The sixties were a rough time to go through Catholic schools, especially after Vatican II. Nuns were modifying their habits, which meant shortening not only their veil, but even their skirts. The modified habit didn’t last long before religious garb went altogether. No need to bring it all up now; it’s really irrelevant today, now that the experiment is over, having failed in whatever the goal was when the novelty was launched. For almost a generation now, thanks be to God, young women, who feel the calling to religious life, are drawn to orders in which full habits are worn, prayers are said in common and by the hours, Holy Mass is the center of the day, and meals are taken communally. In other words, the espousal to Jesus Christ is now the reason for the resurgence of the consecrated life; and active social work, if the order isn’t cloistered, flows from the religious’ mystic life as a bride of Christ.
I don’t need to mention where I went to grammar school. I was taught by the Sisters of Charity, who went from wearing a torturous-looking wimple, which literally carved itself like a frame into and around their face from chin to forehead, to a regular veil that allowed peripheral vision (but still covered the eyes in the back of their head), to no veil and no habit, all in less than ten years. My aunt, now eighty-two years old, is a member of this same order, living today in the same convent, and wearing the same slightly modified habit that the sisters adopted around 1963 when I was in fourth grade. I visited her a couple of weeks ago, having had to pick her up for an uncle’s funeral. The old sisters at the convent call her the “saint” because she is always joyful and willing to do the most menial of chores. They say this right in front of her, and she just smiles. It helps that she can hardly hear, never remembers to replace the batteries in her hearing aid, and has no clue what her dear sisters are saying about her.
While at the funeral, my aunt informed me that my kindergarten teacher, whom I can never forget, because she was the first “nun” I ever really “encountered” — having had the privilege of her intimate presence from 8:00 to noon five days a week, for all but three months of the year 1957 — was still living. The first day I went to school at five years of age, I remember leaving my mother’s hand and staring at a goldfish aquarium sitting on a ledge as high as my eyes outside a huge playroom. There, standing right by my side, was this very tall sister with a very warm smile who was waiting to give me a seat on a rubber cushion. Her name was Sister Margaret Gregory.
The few memories I have of my early years in grammar school were pleasant enough, and the sisters of the lower grades were all angels. And, actually, so were the laywomen teachers. Even though I had an aunt that was a sister, whom I didn’t see all that much, I really did think these black-robed figures with the scary-looking wimple were — well, not angels — but angelic. You see, they all had this heavenly fragrance about them. I would take in the wafting scent with wonder every time one of them would swoosh past my desk with her rosary rattling against the desk’s metal legs. What a disappointing revelation it was when someone told me years later, upon my reminiscing aloud about the “odor of sanctity” thing, that it was just fabric softener.
Sister Barbara played baseball with the little boys in the school playground at recess. I can remember her showing those who couldn’t figure it out, or had no baseball dads, how to hold and swing a bat. And, no, these angelic sisters did not force lefties to write or bat righty. Sister Barbara, no exaggeration, could belt a hard sponge ball with her fist further than any of the boys even in the older grades. City guys my age may remember “punch ball,” or “curb ball,” when no bats were around?
There are so many memories. Sister Regina Marie was my very pious and sweet sixth grade teacher. She was very much into physical education; and she was German. Of course we had no physical education classes in Catholic grammar schools back then, so she’d improvise. She’d have us stand at attention by the side of our desks and rotate our shoulder cups over and over again. Liebe Schwester Mueller did not like slouching in any form: “Stand up straight!” she’d say, “Hold those shoulders back!” Her favorite exercise was plunging and she would lead the way with gusto. This was an easy one for her, and that’s why she would always push it on us after we did our stretching. Only God knows how many times a pious sister would genuflect during the day, and “plunging” was sort of like genuflecting, only with a forward thrust. I’ll never forget her drills, nor her voice, “Now Pluuuunnnge,” she’d say, and we’d all fall into the rhythm. Whenever I get together with old friends from town, every one who had these Sisters of Charity agrees on who their favorite sister was — Sister Regina Marie, hands down.
Still, there was Sister Leonora, our fourth grade teacher. I could go on writing about all the sisters, but Sister Leonora is the reason why I decided to share these memory morsels with you this morning. She was tough, very tough, but also beautiful. I think, like many other sisters who taught in our grammar school, that she must have hailed from Bahston, Massachusetts. (Our school janitor would always tease the sisters from Bahston with his hearty greeting “Good maaahnin, Sister.”) If indeed Bostonian, that means she was probably Irish. Good Sister Leonora gave me the back of her hand once because she thought I was giving my homework to copy to the boy sitting next to me in class. That’s another story. At the start of the school year Sister inaugurated a new seating strategy called “coupling.” Naturally I got “coupled” with the class terror, Steve, a likable guy (once you got to know him), who had been kept back twice and already needed to shave (well, maybe I’m exaggerating just a bit). That “strategy” of desk coupling would be repeated by our eighth grade teacher, too. And, once again, I got partnered with the school’s other “hoodlum,” Frankie. There were only two of these characters in my class, both prime candidates for the Cosa Nostra, and I got to spend two years of my primary school education shackled to each of them for eight hours a day.
By the way, going back to fourth grade and Sister Leonora, it just so happened that I was innocent of that particular crime of giving out my homework. All I had given my friend Steve was a piece of blank paper, which is what he had asked me for. But, I sure knew how to look guilty. Sister certainly thought so, and therefore, whaaack, I got it across the kisser, not so much for helping the incubative hood to cheat, but for denying that I was helping him to cheat. Other things (really mean things) that I was guilty of, and got away with, deserved a lot more punishment than a slap. And, as anyone my generation can testify, even if on a rare occasion you were innocent, boys did not go home and tell their parents that they got whacked in school. That would not have been wise.
I don’t want you to get the wrong impression of this good sister. She was really a lovely sister with a heart of gold. But she was not averse to some occasional heavy-handed medicine, if soft words proved futile. Oh, yes, that’s another thing about Sister Leonora: she was strong, but thin and wiry, with the worst kind of hands for dispensing corporal punishment. One must remember that these sisters were dealing with all sorts of little munchkins in a class of about thirty: some were good, some naughty; some were respectful, some defiant; some were thoughtful of others, some spoiled; some well-groomed, clean, and hygienic, others, well let’s just say, unhygienic. Order required discipline, and discipline, when there were no more corners to stand in, could often be painful. One of my fellow fourth graders was the poster child for a spoiled brat. It was during a French lesson, which the class was tuned in to for a half hour a day by way of a Canadian television station, that “Johnnie” finally got what all of his classmates thought he needed. The program one November 22, 1963, was interrupted with a report that the president, John Kennedy, was shot in Dallas. We were all stunned even at ten years old, and the sister from Boston was having a hard time keeping her emotions in check. Maybe it was the tension that got to the spoiled brat; whatever it was, he started laughing. I remember watching Sister Leonora march down the aisle and wipe the grin off this poor boy’s face. I guess when people asked him in adult life where he was when Kennedy got shot, he got a little nervous. Poor Johnnie. I hope he learned from his mistakes and became a man.
That same year, on a different mission, I remember Sister Leonora running down the far aisle of our classroom. It was to grab a little girl and take her in her arms and hold her while she cried and cried. She held the child’s head against her breast and stroked her blond hair over and over saying, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry! He’s with Jesus now,” or, words to that effect. The girl’s name was Karen and she had an identical twin sister in the other fourth grade class. You see, Sister Leonora had a woman’s heart, a mother’s heart, besides a heart of gold. Every day — I never could forget this — she would greet the class and then ask Karen how her older brother was doing. She cared for each and every child in her class, but had some special interest in Karen. We all just figured that Karen’s brother was sick. Well, every day Sister would ask about him, and Karen would answer, “He’s OK, Sister.” When Sister asked on this particular day, I remember looking at Karen when she didn’t respond right away. The rule was when a sister addressed you, you stood up when you answered. Karen was standing and her knees were shaking. She began stuttering, “He’s dead,” then she said it again more clearly, “He’s dead.” Sister Leonora ran and caught her as she was about to drop.
The next day, Karen being home with the family, Sister Leonora spoke to us just as if we were adults. She asked us to pray for Karen, for her twin, whom we all knew, for their family, and for Karen’s brother. She told us that Karen’s brother had been in a coma for a number of weeks as a result of a drug overdose. It was the sixties and many of the young were experimenting with very dangerous drugs. We were only ten years old when Sister Leonora warned us about drugs. I always wondered what happened to her. My aunt told me that she ended up working with the poor somewhere.
