When the Catholic Church was founded, there were few hospitals. Today, one out of five people in this country receive their medical care at a Catholic hospital.When the Catholic Church was founded, there were few schools. Today, the Catholic Church teaches 3 million students a day, in its more than 250 Catholic Colleges and Universities, in its more than 1200 Catholic High Schools and its more than 5000 Catholic grade schools.Everyday, the Catholic Church feeds, clothes, shelters and educates more people than any other organization in the world.
The new Obama Health Mandate could end all this and the tax payers would have to make up the loss.Also, all Catholic adoption services would come to an end; a human disaster.There are more than 77 million Catholics in this country. It takes an estimated 50 million Catholic votes to elect a president. I am asking all of you to go to the polls in 2014 and be united in replacing all Senators and Reps with someone who will respect the Catholic Church, all Christians, and all Religions with the exception of Islam.
**Mr. President, you said**, “The USA is not a Christian Nation”. You are wrong we are a Christian Nation founded on Judeo-Christian values allowing all religions in America to Worship & Practice Freely.
Something Islam will never do.Oh, by the way, on MUSLIM HERITAGE IN America …Have you ever been to a Muslim hospital?Have you heard a Muslim orchestra?Have you seen a Muslim band march in a parade?
Have you witnessed a Muslim charity?
Have you seen Muslims shaking hands with a Muslim Girl Scouts?
Have you seen a Muslim Candy Striper?*
*Have you ever seen a Muslim do anything that contributes positively to the American way of life?*
( Editor’s note: Actually, I have seen a few Muslim medical people working in hospitals, most are Doctors who came to America to become doctors, and wisely decided to stay in the good old USA. Today they are silent, and loving Muslims. However, once their numbers reach a significant level of ~3-5%, they begin to spew the need for Sharia law and lean toward radicalization. It is happening all over Europe and the natives are sick about it.)
The football team at Mendel was as young as the school; one year old. The young team played games, but always against the Freshmen/sophomore teams in the Catholic league. Football in the Catholic league was a huge sport. Since most of the Catholic schools were boys only or girls only, the teams meant a lot to a school. The dominant footballs teams were from Carmel, Leo, Fenwick, Saint Rita, and De LaSalle. There were others, too, but these schools dominated the league.
I remember reading about “Red” Gleason, the coach from Leo High School. Leo played in the championships often. Winning the Catholic school championship meant playing at Soldier Field against the public school champions for the All City Title. My brother Bill went to St. Leo when Red Gleason coached the Leo team to a championship.
I secretly dreamed of joining the football team. My limited association with the game came from playing “tackle” on the lawn next to the rectory. Tackle games were few because we had to wait for an evening when Father Horvath was out. I didn’t know about shoulder pads, hip pads, padded pants, jerseys, or helmets. None of my friends did either. Most of the time we played “tag” games in the schoolyard, or on the street in front of the house.
One day, during the spring of my first year, an announcement came: “Anyone wishing to try out for the football team should come to the gym at 3:30 to meet Red Gleason the new head coach.”
Wow! I thought, Red Gleason, a chance to meet ‘the man’ himself. I couldn’t wait for the day to end so I could rush to the gym to sign up. Finally, the last bell rang and we rushed to our lockers to put away our books. There was plenty of time to get to the gym, it was only 3 p.m. I got there early to stand in line with what seemed like at least two hundred boys. All of them were anxious to try out for football.
At three-thirty, Fr. McNabb walked into the gym with a short dumpy man, rather portly, with thinning reddish hair. I recognized him from the pictures I had seen in the newspapers. Red Gleason is really here.
Father directed us to line up single file and shoulder to shoulder. The coach and Father McNabb passed by the line for inspection. Coach stopped in front of each boy and looked him over head to toe. Sometimes he asked for a name, or some other question, and occasionally, he even shook a boy’s hand.
It took forever but he finally got to me. He stopped, looked at me hard and asked, “How much do you weigh, boy?”
I really didn’t know my weight so I answered, “about 90 lbs.”
“Be sure to come to tryout in summer.”
I was in heaven. Red Gleason asked me to try out for the team!
Of course, the largest obstacle I faced was not the team tryout, but it would be talking Mom and Dad into letting me do it. Neither of them knew much about the game except that you could get hurt. I had all summer to do it; now I just wanted to celebrate.
Ideas flooded my mind for how to convince them. After a days of deliberation I decided to work hard all summer to earn my tuition so they would have to let me do it. The summer of 1953 became the longest summer of my life, and was also the one that changed my course in a way that tested me beyond all of my dreams.
My grammar school was special; it was small, and it was across the street from our home. It was a typical Catholic school, except; the classrooms were above the church. The building was dull compared to European churches. Some Catholic schools were separate from the church. Those parishes had a typical European style church with ceilings that stretched toward the sky, choir lofts and arched stain glass windows. Our pastor built a cost effective, utilitarian building.
On the second floor were four classrooms; grades 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8 doubled up in a single room. There was not room for kindergarten or preschool. The nuns lived on the same floor in the space of two classrooms.
A single nun taught in each room. An aisle divided the grade levels. Each room had six rows of seven desks mounted to wooden slats. The seven desks all moved together, and room set-up was easy to do. The seat back of one desk formed the front of the desk behind it. The desktop slanted down to make it easy to read and write. At the very top of the desk surface was an inkwell with a glass bottle. No ink was kept in the well unless we were doing a writing exercise. The desktop lifted up to reveal a compartment for books.
Each classroom had between 30 and 36 kids. The school population was between 120 and 144 kids. Perry School, a public school nearby, was much larger.
Having two grades in a room always gave the lower grade an opportunity to see what the upper grade was doing, and the upper grade could review last year’s material. The nun assigned work to one grade, and taught the other. Our assignments were solving problems, practicing our writing, or reading. She could only leave a group on it’s own for a short time before someone would start talking or picking on a classmate.
A nun was very good at dispensing justice. Punishments varied from standing in the corner to getting a whack across the hands with a ruler. If a student did something very bad, she sent him to the principal’s office. Sometimes she held a culprit after school to clean up the room. Cleaning up was a gift. A worse punishment was staying after and just sitting quietly reading an assignment. I had my share of detentions, knuckle whacks, and corner facing.
Every day, school began with mass at eight o’clock. I could never get there on time, but neither did many others. I just marched down the center aisle to my class, and joined them in the pew. Our nun sat with the class. After mass everyone filed out of church up the stairs to the classroom. We had a fifteen-minute recess in the morning. Our lunch was one hour. The afternoon recess was also fifteen-minutes. Classes ended at 3:00 P.M., except on Wednesday when we got out at noon. That’s when the public school kids came to OLH for Religious Education.
Every day, class started with a prayer, and the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. Our rooms all had a blackboard across the front with a set of maps hanging on rollers. The Sister could pull a map down when needed. Above the blackboard was a line of cards with the alphabet shown in cursive capitals and lowercase letters. The street side was a wall of windows and the center wall had a closet for our coats.
We could buy milk daily, or by the week. A milkman delivered the milk in special racks filled with half-pint cartons. Most kids brought a lunch. Those of us who lived very close went home for lunch.
Attending a Catholic school gave us many excuses for getting out of class. For the boys who were altar servers, it was serving at a funeral. The girls got off to sing. During funerals, we had to be extra quiet in the classroom. We didn’t want to wake the dead or disturb the mourners.
The eighth-graders always got called on to be messengers. They went from room to room to hand the nun an announcement. The older boys served on the safety patrol. “Patrol Boys,” stood at the corners on the way to school. Their job was to warn kids from crossing when a car was coming. That was a good duty because I got to come in a little later and leave a few minutes earlier to stand on my corner. Patrols got to wear a white belt that crossed over our shoulder to our waist. Today, only adults are crossing guards, and they get paid for their duty.
The nuns sent report cards home to our parents four times a year. They used a number system to grade us. Each subject had a number. For instance, Religion – 85, meant I scored 85 percent on all my work in religion. Our parents had to sign the cards. We got them on Friday and had to return them on Monday. God forbid that I got a check mark on anything, especially, obedience. A check mark in an area was a signal to my parents. It meant they were failing to keep me under control. Whenever I got a check mark, it was a guaranteed lecture from Mom. Dad never said anything.
Neither Mom nor Dad went past the fourth grade, but it never showed. What they lacked in formal education, they made up for with experience and common sense. They never doubted or challenged a nun on any issue. A nun was always right. She was a saint. The priest was Jesus with a black robe and white collar.
As a Catholic, we believe that we are the one true church. Back then associating with Protestants was not appropriate. Hanging around with a protestant person was the same as wanting to be friends with the devil. Mom always wanted us to speak Hungarian at home and we did until we started school. One year, she learned about a summer school that taught kids to read and write Hungarian. The people of the Hungarian Reformed Church taught Hungarian during the summer. Their church was near Tuley Park. Mom registered Sis and me. We went to the first class. It was fun, and I looked forward to learning to read and write. For some reason after the first session mom told us we weren’t going any more. Many years later I learned that she felt guilty about sending us to the Reformed church. She talked to Father Horvath about it. He didn’t make Mom feel any better. He advised her not to send us back. Back then the Catholic Church made the current Islamic Fundamentalists look like amateurs. The reason for keeping us out was a fear that the protestant teacher would convert us to their beliefs.
Our nuns always helped by tutoring us. My worst subject was English Grammar; it still is (Thank you Bill Gates for Microsoft Word grammar check). I never got the idea of sentence structure, and diagraming sentences was gibberish to me. During the exam to get out of fifth grade, I got stuck on those questions. I wound up being the last one in the room. Sister Clementine came to my desk. She sat next to me and started asking questions to try to give me hints. She did everything but give me the answer. It was embarrassing, and I was afraid to death that I was going to flunk. It terrified me to think of repeating a grade like my friend Georgie. Worse, I feared what Mom and Dad would say. It seemed like she sat with me for an hour coaching me through the exam. To this day I feel she promoted me to the next grade out of sympathy.
Many wonderful new worlds opened up to me in high school. It seemed like every time we listened to the announcements during home room class a new activity was born. This time it was the “sock hop.”
My social life was never lacking because of all my friends around the block. In grammar school we stuck to each other like glue. We hung together, we danced, we played games, we laughed and told each other our deepest feelings. When high school entered our lives, it all changed. We were still friends but our common interests were gone. All of us were developing new ones. We had new activities to attend. Now, we met our high school friends at these activities rather than take our grammar school buddies with us. The school frowned on bringing boys from a different school to a Mendel social function. It was okay to sell them a ticket to a ball game but not to a dance. In a way, attending high school was like belonging to an exclusive club which was members only.
Up until that time, I had never heard the term ‘sock hop” before, but my new buddies, who were already in the know, told me I had to go because it was a great place to meet girls. I could have taken a date to a sock hop, many boys did. I was too afraid of girls to do that. Even though I danced a lot with the girls of Avalon, this was different. These girls were strangers and I’d have to talk to them. It wasn’t easy for me to come up to a stranger and begin a conversation. My mom was great at it. She made friends with people in an instant. Dad was quiet. He had to force himself to meet new people all the time on his insurance job.
The sock hop was always on a Friday night. They began in mid-fall during football season, and continued through the basketball season. Many times they were right after the pep rally, and bon fire. They were simple dance socials organized for the purpose of getting the boys to meet girls and vice versa. We always had a live band of high school kids who played the latest music. At least one band member was a student at Mendel. We had to take our shoes off to dance on the sacred basketball floor; that’s why it was a ‘sock hop’.
There were a number of Catholic schools In the Roseland area. Saint Louis Academy was one of them. Saint Louis was an all girl’s school located on State near 115 Street, and about a mile from Mendel. The priest in charge advertised our event at all the neighborhood girl’s schools. The word always got out, and there was always a good crowd at these dances.
Homecoming Dance, Not a Sock Hop, 1956
In my first year, I attended as many hops as I could. Each time, I met a buddy and we stood on the sidelines drinking a coke, eyeballing the girls dancing by themselves. We poked each other when a particular girl peaked our interest, and dared each other to ask her to dance. I always thought the girls were too good for me, or too pretty. I never believed a pretty one would ever accept my offer to dance. The girls all seemed so old and mature. Most times it took me all evening to build up enough nerve to ask a special girl to dance. Then, when I finally made my move, another guy asked her just before me.
It was easier to talk to someone if you were dancing a slow dance than if you did a jitterbug. That limited the number of chances I had to meet someone. Since most guys could dance slow, but not fast, the competition was fierce. (It just occurred to me as I am writing this that I was a good dancer, and loved to jitterbug. I should have taken advantage of that skill to meet the girls. Duh!! Not too dense, it’s only taken me fifty-eight years to figure that one out!)
The dance ended at 10 p.m., then everyone went their own way. Many parents waited outside in cars to pick up their daughters. A few older boys drove home from school, but most of us took the streetcar home.
In that first year that I attended the sock hops, I never developed enough nerve to ask a girl for a date after the hop. I finally got enough nerve to begin asking girls to dance, but never had the nerve to go past “see you at the next sock hop” when it came to furthering a relationship.
Every time I attended a sock hop I took a step away from Avalon and a step further from my friends on the block. My freshman year at Mendel was my ‘breaking away’ experience. We were all growing up and expanding our horizons, but desperately holding on to each other at the same time.
