The oldest part of St. Elizabeth School, opened in 1943, faced Grove Place and was a dark, two-story brick building with large windows facing the street. As I remember, the interior was painted a moldy-green color. The principal’s office was on the second floor at the far end of the building – there was a smaller entrance to that part of the school, right off Irwin Drive, that lead straight to the principal’s office. I think we had two principals during our school years, Sr. Virginia and Sr. Theodore. I steered clear of both of them as much as possible.
Cal Chesleigh was the maintenance person at the school. A pack of Chesleighs were our fellow students including Maureen who was in our class of 74. It was Mr. Chesleigh’s job (amongst a myriad of other duties), God bless him, to sprinkle the green substance on top of vomit on the floor to aid in its cleanup, a practice I am still having nightmares about, and which seemed to happen on a daily basis in the early years.
The original school building had a basement as well. Mysterious and magical events took place in the basement. The “fallout shelter” was in the basement where we practiced air raid drills. The nurse’s office was in the basement- there was a room with a small bed in it in the nurse’s office that a child could have a little snooze if he/she had contributed some of afore-mentioned barf to the school floor (I remember that room quite fondly). In 4th grade, Mrs. Ceconi produced an elaborate production of Peter Rabbit with the performances in the basement. And we had some PE classes there as well.
But the real magic that took place in the basement was the amazing candy store. In my memory, the candy store was in a small enclosed room, diagonally-across from the nurse’s office . There were a few ladies in there to sell the candy, and a display case full of delightful sweets. I think buying candy there was the first time I had ever purchased anything on my own; each purchase felt momentous. For $.25, one could buy an entire bag of sweets – it was heavenly. Sadly, that only lasted for one year, when we were in first grade – the parents and dentists put a stop to that wonder.
What I remember about the early years: learning math with those colorful, plastic abaci (plural of abacus); practicing penmanship in preparation for learning cursive writing (all those swirls and squiggles); phonics lesson; learning French with Sister Paulette; never being chosen to be the May queen; going to church A LOT; talking in class and getting into trouble (one time in first grade, the nun, whose name I don’t remember, paddled the whole class individually for talking when she left the room), and playing on the playground at lunch time. Lots of jump rope games, playing jacks and tag, gossiping, bullying, and general shenanigans occurred on the playground. In later years, we played Red Rover which was really about popularity and lead to a lot of skinned knees and worse. Good thing we had the on-sight nurse!
In first grade, on November 22nd, an announcement came over the intercom from Sr. Virginia telling us President Kennedy had been shot and we all got on our knees next to our desks and said a prayer for him. Minutes later, another announcement came over the intercom saying school was dismissed though it wasn’t the end of the day yet, and I found out on the walk home that the president had died.
The newer part of the school was on the opposite side of the playground from the church and was built perpendicular to the original school with windows facing the playground. On the ground floor was the cafeteria where Mrs. Shema and her crew of ladies made lunches for all of us which cost $.35 a lunch. Whatever one can say about the menu choices at the St.E’s cafeteria (stewed tomatoes, anyone?), we were blessed to have the ladies cook for us, and the communal place to hang with friends before braving the playground.
In the middle elementary grades, some of our teachers were Mrs. Welsh, Mr. Zarret, Mrs. Ceconi, and Mrs. Paneton. In the upper elementary grades, we had Miss Paul, Mr. Stockey, Mr. Pearson, and Mrs. Laufer. Mrs. Laufer was intimidating but she was a good teacher – I particularly enjoyed the vocabulary and word origin lessons we had from her.
One particular standout teacher in the middle years was Mrs. Taylor. She was a no-nonsense lady who somehow had the extra fortitude to teach an unruly crowd of prepubescent tweens square dancing. I still remember allemande left, do-si-do, and being forced to hold hands with sweaty boys. Good times! It was the Catholic version of sex education…
High school opened up a whole new world: basketball games on Friday nights, dances, plays with Mr. Roemer, clubs, working on the newspaper and the yearbook. Not sure why our class didn’t have a yearbook – I guess we were too busy having fun! Sr. Mary for biology was memorable. Chemistry class with Mr. Stafford, Ms. Penn and Mr.Lippert for English, Mr. McVay for history, Mrs. Lombardi and Mr. Roemer also for English, and Mr. Matico for physics. Sr. Macrena for religion (those films!) and poor Sr. Margaret who used to get tortured by some of the boys. Mr. Katrencik for art, Mrs. Campbell for Spanish, and Ms. Azzara also for history. They all tried their best to give us a good education and I look back with gratitude.
When we graduated in June of 1974, we couldn’t have known how profoundly that was the end of life as we knew it then. Fifty years on, it’s a pleasure to relive some of these shared memories.
-Sheila Barry