Summer Vacation

Dr. Raymond E. Janifer, Sr

Shippensburg University

Professor of English and Ethnic Studies

Jeffersonville, PA 19403

July 24, 2017

rejani@ship.edu

Reflections on Summer Vacation

My family was not wealthy, but as a toddler I lived an idyllic life on the East End of Norristown on Chestnut Hill at 351 E. Chestnut Street. Before being dropped off in the first-grade classroom at St. Patrick’s School, I had spent my pre-school days playing along Saw Mill Run Creek getting wet, catching tadpoles, watching caterpillars change into butterflies and throwing rocks at the guys from Oak St. who stood on the other side of what we called, “The Creek.”

One day though when I was about five and a half years old my parents took me school shopping in downtown Philadelphia, and within the next few days I had on my brand-new Buster Brown shoes, a starched white shirt, and a bright blue tie. I eventually ended up sitting under the baleful glare of a giant nun in a big white circular bib and a navy blue flowing gown with a colossal crucifix in the middle of her chest.

Her name was Sister Anna Theresa, and she ruled her classroom like a Stalinist dictator. My classmates and I quivered when we said her name. To us there was no higher authority in the Catholic Church, not even the archbishop or the pope. She drilled us unmercifully in our ABC’s and numbers, and we recited from our Catechism textbook everyday page-by-page. Every day you memorized and recited every word of every lesson over and over again.

She started my hatred for school that lasted well into my college days at Millersville University. Sister Anna Theresa had piercing blue eyes that bore straight into the soul of any child foolish enough not to do his or her homework or who talked or played around during class. I will never forget her shattering an oak pointer on Wimpy Watson’s behind for wetting his pants at his desk.

After leaving her class, I systematically moved through the higher grades and the teachers at St. Patrick’s, including my only lay teacher Ms. Iacovelli. My life took on a comfortable rhythm that inevitably moved toward the lazy days of each summer vacation. Every spring brought classrooms that were like sweatboxes or Turkish baths because the windows were high above our desks, intimidating diocesan examinations, and the ritualistic cleaning of our rooms with Clorox and Pine-Sol signifying the end of the school year.

St. Patrick’s was a school that demanded a complete mastery of its academic and spiritual lessons. When I drive past the shuttered building now I remember students who only said yes or no sister and excuses that were never good enough for not doing your homework or being late for school. Also, there were always immediate public punishments for using foul language or fighting on the playground.

At St. Pat’s you earned everything you were given. There were no private rooms for examinations or extra time given to complete a test. There was a single set of academic and behavioral expectations for everyone, and students met them without complaint. If you could not meet academic expectations, you went home and studied until you could meet them. You were never automatically passed on to the next grade. If you did not master the required material you simply repeated a grade, and there would be no parental intervention and no note from a psychologist saying your self-esteem might be damaged.

Eight years at St. Patrick’s prepared me for 10 years of university life as a student and later for forty-five years as a faculty member. Initially though, it drove me to come back to school after dropping out of Norristown High School in tenth grade and push myself towards a doctoral degree at The Ohio State University. This school taught me that studying hard was a student’s primary responsibility.

At St. Patrick’s, hard academic work was expected and celebrated. This basic lesson still determines the direction of my life and consistently continues to afford me many of life’s rewards. These lessons are even more complicated when I drive by the old Bishop Kenrick High School building. I know that it has been closed for some time, but I’ll always remember my heart being broken there in 1963 when I suffered the shame of being dismissed for academic reasons.

I still cry when I remember being unceremoniously expelled from BKHS by the drill sergeant like principal Father Frederick B. Moors.

It marked the beginning of life for me outside the overwhelming influence of the Catholic Church and the close academic mentoring of nuns and priests. Norristown High School was only a few blocks away on Markley Street but a world apart. Suddenly it was not important whether you were Catholic or Protestant; the issue became whether you were black or white. Because it was early in the Civil Rights Movement instantly my skin color became associated with my academic destiny. Instead of being told what to do every minute of every day, I had a variety of choices to make and I handled them poorly.

I was a highly disciplined Catholic school kid set adrift in a world without the specter of the pope or mortal or venial sin to direct my thoughts or behavior. In this Protestant universe schoolwork was an option that I chose not to explore. There were no more blue ties, starched white shirts, and three hours of homework every night. There were no more 7 a.m. masses before school, holy days of obligation, or detentions where you wrote mindless phrases for hours. It was a completely social world of dances and athletic contests, and it felt good.

It did not stop feeling good until one night in June 1966 when I did not graduate with my original class. For me, reality was a crueler teacher than any nun or priest had ever been. I instantly knew that I needed my previous lessons from St. Patrick’s that hard work and discipline always paid off. I realized that, despite not graduating, if I went back to my Catholic School way of thinking I might still have a future ahead of me on a university campus somewhere.

As I fought back the tears in the harsh light of that monumental failure my classmates’ mortarboards cascaded down from the sky and unceremoniously fell at my feet. I knew that I would never again take my academic lessons from St. Patrick’s and Bishop Kenrick for granted. Although both of these schools are sitting empty now I will always have the lessons imparted to me by my nuns and priests and appreciate being driven towards higher levels of academic achievement.

I know that I am not the only one who will never forget these lessons from St. Patrick’s and Bishop Kenrick. The rules were fair, they were hard, they applied to everybody and most importantly they prepared you for life’s challenges.

(REJ)