by Maralyn Fink
My first day of school took place at Central School at the ripe old age of six in 1947. I remember being scared and wondering how to get out of that situation. My teacher was Miss Martha Duffer who requested everyone to bring a blanket for nap time. Well, maybe this won’t be as bad as I thought…..a nap, maybe I could nap the whole half day! Of course that didn’t work out,
In the Fall of 1947 I entered St. Joseph Catholic School. I attended there through the 8th grade.
Our day started attending 8 am Mass at the church and then being dismissed at the end of Mass in file back to the school. We were taught by the Sisters of St. Joseph. The school was smaller then than the present day.
Each classroom had it’s own cloakroom for coats and brown paper bag lunch that you brought to school, unless you were one of the fortunate ones to have a lunch bucket. I remember being able to smell the tuna and egg salad sandwiches which as you know contained Mayo. In the present time, that seems to be a no-no not to have them refrigerated where ours were not. I do not remember hearing that any of my classmates had passed on because of Mayo poisoning.
After Mass, our learning started with a pointer and the blackboard. No talking amongst each other as we were there to learn.
Father Hermes, our Pastor, came to the school to visit all the students once a week. We never knew which day; but when we heard his voice, everyone in the classroom stood and said good morning, Father. He would talk a few minutes in all the classrooms.
There were times in class where our teacher had to leave the room and told us we were on the honor system and no talking to each other. When she came back to the room she asked that all those that had talked to please stand up. Well now, I remember that maybe 1 or 2 were honest.
The lunch time bell would ring and it would be lunch time. Then we were able to go out on the playground or go home for lunch if you lived in town.
At a certain time the bell would ring and each class lined up outside in a straight line and if no one talked we were good to go inside; but if someone talked, we stood in line until all was quiet.
We had Christmas plays and plays that we as students put on like all schools did and the church itself had many dinners and always a church festival under a big circus tent.
I graduated from St. Joe’s with 21 classmates listed as follows:
– Gail Haske
– Norbert Kuntz
– Barry Knight
– Harry Burns
– Carlene Thelen
– Anthony Jorae
– John Stone
– Jack Zimmerman
– William Moeggenburg
– Gerald Pattison
– Jack Mesh
– John Jakus
– Jim Schaeffer
– Norbert Simon
– Wallace Huggett
– Marjorie Kissane
– Karen Pohl
– Patricia Ondrusek
– Maralyn Fink
– Janet Henning
– Joyce Ochis
Staff: Mother Honora, Sister Pierre’ Sister Aloysia, Miss Van Pratt.
In closing, I would like to say that I would never want to change those years as they were great growing up years.
We learned discipline, structure and had a caring staff of the Sisters of St. Joseph whom we all looked up to and who taught us well.
We graduated in the spring of 1955, prepared to enter RBW in the fall of 1956.
Now that’s another story!
