Susan sparks some interest by posting:
Susan wrote:
>
I totally brag about my wonderful Alvernia High School/Chicago,
it was
the coolest and run by the strongest, open-minded, liberal women,
who
have guided and influenced my life more than anyone else. I still
see
women from that school - both teachers and students ... and there
is
love!
In 1968 and 1969, my buds and I dated the entire Alvernia classes of 69
and 70. It was like some large group and we all traded partners. Carol
Gabbert was the
one I went steady with, and somewhere she has my Lane Tech pin and I
have a rock that she painted, still on my shelf after all these years.
The nights I went to see
Monterey Pop 3 nights in a row, it was with 3 different Alvernia girls
and by buddies who brought different dates on two of those nights all
brought Alvernia girls.
This memory means nothing and is pointless (as are the vast majority of
my posts) but it allows me to say that I knew Alvernia students and the
students were also
"the strongest, open-minded, liberal women" in political and feminist
terms and were just so much more mature and knowledgeable on culture and
art... quite a
group to hang with! Shared many a Goodman Theatre play and Art
Institute and Museum of Contemporary Art trips with Alvernia students.
Ranking: Immaculata had the best looking, but were very stuck up.
Madonna - better left unsaid. Good Counsel - too into themselves.
Someday remind me to tell you how the nuns and teachers at Our
Lady of
The Angels Catholic Elementary school
WHOA! Our Lady of the Angels? Was in a very racist part of Chicago (I
know, near where I grew up, OLOTA was on Thomas and what, I forget now,
I was a
little more northwest at Belmont and Cicero) but Susan said that. Our
Lady of the Angels is a major event in the life of every person who was
a grammar school
student in Chicago in 1958, with the Our Lady of Angels fire of 1
December 1958, when 93 kids and 3 nuns burned to death. Susan, were you
there when the fire
happened? It was so horrible; students found dead kneeling next to
their desks, student plunging to their deaths on fire, the parents
banging fruitlessly on the iron
bars that made up the fence around the school that the ladders couldn't
reach around to reach the kids...
It was horrific and indelible in the minds of all Chicagoans of school
age at that time. The biggest lesson we learned was never, ever respect
authority. Obedience
could lead to death. The vast majority of kids died because the nuns
were waiting for an "official" dismissal. When smoke billows under the
door, get the hell out
by any means, you do not wait for an "official" dismissal.
93 kids and 3 nuns... whenever two Chicagoan of that age get together
and the fire comes up in conversation, it gets very intense. Sorry to
go on and on about the
fire, but it was a prime event in my life. Every child, every student,
every teacher knew it could happen in their school.
I think a study of those who were students in Chicago schools in 1958
would yield some interesting results. No wonder perhaps that we were
repeatedly taking on
the system in 68 (Dem convention), 69 (Days of Rage), 70 (the Sly and
Family Stone thing.) Obeying authority was death. Thinking for your
self and doing your
own thing (get the hell out of the burning building despite what the
teacher/nun says) became a part of all our psyches.
Sorry to bring up such a downer topic but whenever someone mentions the
Our Lady of Angels, I automatically flash back to that horror, coming
home from school
(I was in 1st grade) and seeing one of the first live tv reports ever. a
school that looked just like mine on fire with dead students, 93 of
them. The grief of all Chicago
was so overwhelming
Anyone else remember the fire? I think Kate in Colorado went there too.
(the Rev) Vince
NP: the Real Slim Shady.
