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« on: August 14, 2009, 05:31:53 PM »
I stated going to First Communion preparation classes for public school students in early 1955, in the old building. We moved back to Hackensack in the middle of my first grade and there was no room so I went to Fairmount until the end of third grade. They had catechism class in the old school every Sunday after 10 o'clock Mass. When I started fourth grade (1957-58 school year) the brand new Holy Trinity grammar school opened, and the high school students continued to use the old building until the end of that school year. I used to go to the high school basketball games, held in the gym in the grammar school (though the grammar school had no gym classes!) to watch my upstairs neighbor, Kevin McKegney play. My fourth grade teacher that year was a Mrs. Benson, but she didn't finish the school year (no one knew why) and she was replaced by a Mrs. Fiori. Someone mentioned a Sister Liboria. I think she was the fifth grade teacher across the hall from us. My teacher sent me to her because I had turned during class and WHISPERED something to a classmate. (The teacher, apparently, was incapable of handling such a major, life-threatening incident herself!) I waited respectfully for Sister to finish her conversation and she glared at me, saying: "What are you standing there looking at me sad-eyed for? What do you want, a poke in the eye?" She told me and the other juvenile delinquent to write "obedience" 50 times. No, I'm not one of those disaffected Catholics who is still bitter. I had three very pleasant years at St. Paul's in Ramsey from sixth through eighth grade (1959-1962) and they also had Sisters of Charity, but those sisters were caring and kind.