This past weekend we had our inaugural “All Class School Reunion” at St. Sebastian. There was a nice turn out of people from classes extending back to the ‘30s. It was great listening to people reminisce about the goings on around here in years past.
Perhaps one of the most fascinating for me was hearing about the nuns, the Humility of Mary nuns that once staffed our school. It was to me what perhaps Monday Diary is to other about the life of priests. My favorite story of the night was the lady (then a girl) whose mother would send her to the basement of the school with “Pink Ladies.” Yeah, I didn’t know what one was either. According to Wikipedia it’s a “girlie drink.” Apparently as part of their recreation they would roller skate in the basement of the school having pinned up their great veils and enjoying a little libation. Another lady told about how her mother used to lend one of the nuns her car so she could drive around. The nuns were not supposed to drive though whether this was a rule set by the order or by the state I do not know. I do know that some orders were not allowed to drive by order of the state due to the fact that their habits blocked their peripheral vision.
The original convent was on the top floor of the school until they needed the room for classrooms and the convent was built. That would never happen today. Not only would I not want to live in a school building (could you imagine!?) it probably would be frowned upon in our current wariness.
2 comments:
We students never knew much about the lives of our nuns, the Bernardine Franciscans. We didn't even know their last (family) names.
As for recreation, they sat on the front porch of their convent. We were scared to walk past it, lest they call us up to the porch and yell at us for something.
They attended 7:00 am Mass every day.
the hun's quarters were on all three floors at the east end of the school building
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