Well, you asked for it.\u00a0 Against the better judgment of the good Jesuit fathers, I and my colleagues were in the first graduating class of Jesuit High School in Dallas, Texas.\u00a0 The campus was what had originally been the property of either the diocese or the order that runs Notre Dame.\u00a0 It was called \u201cDallas University\u201d when I was a child. But it wasn\u2019t a school at all when I remembered it, it was an orphanage. We, the first graduating class, were really products of the education given us by the Sisters of Divine Providence.\u00a0 The campus was in the red brick building next to what once was St. Joseph\u2019s church, later St. Andrew Kim Catholic church, and now a private residence of a wealthy actress.<\/p>\n
It probably was a ghetto frame of mind, but we were quite proud of our little high school.\u00a0 Then when the Jesuits came to town they came from a highly successful five hundred year run of successful education of young men.\u00a0 That success meant nothing to us.\u00a0 As you may be aware, the publicity, along with a mountain of misinformation, did not make us willing seekers of knowledge at the feet of our black robed masters.\u00a0 There were two areas of agreement between us and them.\u00a0 They wanted a good football team and they brought Mr. Hohman, the band director at St. Joseph\u2019s, and he brought along a successful band program.\u00a0 Obviously these two are on the periphery of secondary education.<\/p>\n
At the heart of education and the problems at Jesuit High at that time was a fundamental disconnect between us, the students, and them, the teachers.\u00a0 What they wanted, we did not want, and what we wanted, they were uninterested in.\u00a0 The football team was better than the one at St. Joseph High.\u00a0 And the band was small, but good.\u00a0 The Jesuits started a drama club and a periodical newspaper.\u00a0 And they taught us English, chemistry, trigonometry, American history and apologetics (the singularly most important semester in my secondary schooling).<\/p>\n
The problem was mostly discipline.\u00a0 When I was there, the good fathers could not think of some form of punishment, short of a birch rod, that worked.\u00a0 Two years later they got the problem in hand \u2013 after expelling six students.<\/p>\n
Now, to your questions.\u00a0 Jesuit offered us nothing [to come there].\u00a0 Our [previous] school was shut down.\u00a0 It [Jesuit] was \u201cthe only game in town.\u201d\u00a0 The above should give you my answer to what it was like to come as a senior.<\/p>\n
My memories about the commons, etc.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t play basketball, chapel was chapel.\u00a0 Dances.\u00a0\u00a0 I didn\u2019t dance \u2013 still can\u2019t.\u00a0 Graduation.\u00a0 I gave a speech of my own composition (except for the closing line which was furnished to me by Eddie Mahr who I knew from St. Josephs).\u00a0 The speech was not well received by my relatives, but the bishop (Lynch) liked it, he said.\u00a0 Later I was introduced by Fr. Kammer to one of his associates as the guy who made the \u201cspeech.\u201d\u00a0 There were jokes in it.\u00a0 The audience laughed at all of them except the first one.<\/p>\n
My favorite class when at Jesuit was trigonometry because I could see a reason for it.\u00a0 Fr. Kammer made the greatest impression on me.\u00a0 He was a scholastic at the time.\u00a0 Later, apologetics loomed large.\u00a0 I went to sea as a well paid merchant seaman.\u00a0 On ships we talked about important subjects besides sex.\u00a0 And I was painfully aware that I could not hold my own against dyed-in-the-wool Communists and Socialists.\u00a0 But I remembered that there were rational proofs for the existence of God, the soul, etc.\u00a0 But I did not know them, and I later went to a Jesuit college where I learned them.<\/p>\n
I wrote a column for the newspaper, which that year was a tabloid sized thing that came out about four times in the year.\u00a0 My column was adolescent.\u00a0 The first installment was a blast at the football team.\u00a0 (I was sort of a member.)\u00a0 It was not published.\u00a0 Football was sacred then as now.\u00a0 For the last issue, I tried to write an editorial about the war between faculty and seniors, but did not have the words and gave it up.<\/p>\n
The \u201chigh jinks\u201d that I can remember were stories told to me by Eddie Mahr after I graduated.\u00a0 So they are at best second hand.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t do anything for Saturday night fun.\u00a0 In 1943, Saturday was a working day so Friday was not party night yet.<\/p>\n
To my knowledge I was the only member of my class who was not in the military, but I did go to sea.\u00a0 My wartime service consisted of four days at sea going from Jacksonville, Florida, to Galveston, Texas, while the war in the Pacific was still going on.\u00a0 But I sailed for years afterwards.<\/p>\n
Most everybody I knew in school went into the military.\u00a0 Mostly, they enlisted in the volunteer services, i. e. Navy or Marines.\u00a0 A few were drafted.\u00a0 One of my classmates, Jerry McGinnis, was in the Marines and was killed at Iwo Jima.\u00a0 Others took part in battles, mostly in the Pacific.<\/p>\n
[sent via letter, Dec. 2009]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well, you asked for it.\u00a0 Against the better judgment of the good Jesuit fathers, I and my colleagues were in the first graduating class of Jesuit High School in Dallas, Texas.\u00a0 The campus was what had originally been the property of either the diocese or the order that runs Notre Dame.\u00a0 It was called \u201cDallas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1940s","category-memories"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n