Catherine were both chain smokers; they would light their next cigarette with the butt on the one they had just finished.  I would play outside, or color at the table, or play the occasional game of "Go Fish" with Margaret until Mom or Dad came over to pick me up.

Mary and Paul at the Beardsley Zoo, Fall 1968

I don't recall any family vacations; my mother always referred to my father as a "Stick in the Mud" but since 'family vacations' were really not universal at this time, we had to settle for "Sunday Drives".  The great thing about the Sunday Drives were not knowing where you would wind up.  Sunday mornings were devoted to church, of course, and Sunday dinner was served around 2:00 p.m.  But after dinner and dishes, we got in the old Buick station wagon and off we went for a drive 'in the country', which was basically Monroe, Easton or Newtown.  Sometimes Dad bagged the 'country' part of the drive and we headed into the 'big city' of Bridgeport - Seaside Park featured large, as did Beardsley Park and the zoo.  Sometimes Mom and I would travel to Long Island and the grandparents homestead in Huntington and these were special occasions; Dad would drop us off at the Port Jefferson ferry pier in Bridgeport, and we'd climb aboard the "Martha's Vineyard" ferry (that was the name, not the destination) for the trip across the Long Island Sound.  Grandpa Denton's car always smelled of Borkum-Riff pipe tobacco but the house smelled of butter and coffee and good things baking.  Grandpa Denton's second wife was from Sweden and Grandma Denton was a baker of all things delicious.  They kept White Rock soda (fruit punch!  lemon-lime!  grape!  black cherry!) in their basement fridge, and a stock of toys in the closet of the spare bedroom.  And coloring books and crayons and (gasp!) plain white pads of drawing paper,  a luxury unheard of in my experience.  We would settle in, watch a slide-show of their latest travels (during which I would fall asleep as it was pretty boring to me) and then enjoy visits from cousins and neighbors with funny Swedish names like "Astrid" or "Asa".

Mary at Aunt Madeline's house in upstate New York. Note the length of the pants; these were supposed to be long pants but I guess Grandma hadn't seen me in a while and I had a growth spurt.  But they were from Bermuda and I loved them regardless of the fact they didn't fit.  Can you make out my PF Flyers?  They made me run faster and jump higher.

Grandpa's sisters lived together in another part of Long Island, and Aunts Madeline, Marie and Anna were booming, boisterous and larger than life.  Aunt Madeline married well and had a summer home in the Adironack mountains, complete with a full-size gymnasium, a babbling brook running by the side of the house, a huge screen porch and acres of property.  Dad never joined us on these trips, as I recall, but cousins sometimes did and we had a field day exploring, teasing the cows from the dairy farm across the street, hunting for crayfish and playing hide-and-seek.

First grade at St. Thomas Aquinas Roman Catholic School; my first bout of separation anxiety, as my best friend Debbie was in the other class.  The one with the nice, young, pretty nun named "Sister Laura".  I had the "Old Crow" nun, whom I believe was Sister Mary Something.  Almost ALL of the nuns were Sister Mary Something or Sister Something Mary:  Sister Mary Robert, Sister Jean Marie, Sister Ignatia Marie.  Nuns in real life were nothing like nuns as portrayed in "The Sound of Music" or "The Flying Nun" or "The Singing Nun".  Nuns in real life, with few exceptions, were mean.  Most nuns didn't like children very much, if at all.  Children were full of the devil, and had to be exorcised by all and any means, including physical means, if necessary.  And most of the nuns were misandristic;  they were boy-hating fiends who were free with the corporal punishment as it applied to boys.  Granted, the boys could be unruly and unmanageable but I don't ever recall a girl being hit with a ruler or a pointer; the boys were hit on a daily basis.  And threatened with eternal damnation.  The visions of hell these warped women conveyed to us were terrifyingly real, seared into our burgeoning brains with an efficacy well-honed and oft used.  Repent, lest ye suffer the fires of Hades.... 


By second grade, Debbie had moved back to Old Field School but I was stuck at St. T's like a fly in amber.  With an early January birthday, I was the oldest kid in the class and was therefore taller and bigger than most of my classmates.  And due largely to being oldest, I made up 25% of the 'smart kids'.  The ones the teachers always called on for the answers, no matter where we sat in the room.  The other 'smart kids' also had January birthdays:  Peggy Rawley on 1/9 and Maggie Hyde on 1/17 and Mary Power, too.  I don't think this is coincidental; if you have an extra year of reading, Sesame Street and experience under your school uniform, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy that you will get the positive reinforcement of usually have the correct answer.  And therefore you strive to maintain that 'smart kid' moniker.

Mrs. McMahon was the sole teacher of second grade; in the larger world, enrollment in the parochial schools was declining faster than January temperatures, and our class of 24 was soon swelled in ranks as St. Anthony's Catholic School (largely Polish) and St. Pius Catholic School closed their doors.  Until this time, St. T's was a neighborhood school and everybody walked to school; those who lived very far out were driven by their parents but those kids were few and far between.  But now we had buses for our new recruits, and our class size was around 36 for a while.  By and large, society in the early 1970s was not as mobile as it is today and although we had a few new faces who didn't last long, and old faces whose parents let them change schools (there were cases of pedophile priests), we had a core class of 32 and though it seemed like it was mostly boys, by my count it was 18 boys to 14 girls. With surnames of "Sullivan", "Neary", "Morrisey", "Boland", "O'Brien", "O'Neil", "Walsh", "Philbin" and a couple of Italian names (Romano, Francoletti) thrown in for good measure.  We were a class with a unique dynamic; more on the "Class of 1976 Sweathogs" tomorrow.