Where shall I start? With the Golden Stairs, stocking feet and special permission only, or May Procession, with all white dresses and veils, and arms and hairdos loaded down the flowers (mostly lilacs)…white shirts and dark pants for the boys, of course…or the FURANCE ROOM?!!??? I think most of us saw the inside of that infamous place, designed, I feel now, just to scare the wits out of us, so we would be good little boys and girls. A few well-placed whacks went along with the visits just to reinforce the intended point.

HIGH SCHOOL…in some ways, a hundred years ago (actually only 43), and in some ways, like only yesterday. Those school dances! It was kind of hard to figure out just what the nuns really expected of us. They raised a collective eyebrow should they catch a "he" and a "she" chatting in the hall; they discouraged dating and automatically expelled you from Sodality (I speak as an X-member) if you were to "go steady"…BUT, at school dances, the boys were expected to ask the girls to dance, and the girls were expected to accept, which probably would have happened, had the first part of the plan been carried out. As it happened, the boys acted as if they were glued to the west wall of the gym, and the girls either sat until their bones ached from those comfy folding chairs, or they danced with each other.

Some years later, I was among the crowd watching in horror as smoke billowed, and flames leapt 150 feet into the air, melting and crumbling our Alma Mater. The symbol of everything I believed in stood silhouetted against the bright orange flames for over three more hours…most of the building was gone by this time. When the cross finally fell to ground, it made a sickening thud in all our hearts, yet we knew, somewhere deep inside, that our beloved St. Mary's would rise again, from the ashes, one more time.

As Bob Hope would have said, "Thanks for the Memories."