Sts. Peter and Paul’s School
Bronx, NY
Parochial School
The Church
My memories of parochial school are intertwined with my memories of the parish church. I graduated in January, 1944, from Saints Peter and Paul's school. The church and school were and still are in the Bronx on Brook Avenue at 159th Street. The Third Avenue elevated train, now vanished, was still running and took an west-east jog across Brook Avenue just north of the school. This jog
on Third Avenue followed, no doubt, the path of a long ago bridge over the long gone brook of Brook Avenue. The school was separated from the train tracks only by a large furniture store on the corner. The quiet tedium in our classrooms was regularly pierced by the sharp, shrieking sounds of train wheels as they rounded the sharp curve of the tracks across Brook Ave. The noises of the trains easily overrode the slightly more subtle sounds of trolley cars. Four trolley car lines met at 161st Street and Third Avenue, only a football field length away, and the clanging of trolley bells and the rumbling trolley track noises were almost constant in the background.
The school building was a standard parochial school design like the many others scattered everywhere in the city. The parish church was different. It was new and it was beautiful. The cornerstone was dated 1932 and it was completed about 1937 when I was in the second grade. A large chapel in the basement was completed first and served as our church for several years. I remember vividly the opening of the new upper church. I first saw it at night. The blaze of the lights, the vast interior, the brilliance of the light stone walls, and the magnificence of the distant altar, all these impressions filled me with awe when I entered. It seemed like a vision of the heaven we heard so often described by the nuns. As we were leaving church
one evening, I noticed in the rear of the church an alcove overlooking a blacked out lower area with a narrow stairway descending into the darkness. Jack, my older brother, had made a tour earlier in the week with his class so I asked him what was down there. He told me in great seriousness that it was the stairway to Hell. I was really impressed and feared the dark area for a few weeks until I realized it was only the stairway to the lower church we had been using for years. This lower church remains part of a cherished memory. On Christmas Eve there were two Midnight Masses in our parish. The formal Solemn High Mass was sung in the main church with three priests and the large parish choir. There was also a Low Mass in the lower church for which the school eight-grade class served as the choir. This choir event was treated as an honor and a significant coming of age for the class. To this day, when I hear "Silent Night", I remember the warm pride I felt the night I was in the choir at midnight mass.
The exterior of the church was beautiful. It was a large, Gothic style, light color stone building with grand and beautiful front doors. Several large statues of saints reigned above the doors. Over their heads was a large rose shaped stained glass window. The front of the church had very wide steps and an extremely large sidewalk. It was great for meeting friends after Sunday Mass and for processions, weddings, and funerals. The front of the church was not fenced when it was new and remained unspoiled until years later. A small garden area was in front and down the south side of the church. Rose colored stained glass was installed in the window a few years later. The rose window faced west and the afternoon sun made it magnificent, overshadowing the choir loft in the rear of the church and painting the entire church interior in a beautiful glow.
There was also a large garden behind the church on the corner of St. Ann's Ave. This garden must have been truly holy ground, It was fenced off and open only when there were outside services on special feast days such as Christ the King Day. The church rectory was a picturesque red brick Victorian building adjoining the garden but facing on St. Ann's Avenue. The rectory was convenient to the church but the convent was very remote. For some reason, the convent was on Cauldwell Avenue. Although only two blocks from the church and school, the short path was up St. John's Hill, a very difficult slope equal to anything in San Francisco. Years later I wondered how and why the convent was so inconveniently located. The nuns could have come around a less difficult but longer route but, what ever the reason, except in the most slippery weather, all the nuns, young and old, came by St. John's Hill.
The pastor of the church for most of my youth was Monsignor McCarthy, a kind elderly priest. His predecessor, Father Gilmartin, had moved on when I was in the second grade and I remember little about him. His reputation remained after him, often cited by one elder or another. Their judgment of him was classic Irish. They had great respect for Father Gilmartin as a priest but all despaired at his persistent money raising. Of course this persistence finished the church. They loved and admired the church that Father Gilmartin built but they did not love him. Monsignor McCarthy, on the other hand was beloved by all. He was a constant figure on the sidewalk in front of the church, pacing back and forth, his black missal ever present in his hands as he prayed his seemingly endless Divine Office. His prayers were continually interrupted as he greeted each passerby, adult and child alike. He seemed to know each child by name and inquired of other family members by name. This now seems an impressive trick with about eight hundred children attending the parish school. Monsignor had a heavy Irish brogue and when he said "Amen", it rumbled with a loud resonance. During Mass, when giving Communion to the row of communicants kneeling at the altar rail, his repeated "Ahh-men" resounded around the church like a boat captain beating cadence for unseen oarsmen. His heavy brogue made his sermons on the altar incomprehensible. Mr. McCabe, another Irishman, once told me that he attended the Monsignor's eight o'clock Mass every Sunday for many years and had never understood the gospel or the sermon during all that time. Still Monsignor was beloved by all. When he passed on some years later, the papers said that he had been a professor in the seminary and a noted historian. I wondered how his students coped with his brogue.
The parish church was new and it was beautiful but its location was not. I never even heard the word aesthetics until years later but even then I knew the church was beautiful and the location was ugly. Brook Avenue was an ugly block. Across the street from the church front was a long ugly expanse of a empty lot, the fire escape studded rear of an apartment house, and the front of a wholesale cheese distributor. The busy front of this cheese place was directly opposite the church. Giant cartwheels of cheese, standing on their sides, formed an exotic contrast with the beautiful church entrance across the street. It must have challenged every photographer trying to catch a beautiful bride entering the church. The remainder of the block, opposite the school, was a long black fence shielding the below ground level railroad tracks of the N. Y. Central, and was backed up by the ugly side expanse of a commercial factory building. A small abandoned retail building on the corner of Third Avenue completed the scenic view. In 1964, I meet a lady at an interracial meeting who had moved from St. Peter's and St. Paul's in 1932 to Lindenhurst, Long Island because she thought the neighborhood was a "slum". I disputed her, pointing out that the new church was started that year, hardly a sign of a slum. The neighborhood houses had been clean, safe, well cared for and fully rented, decent, not grand, and certainly no slum. The neighborhood stayed that way for thirty years until the terrible times that enveloped all of the Bronx. Of course, one person's slum is another person's promised land. Perhaps her home also overlooked Brook Avenue by the church.
Beside the school on the north side was a large and impressive furniture store. Around the corner on Third Avenue was a row of drab retail stores. The only ones I remember are an army-navy store at the corner of Third and Saint Ann's and Brady's bar adjoining it. There was a large lumber yard in the middle of these stores that was destroyed in a spectacular fire during my school days.
The view from the church looking south on Brook Avenue was only slightly better. It was a long open triangle of cobblestone street formed by the intersection of several streets with Brook Avenue. The open space covered the freight train tracks which ran below and extended into freight yards below 156th street. An old public school, used as an annex to Morris High, was located on the square block below 159th Street across Brook Avenue. The rear of this school was shielded from Brook Avenue by a tall brick wall and picket fence which did little for the view from St. Peter and Paul's Church. After World War II, the derelict school was replaced by a playground and named after a local boy killed in the war. Earlier there had been no playground nearby and our school like most parochial schools had none. Our playgrounds were the streets, the lots, and later the freight train tracks. To the rear of the church was Saint Ann's Avenue and, despite its beautiful name, it was as ugly as Brook Avenue. There was a long empty lot behind the school adjacent to the rectory. Garages and buildings associated with a brewery lined the opposite side of the street. Truly the location of the church and school was ugly.
The School
The school building was of standard parochial school design with three sets of large double doors in front. The doors on each side had been designated by gender with stone plaques above each door. This designation, seeming so permanent, had become obsolete before I saw it. The big front door on the left served an annex of Cathedral Girls High on the top floor taught the Dominican Sisters. Only the nuns used the center door. The big door on the right served as the student entry for our grammar school. Immediately inside the doors and leading to the classrooms on the upper floors were the worn dark gray slate stairs I can still see clearly in my mind. The school office door was beside the stairs and was always open, giving an excellent view of the entry door and the stairs. Like in Alcatraz, potential escapees had little hope of going undetected. Our school was run and taught by the Sisters of Charity with the assistance of a few lay teachers. In addition to the school office, the school auditorium and the nun's dining room inside the large center door occupied the ground floor. On the second and third floors, there were many classrooms off T-shaped corridors.
On the second floor at the top of the stairway stood a massive statue of Jesus with His Sacred Heart exposed, his thorn-pierced foot in close view as I passed by and His all-seeing eyes staring down on me when I looked up at Him. A statue of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception was in a special place at the front on each classroom. These classroom statues were usually decorated with flowers brought in by a female student. No boy brought flowers except on very rare occasions and risked social disgrace from his peers.
At the extreme back end of the corridors, seldom visited by students, were the teacher's rest rooms. The student's bathrooms were in the basement and were visited only during recess, except in extreme emergency. If one really had to go to the bathroom outside of recess time, obtaining permission was almost impossible. Teachers rightly viewed most requests as triggered only by a desire for freedom. It was sort of a Catch-22 situation. You had to wet your pants to prove you had to go to the bathroom. This indignity, suffered in full view of the entire class while vainly seeking permission, is a well remembered experience for most parochial school graduates. Going to the bathroom during recess also had its hazards. The boy's room was beyond the scrutiny of the nuns and between the natural hazing of most boys and bullying from the larger boys, the visit was an adventure. It was especially bad if you needed to use the toilet. All the stall doors were usually locked from the inside by jokers. After you had climbed over or crawled under the door, you would usually find that the toilet paper, if any, had been dumped on the wet floor. Then your defenseless position made you the target of various indignities. After all this the monitors would announce that recess was over and you must leave now.
The Early Years
My first personal parochial school memory is from January 1936. I accompanied my mother on a visit to the principal's office to be enrolled. It was a very deceptive introduction. It was a very brisk cold day and the principal seemed very friendly as she remarked on our rosy cheeks. I remember being surprised at how nice she seemed. It contrasted with my brother and sister's tales of the strictness of their teachers. I also vividly remember my first day of school. When my mother took me into the rear of the auditorium that first day, many of the other new kids were crying. I remember wondering just why they were all crying. It was a memorable introduction to my eight years of parochial school.
We had one teacher for all subjects throughout the day with a new teacher each half-year. I was fortunate to have a very pleasant nun in my first term. The much stricter nun who taught both Ann and Jack had just been reassigned. From her reputation, she seemed much too rough for the first grade. Although there was a small kindergarten, I and most of my classmates started in the first grade. We were still so young that the teacher would have us put our heads down for a short rest period each day. We sat at school desks that held two students and, I remember, Peter Scarangello and I shared a desk. It was an unwise arrangement for boys and we soon were in trouble for some mischief. The nun solved the problem by moving me over to the girl's area. I was upset because Peter, of course, was the culprit. Although it was only for a day or two, I soon appreciated that my female neighbors were pretty nice. I remember the first grade nun using beautifully written hand cards that she would slid along the blackboard chalk holder to teach us new words. I could read and write to some extent before starting school due to my mother's teaching and I still share some of her writing style. My handwriting, unless I take great care, has the standard crabbed scrawl of many left-handed people.
Parochial schools today are, I suspect, the training grounds for new teachers and it was no different when I was small. I have a vivid memory of a lay teacher in the second grade who handled a minor infraction by me very poorly. I had received a new pencil box and had it open, admiring it, in class when I was supposed to be doing something else. When I closed it, the button clasp made a sharp noise that the teacher heard. She took the box away and I was heartbroken. I cried the entire day in school and I just couldn't stop sobbing. She never did return the box, not even at the traditional desk cleaning day at the end of the term.
Two Miss Kelly's taught at the school, sisters, siblings that is, not nuns, and I had them both. Both were young and I guess pretty. I had an embarrassing experience with one when I was in the third grade. She was leading an exercise from the row beside my desk, standing in front of me and facing away from me. I was being a wise guy, amusing my neighbors by pretending to spank her. Suddenly to my horror she stepped back a step, my hand contacted her body, and I was in big trouble. I got an immediate power slap. This was followed by a cross-examination in full view of the class to determine my true intentions. It was very embarrassing and I wonder now what she was thinking. I guess she decided I was a just a fresh kid. By today's standards I would be either a class hero or charged as a sex offender. I also had her sister in a later grade. I remember her sister was quite cross-eyed and it was impossible to tell when she was looking at you. You would hear a question apparently addressed to your neighbor and then receive a lecture for not answering the question. She was always especially dangerous because you couldn't be sure when she was watching you. I would never have tried that spanking trick on her.
Our sixth grade class was very difficult, actually disastrous, for two different lay teachers. We first had a young teacher who made the fatal mistake of trying to be one of the guys. She would throw chalk or an eraser to get your attention if you were talking to another student. She would also use wisecracks to get across a message or to top a smart aleck remark. She even let us compete on throwing erasers. These actions let us see her as a competitor and soon destroyed her authority. The sixth grade was a particularly smart aleck age and several in the class tormented her. She soon lost control of the class and one day fled the classroom in tears. Her replacement was a mature but very unusual woman. She wore severe dresses and old fashion high button shoes that reached to mid calf. She also wore her hair, which was an odd copper red color, in long tight coils. She tried to be very strict but I guess the class was by then very difficult to control. One girl, in particular, baited her constantly and she finally lost all self-control. She started beating the girl in her seat with a ruler and then used her fists until the girl's older brother restrained her. The teacher was fired but many in the class thought the girl deserved what she got. Some were even surprised she got off without further punishment. If it had been a boy he probably would have been expelled. I don't remember what happened afterwards but I'm sure our class received firm attention from an experienced nun.
The Nuns
I had a strict and rather elderly nun, Sister Josepha, whose memory I associate with a rhinoceros. Although all the nuns wore the shiny black rounded habit suggestive of that animal and some had its bulk and formidable ways, only Sister Josepha had that special memory association. The door in her classroom would not latch and would swing open with every draft in the hallway. Sister told us that the door opening was the devil entering seeking souls. We students thought that she was pretty daft but now I can appreciate her view. One day Sister used the class tough guy, Buster Gates, as a monitor to help maintain order in the class, help she certainly did not need. Buster used a broken blackboard pointer to indicate some infraction on my part and managed to spear me with the sharp end right through my shirt. It left a long jagged scratch down my chest which must have looked worse than it was. My mother came down to the school to complain, an event rare in parochial school parent-teacher relationships, and an event that probably would not have occurred if Sister had done the damage. I remember my delight seeing Buster Gates in trouble and knowing he would suffer Sister's wrath if he tried to get even.
Sister Mary Margaret taught the fifth grade. She was a very tall slim nun with a very firm manner. I don't remember what else we learned that term but we were immersed in New York State geography. We memorized all the principal cities along the Erie Canal and the major products of each city. It seemed a complete waste since the canal was inactive for over a hundred years and as I found out later was only used for a short time before the railroads put it out of business. Fifteen years later, I was taking the New York State War Veterans Scholarship exam and, bingo, a big question asked for the chief product of the major cities in New York State. The memory of Sister Mary Margaret's tall slim figure stood over me as I zipped through that question and gained a scholarship by a very close margin.
Sister Anacleta, our Grade 7B teacher, managed to be both gentle and firm. I was delighted to see her on the first day of school. I knew from the tales of my brother and sister that her predecessor was very strict and gave out weird punishments. She had punished my brother Jack for talking in class by taping his mouth shut with packing tape. Also she was famed for often sticking a boy's head out the window with a paper bag over his head and closing the window on him until the wind blew off the bag. I led a charmed life on several occasions, going into the classroom on the first day of each term expecting an ogre and finding that she had departed and I had again been spared. On the occasions where the nun had remained, the first roll call routine never varied. I would say my name, she would ask, "John Haran's brother?" look me over very critically and then mark a check beside my name in her book.
Sister Grace, my Grade 8A teacher, I remember as an excellent teacher who was firm but fair and approachable. She was a tiny nun whose entire demeanor commanded respect. Many of the eight grade boys towered over her but if the need arose, an unruly boy was ordered to lean down and received a good crack on the cheek. Any rebellion resulted in the prompt appearance of one of the parish priests at the door. The guilty one was summoned into the hall, a loud slap resounded into the classroom, and the chastened culprit quietly took his seat accompanied by the smirks of his wiser classmates.
Sister Joseph Mercedes, my Grade 8B teacher, was another welcome replacement for a much-feared nun who taught my sister and brother. I had mixed memories of Sister Joseph Mercedes and, at the time, thought she didn’t like me. Later, upon rereading a note in my autograph book from Sister Joseph Mercedes, my Grade 8B teacher's, I realized she thought highly of me. Perhaps she thought that I needed humbling and perhaps I did. I led the line of boys at graduation because I was the smallest boy in the class. I still get a grand feeling when I hear the Pomp and Circumstance graduation march.
Like most kids, I sought status and awards. The awards we sought so eagerly were actually pretty modest, holy pictures, tiny holy medals, and other such trinkets indicating some class honor, and still in a box in my bureau drawer. Best essays and drawings in each grade were posted on a bulletin board by the principal's office for parents to see. I remember well one award I received in the sixth grade. It was a big event in the auditorium in front of the whole school. A girl and I were tied for our class and we were each awarded a book. The girl, naturally, had first choice and chose a book about Indians. I was disappointed because I was intensely interested in Indians at the time. When I got the remaining book I was both disappointed and confounded. It told the experiences of an elderly convert during Holy Week in Rome when she was baptized by some famous Cardinal. It was grandly inappropriate and I wonder now what possessed the nun's to give it.
Altar boys had status but I never wanted to be an altar boy. True they got out of school for funeral masses, pocketed tips for weddings, and went on an annual bus ride to Rye Beach. On the other hand we heard stories about how strict the priest was about mistakes and the requirement to get up for early mass in the winter. I did want to be a choirboy but every year at try-outs I had a cold and missed out. I think I must have had some allergy problems.
In the eight-grade students took a turn practicing reading the gospel each Sunday, while standing in the middle aisle and facing the congregation. I looked forward to my turn but I totally bombed-out. When I saw all those eyes looking at me I froze. My voice failed and I don't think I even finished the reading. Stage fright continued to bother me for years afterwards.
I really admired the safety monitors. These were eight graders who had badges and stopped traffic when the kids were crossing. I think they were no longer used when I was in the eight grade but, anyhow, with my pint size I wouldn't have made it. So my school service activities were very limited. I did the usual cleaning the boards and erasers after school. I looked on this as a reward until I realized it was also assigned to some students as a punishment.
My services to my church were limited to my mite box during Lent and my weekly envelope in the collection basket. The offering in the envelope was publicly reviewed in class during the week and this was sometimes embarrassing. We put in what our parents could spare and maybe we were supposed to supplement it with our own money. In truth we never had any money but if we ever did, the envelope was the last place we would put it.
The school, like all parochial schools, was rigidly monitored by tests. There were Diocesan exams from the diocese, and in the seventh and eight grades, the Regents tests from New York State. The class did well on the Regents because they were drilled at length on previous tests. My test taking skills, so developed in St. Pete's served me well in later life. Even in high school, I avoided disaster after loafing much of sophomore year by scoring well on the Regents. To comply with New York State standards on desk separation for Regents tests we were tested at St. Rita's on 147th Street. This parish, with a tiny church but apparently wider separated school desks is the same St. Rita's featured on TV a few years ago when Mother Theresa visited a convent of her order there shortly before she died.
High School
If Sister Joseph Mercedes felt I needed a humbling I sure got it the next term in high school. That year, 1944, was the last of the January graduations in the New York parochial schools and few Catholic high schools has a January entry class. Cardinal Hayes High, the newest and grandest school those days, usually had a June entry class of over a thousand but accepted only one class of forty students that January. That small February freshman class in Hayes included many scholars, most much more scholarly than me. My class standing and my ego went from the heights in grammar school to near bottom in high school. I got all the humbling I needed that year in Hayes. The choice for going to Hayes had been made by written test.
Only four of us were among the elect. One disappointed classmate, who later was himself a principal of a catholic high school, was
not impressed. He said the selection was done by the pastor and not by the test results. I told him he was just crying sour
grapes. He then pointed out to me that one of the elect was not a great scholar but his father was very active in parish
activities and his point was undeniable.
The Principal
I don't remember who the principal was who smiled at my rosy cheeks on my first visit to St. Pete's. I remember well Sister Noella, our principal during most of my school days. My mother was very friendly with her and knitted lovely gloves for her and many of the other nuns each Christmas. One Christmas, at my mother's command, I accompanied my sister to the convent on Cauldwell Avenue to deliver some of these Christmas gift gloves. When I was about five, only a few years before, we lived only a few doors from the convent, a mystery of mysteries. It seemed immense at the time, with a big turret shaped corner, and surrounded by large fenced garden-like grounds. With my sister, I approached the convent door with awe and trepidation. A nun greeted us at the door and took us into the parlor. I remember only a large expanse of polished wood floors and a very large Christmas tree in the turret area. Sister Noella came in, greeted us warmly, and showed us the tree. My sister made her presentation of the gifts, and then Sister thanked us, and gave us several boxes of Christmas recess candies. We were then escorted out and I thankfully made my escape.
At morning and noon Sister Noella rang a big handbell outside school and its sound set off a mad dash for the gate. My relationship with Sister was always guarded. Most of the times she would be the stern principal, but other times she would be all smiles at Mrs. Haran's boy, and then suddenly, a lightning swift slap across the face for some inadvertent offense. We were rehearsing for our First Holy Communion, all in one long line, side-by-side, kneeling at the altar rail. Sister was acting the role of the priest distributing communion. Suddenly I got one of her cheek-stinging head-rattling slaps across my face. I had been fooling around and missed her instructions to place only our clasped hands, not our arms, on the altar rail. My solitary arms stuck out in a long beautiful row of clasped hands on the marble altar rail. It seems now that her response was rather extreme towards a seven-year-old preparing for such a meaningful event. I remember another super slap I received from Sister Noella during the promotion ceremony in one of the upper grades. In mid-year it was a simple ceremony that she carried out in each classroom. She would hand out the Report Cards and read the names of those promoted. Each student in turn would line up by the door leaving the few who were left back still sitting in their seats. The group would then march to the new classroom to begin the new term. One year Susan, a very pleasant classmate, was left in her seat. I had been unaware that she was having difficulties and I wondered to the student beside me if her report card had been skipped over by mistake. Suddenly Sister Noella gave me one head jarring slap to shut me up and I realized it was no mistake.
Class Routines
My memories of parochial school are of monotony interspersed with anxiety, tedium with low-level terror. The classes were large, some of the students were slow, and the lessons were repetitive. The around-the-room question and answer sessions were a daily hazard. The black robed inquisitor paced up and down the class room rows challenging classmates each in turn. If in the line of fire, I waited anxiously to spit out history dates, catechism answers or geography names. If I had already answered or thought I was safely distant, then day dreaming became seductive. I would be following the question and answer session and then be lost in staring out the window. On one side of the school was a close-up view of the church wall and the sloping church roof. The church then was quite new and the walls were a pleasant light-gray beige color. I often studied intently the alternating pattern of varying gray stone tiles on the roof. On the other side of the school, there was the beautiful blue sky over the old courthouse. Then suddenly I realized that a question had been fired at me out of sequence and felt the panic of not knowing even the question, never mind the answer. Even if I had done the homework and knew most of the work, a tough question could be big trouble. Answered wrongly it could mean extra homework, a fearful punishment. Much worse, a ridiculous wrong answer might be taken as a wise-guy response, bringing the ruler on the hands or the pointer across the back of the legs.
Our methods were to memorize, memorize, memorize. We chanted endless catechism questions and answers. We loudly recited poems, spelling and spelling rules, history dates, and endless multiplication tables. Once I anxiously wondered what would I do if I forgot a number on the multiplication tables, that eight times seven was fifty-six. It was months before I realized that the answer had an existence other then the little boxes on the back of the marbleized notebooks. Suddenly I realized that eight added together seven times was fifty-six, the key to the mystery was found. Had the nun told me this and I just didn't listen? Memorize, memorize! I even solved mathematical word problems by reducing them to a set of solutions based on the problem phrasing.
Culture classes were recitations of poems sounded out with volume and drama. Tennyson and Walt Whitman were chanted out, sharing time with Joyce Kilmer, the Catholic poet killed in the First World War. The words "flower in the crannnied wall", "rode the six hundred", and "Captain, my captain" were interspersed with "I see His blood upon the rose" and "a poem as lovely as a tree". There was no place for disconnected words or discordant phrases, or verbal forms of modern art. There was little place for any art much less modern art. Our art lessons were in memorizing the names and works of various European painters and making crayon renditions of clearly defined subjects. Our writing lessons were in composition, grammar, and sentence structure. We diagrammed sentences in endless exercises with no clue towards any possible benefit. Our training in drama was the mandatory participation in the annual school play under the guidance of Miss Sheehan, a heavy-set older woman. This seemingly untiring taskmistress each year developed and produced a new routine for each grade. She then drilled us into an acceptable song and dance group. Despite her efforts, I don't think any of her students went on to a Broadway career.
We had one brief introduction to modernism in the male dance field. It was not in the curriculum and showed an uncommon open-mindedness of the teacher who I don't even remember. The boy, Francis, came as a transfer student about the seventh grade and left at the end of the year when his family moved to a better neighborhood. He was a tall slim boy who was very enthusiastic about modern tap dancing. At the teachers bidding he gave a demonstration that, in retrospect, was probably very good. He danced with much tapping and waving of hands in the manner later popularized by Gene Kelly. The teacher and some of the girls thought he was great. All the boys including myself didn't know what to make of it. I had never see anything like it and thought it very strange.
In teaching about life, obedience was stressed, to God, parents, the Ten Commandments, the six Commandments of the Church, Lenten Regulations, school rules, and the civil authorities. Christ's teaching to render onto Caesar was frequently retold. Patriotism was stressed. "Hats off, the flag is passing" was committed to memory at an early grade, followed soon after by the "Star Spangled Banner" and the "Preamble to the Constitution". Christ's two great commandments, love God and love your neighbor as yourself, were stressed. Looking back, the nuns could have stressed the "as yourself" phrase a bit more but humility was ingrained in their lifestyle. The Golden Rule on every student's ruler became, for many, a rule of life.
Religious Education
Religion was the purpose of the parochial school and the center of its teachings and daily operations. Along with the omnipresent nuns there were omnipresent prayers. There were morning prayers, the Angelus, and I think, prayers before and after lunch. Sometimes during the year there would be an endless decade of the Rosary said daily. Every Sunday attendance at the nine o'clock Mass was a drop-dead requirement. There was also the required Miraculous Medal Novena after school on Mondays. The Stations of the Cross was a dreaded torment, an endless hour of mournful prayers and music, required after school every Fridays during Lent. On the First Friday of each month, we were required to attend Mass to ensure the grace of the Last Sacraments as promised to St. Margaret Mary. Participation at Mass and other religious affairs were under the watchful eye of the nuns and were an excise in military drill. All marched in close formation, genuflected, and went through the motions of the occasion in unison, each step coordinated by a loud finger snap from Sister. The girls believed that a strong finger snap was a sure sign of a "vocation".
At the front of each classroom there was a statue of Our Lady, usually with flowers from some student's family. The teaching of divine truth was by memorization of the Baltimore Catechism and memorize it we did. This teaching was constant through the years until it became a part of each student's subconscious. The Bible was taught with Bible history storybooks and with much less emphasis than on the Catechism. As we learned later, the Church leaders felt personal use of the Bible could lead to independent and incorrect interpretation in some areas.
The first Sunday of May each year was the May procession. The weather was always beautiful. I remember a sunny scene on the large sidewalk in front of the church, little boys and girls in their white first holy communion clothes, little flower girls, the statue of Mary, set on a pedestal and seemingly covered with flowers, and the ranks of priests in colorful robes. The entire student body, all dressed up in our Sunday best, formed in front of the church and school. A little girl, no doubt envied by her female classmates, placed a crown on Mary. Then, with the flower girls in the lead, the procession would parade Mary's statue around the entire block, the students singing hymns of Mary along the way.
We had other processions also on the Feast of Christ the King and later Corpus Christi. Again we formed up in front of the church and paraded around the entire block. The priest held the Eucharist elevated in the elaborate monstrance during the procession. This ceremony ended at the altar in the garden behind the church, one of the rare times we students could enter this sanctuary.
The most satisfying part of the nine o'clock Sunday Mass was marching out at the end while the public school kids stayed behind for religious instruction. They sat separately in the side aisles and I remember thinking they were different, some kind of almost-Protestants. Later a Released Time program was set-up. The public school kids were released an hour early every Tuesday and marched in a group to our school for religious instructions. We "real" Catholics thought it was the greatest idea ever because we got off an hour early. The public school kids also had to prepare for Holy Communion and Confirmation on their own time, another sign of their lower status. Our poor image of public school was not all our own doing. After all, that was where all the really slow kids and the troublemakers went when they left St. Pete's. One really slow kid, who seemed about sixteen and could hardly read in the sixth grade, went off to public school. Also Dennis "Pat" Brady, a fearsome fighter who later did well as a professional, went off to public school. He was so feared, we were all afraid to talk to his sister Catherine, a pretty girl in my class. With these examples, it was easy to think of public school as a place of exile. Of course many of our neighborhood friends went to public school but they were our friends. I remember being actually surprised when I entered high school that some of my classmates were public school graduates. They were very bright, not tough guys, and even more, had fond memories of their grammar school teachers.
Dress Code
The school uniform for boys was white shirts with ties and girls wore white blouses called middies with a sailor type scarf at least until the upper grades. Our white shirts had to be freshly washed, starched, and ironed daily, the starch in the well worn collars cutting the neck like a knife. Buttoning the stiff-as-iron starched cuffs was a morning challenge. If you did it yourself, it took so long you would be late or even worse pop the button, a catastrophe. If you asked for your busy mom's help, it came with a lecture. We would never think of doing each other's cuffs. Mom had my sister's blouse and our three shirts ready each morning. This must have been hard especially when she worked in the evenings. There were only one or two spare shirts for each boy and each was hand washed. Drying in the wintertime was a problem. I remember the sensation of a just ironed, still damp, shirt collar turning from searing hot to frigid cold as I left the house in the morning. Navy blue pants and skirts were the norm but I don't remember if they were required. The boys wore only knickers, balloon-like pants that only went to the knees. Below the knees, we wore long stockings that always fell down, the constant cause of nagging from parents and teachers. The knickers were always of corduroy material that may loud swish-swish noises as you sneaked down the aisle when late for Mass. Our first pair of long pants was for graduation, the sign of our new maturity. One mother defied this custom each year for a series of sons. Her sons were among the bigger boys in each class and the single pair of long legs in short knickers marked her strictness at each graduation. The boy's schoolmates wisely made their comments only in the boy's absence. The youngest of her sons was in my class and we all wondered if she would relent. On graduation day her son marched sadly onto the stage, the knickers on his long legs marking his mom's resolve.
Christmas
Christmas vacation was always a big occasion. We had the usual religious preparations, Advent like a little Lent, and Confession the Saturday before but it really started with an assembly in the auditorium. One year we were treated to a showing of Dicken's Christmas Carol. I guess it was a nice idea but the film quality was terrible and the lighting and student noise level was as bad. My memory of it is pretty negative. I don't remember the experiment being repeated. The big hit of the Christmas assembly, other than our release was the small box of hard candies each child received. Considering the number of kids, it was a nice gift from the pastor and all the kids were delighted. Unfortunately much of it was wasted. The candies were packaged in decorated little boxes very much like Animal Crackers but not nearly as strong. The boxes were very flimsy and the ends opened with the slightest jolt. At the close of recess we all flew towards home with a week of freedom and Christmas almost at hand. Any memories of last year's spill of candy boxes were left behind. The streets round the school were soon strewn with candies. The paths home were lined with burst boxes, candies everywhere, and with crying little kids begging to share the boxes of their more experienced siblings. Surprisingly many kids, especially the more wiser girls, got their fragile treasure home safely. The little boxes of Christmas candies are a memory to every parochial school kid.
I remember another school assembly, held in the basement rather then in the auditorium. The basement was a dark and gloomy place at its best but this day there was a real doom and gloom atmosphere. The nuns, normally quiet in demeanor and speech were even more subdued and were whispering to each other. The principal made an announcement in a sad end of the world voice that Pope Pius XI had died. I remember that it had a big impact on the nuns but had little or no impact on us kids. We knew the Pope was our Holy-Father-in-Rome and the Vicar-Of-Christ-On-Earth, but that was only book responses about a distant and unreal personage. Years later I felt a deep loss when Pope John XXIII died. I guess that's how the nuns felt at that assembly when I was a child.
Student Relationships
I remember relations between the boys around the school were mostly physical, wrestling matches and rough and tumble tricks on each other. I had a couple of good buddies, Tom O'Brien, Billy Martin, and Dudley O'Toole in the upper grades. There were a number of boys that were older or who had joined the class in the last year or two and I hardly knew them. Being one of the smallest boys I probably avoided the big guys and certainly I was not one of the tough guys. I remember once when I thought I was really in for it. Sister had put me at the head of the school line forming after lunch. Quigley, a new guy who was also small but acted very tough, had previously had this dubious honor and was angry because he had been displaced. He told me he would get me after school. True to his word, he and Kelly, his equally tough acting and bigger buddy started for me when we were dismissed. I darted across Third Avenue and saw the police station around the corner. Straight in the front door I went and, when challenged, explained my problem to the desk sergeant. He let me out by the side door and I carefully peeked around the corner. My two hunters were still patiently waiting on the front steps. I went the other way and ran all the way home. I don't remember what happened the next day. Maybe they realized that they might have to answer to my big brother.
I think I liked many of the girls in my class even before I started liking them as girls. Many of them were very friendly and, when I started noticing, many were very pretty. The three brightest girls, Mary Ann, Theresa, and Betty were all very friendly and pleasant and were very pretty. Mary Ann had a constant niceness about her all through the school years. Another girl was less pleasant, a prim rather uptight girl who was smart but treated every test as a personal contest. She just could not be friendly. She also had rather well developed breasts for her age and was constantly subjected to comments from some of the boys. At the time she saw this as an embarrassment rather than an enhancement. One girl I really did not like was bulky enough and nasty enough to make the Bears football team. Once in the lower grades we shared a two-seater desk. I did something that displeased her and she jammed a lead pencil deep into my hip. The point broke off and this memento was clearly visible under the skin for many years. Several girls were very pretty but the nuns immediately suppressed any attempt at glamour. One girl, Dorothy, was the class pioneer in the glamour area. She shocked the nuns by using lipstick and, even worse, nail polish. She caught a lot of lectures from the nuns for her adventurous ways but seemed immune to their protests. She also caught a lot of comments from the envious girls in her class. Even though Dotty lived just across the street from me while I was in grammar school I hardly knew her. We were about the same age but she was always years ahead of me. Later, while my crowd were still hanging around the candy store, Dotty worked as a model and went out with older guys. She stopped in at the candy store to chat a few times while I was in senior high. It was the first time I had a chance to speak to her in years and was surprised that she was so pleasant. Two of the girls in my class later married while still seventeen. A few years later I met one of these girls, Patsy, with several other young mothers camped on the sunny court house sidewalk. Seeing her there, with a stroller and two little children, she seemed still young and very pretty but also so mature and almost matronly. Patsy in truth was no longer a contemporary.
Nuns and Boys
I remember the puzzlement of myself and the other boys after school and after Sunday mass. The girls actually swarmed around the nuns and both the girls and the nuns seemed to enjoy it. Why the girls would even go near the nuns after school was more than we boys could understand. The nuns were a mystery to us and we were very curious about them. We knew their hair was close cut under their bonnets and they wore ugly old-lady shoes under the floor length habits but all else was a mystery. Judging the age of the nuns with those close-fitting bonnets was difficult and most seemed ageless. Some were obviously ancient, at least to us, while a few seemed very young. Two young nuns, who arrived in my seventh grade, seemed only slightly older then the students and were extremely popular.
I must have sometimes been a pain to the teachers. Once, about the fifth grade, I was in a large class that stretched back about eight rows of seats. At the extreme rear sat Marty Hurley, Tommy Diehl, and myself; the three smallest boys in the class. Our small size should have put all of us right up front but our incessant chatter caused our exile. I have a vague recollection that the teacher at the time was a nun but that seems unbelievable. Most times, any problem with a boy would bring the nun's swift and stern action.
There would be the pointer on the legs or the metal edge of a long ruler across the hands. Any real problem student was sent to the principal, always a tough disciplinarian. My two comrades in mischief finished up in public school. The nuns were much harder on the boys than on the girls. During grades five through eight, the ruler on the hands was a norm. Also we boys were kept in so often after class they could have changed the schedule. The strictness of the nuns was no doubt due to the large classes and also because they had the boys until the eight grade. My brother Joe had so much trouble with the nuns that Mom moved him to St. Augustine's which had religious brothers to teach the boys in the upper grades. All his school problems immediately disappeared. Unfortunately that parish was going through a racial change. For Joe's trip home, only about six or eight blocks, he had to run a gauntlet of thrown milk bottles and other similar adventures. Joe's education at St. Augustine's was cut short for his safety sake and he then went to a nearby public school.
Later Thoughts on Nuns
A few years ago I gained some insight into the life of a nun in the parochial schools of my childhood times. We have often had as a guest in our home an Ursuline nun who taught Alice in St. Jerome's. She was a native of St. Jerome's parish and had spent much of her life there. Her order was semi-cloistered and, before the changes in the church, she could not visit her own home even for a funeral. Sister had been a principal and had even founded a high school in Mexico. She was always a very interesting guest but she never spoke about a nun's life as a teacher except for one occasion a few years ago. Alice and I chauffeured Sister to visit another nun who was ill. It was long trip and perhaps the visit to her friend she had known since college, now also long past teaching, had softened her usual reserve about a nun's private life. She mentioned that it was sometimes very hard especially because there were no substitute teachers. Even if you were quite ill and bone weary, you still had to go in, control the class, and get the work done. Correcting the homework assignments for a large class was an endless task. I thought of the nuns in Sts. Peter and Paul's who must have had even a tougher time. At St. Jerome's the convent was adjacent to the school and the boys were shipped off to the brothers after the fourth grade. The classes at St. Pete's were usually twice the size of St. Jerome's and included the boys right into their wise guy teens. The nuns also had to daily climb down and up the fearsome St. John's Hill. The Ursulines also attended college before entering the convent and were more mature when they started teaching. I remember some of the young nuns at St. Pete's seemed only a few years older than the older students. No doubt many found it very hard.
When the post-council era hit the church, the parochial schools saw a sure reflection of the nun's dissatisfaction. Many left their orders and many of those who remained left their classrooms. Those that remained took up other Christian works and showed tremendous ability and capability. Parochial schools, where open, are still run by nuns but are staffed by dedicated lay teachers. Lack of money and competition from better funded public schools have made parochial schools, slowly but surely, a declining force in Catholic life. You might think they might soon be as absent as the beauty of the Beautiful Bronx of my youth. I visited my old neighborhood a few years ago, the courthouse was an empty shell, and my entire old neighborhood vanished, all victims of the Burn the Bronx plague. Only the beautiful church and the sturdy parish school still prospered in an otherwise devastated area. Sts. Peter and Paul School is still on that same block on Brook Avenue, now brightened with new homes, and the school proudly displays a Presidential Excellence Award.
