One of my fondest remembrances of Jesuit is that we were a close knit family. The camaraderie still lives today. I still stay in touch via email with classmates. Jesuit offered us a Catholic education and taught us to be good, Christian men who would help each other. In addition, it had high academic standards.
The senior steps were hallowed ground and guarded by the seniors. The gym was a condemned area and only so many people could be allowed on the 4th floor. The chapel is where we could figure out our classmates’ sins by how long they stayed in the confessional prior to first Friday masses.
Dances were mixers between OLGC [Our Lady of Good Counsel] and Ursuline so we could find a good Catholic girl. A few did. The December Winter Carnival dance held at Lou Ann’s was always special and graduation was just sweet sorrow knowing we would all be following our dreams and career paths. Guess you could say it broke up the family.
My favorite teachers were my coaches. I played baseball and Milt Gaudet was the B team coach. Then, I moved on to Coach Durrick for varsity ball. I fondly remember both men.
But I don’t want to leave out “The Old Warhorse,” Father Rivoire. We all feared him and he kept 500 hundred rowdy young men in line. He had everyone’s love and respect as we went through our four years of growing into young men.
Since we were the only Catholic high school back then, we drew guys from all over Dallas. Of course guys have their differences, so, in order to keep it supervised,the Jesuits would allow boxing matches in the basement during lunch for any two individuals that wanted to go toe to toe. This went on for days and maybe weeks until the second young boxer was knocked unconscious and it was deemed too dangerous to continue. Then it was on to the lower field.
Jesuit was on a hill and there was what was known as The Lower Field. The matches resumed there where many differences between two young men got ironed out bare knuckles. At least until the Jesuits got wind of the impromptu meeting and got down there to break it up before everything could be ironed out. If that happened then the meeting or confrontation would head to Lee Park.
We spent Friday and Saturday nights travelling from Greenville Ave. over to Sybils in Oak Cliff and back again. Trying to find all those Public School girls. Never left any turf uncovered, and of course gas back then was .20 cents a gallon.
One thing that humbled us all was having to wear the beanies our freshman year which identified us to the rest of the alumni.
