Reading And Writing And 'Rithmetic!

On June 30, I did a book signing event at Concord’s wonderful bookstore – Gibsons.

My book entitled, “Was That a Name I Dropped?,” attracted scores of interested individuals who packed the downtown business. I was relieved that they hadn’t shown up with pitchforks and torches like in many an old Universal horror movie in which the angry villagers drive the creature from their midst.

As I faced the crowd and began answering questions, the one I was asked most frequently involved my experiences in the schools I attended in Concord. They certainly helped to instill in me an ongoing desire to write and so I am very grateful to the public and parochial Schools that taught me very well.

I attended kindergarten at and my teachers were Miss Stevens and Mrs. Smith, who seemed to have infinite patience. I don’t recall either of them ever raising their voices or becoming angry, and there certainly was reason to.

More than anything else, I remember our morning break and the icy cold small bottles of milk that Concord Dairy delivered. Despite admonitions to drink it slowly, it was usually gone in two good gulps, so fresh and delicious was the taste. Immediately afterwards we were instructed to put our heads down on the tables we sat at, for our morning rest. The lights in the classroom were turned out and the room became eerily quiet.

I am not sure whether there were cleaning gnomes that entered the classroom nightly or the school had the best janitorial staff around but our tables smelled so clean that they helped lull us into a blissful state of rest.

Our family moved from Franklin Street shortly before the start of first-grade. This resulted in my attending on North Spring Street. This was not the Kimball that was recently torn down but the Kimball that sat a couple of blocks north of that school. There is presently a small playground on the site.

It was the last year the building was to be used. The school had become so overcrowded that the first grade was held in the basement near the boilers. Miss O’Mara would have to raise her voice each time the boiler kicked on in order to be heard.

During her long career in the Concord schools, Miss O’Mara taught thousands of students and clearly loved her job, remembering virtually everyone’s name. Twenty years later I ran into her at a local grocery store and she knew me and even remembered the year I was in her class.

The following year and the start of second grade brought the move to the recently demolished Kimball School and a teacher with the same last name as mine – Nancy Brogan.

When Miss Brogan married, becoming Mrs. Mollica, I attended my first wedding. Nancy and her husband Jack are still happily married today, more than 50 years later.

I left the public school system and entered the city’s then extensive parochial school system for third-grade.

Concord had three parochial grammar schools - on South Main Street, Sacred Heart on Pleasant Street and St. Peter’s on Bradley Street and currently the site of the Association for the Blind.

The Sisters of Mercy taught at St. Peter’s and it was clear from the first day that they took no prisoners.

There were four classrooms in the school and each classroom held two grades.

It may sound confusing but it wasn’t. Somehow it worked.  I looked at it as a chance to overhear the lessons I would learn the next year or to review the previous year’s lessons depending on which grade I was in.

There was a regimentation that intimidated many. Sister Therese, the school’s principal was known to hang a disobedient student by his belt on the coat racks that lined the corridor. The rebel would flail his arms and legs, hanging two or three feet off the ground, until he’d learned his lesson.

Years later when I enlisted in the Navy friends asked me whether I felt I was tough enough to endure a military life.

“I had years of going to Parochial School. This can’t be any tougher”, I replied.

All of the stories about the yardsticks on the knuckles are not exaggerations. There was discipline and if you went home carping about the way one of the Nuns had treated you, there was a good chance you’d be punished again – this time by your parents.

“Sister must have had a good reason for doing what she did. The Nuns don’t discipline without a reason.”

What is usually left out from the stories about the parochial school system is the amazing education we received. A certain educational ethic was instilled and if you allowed yourself to accept it, it would serve you well in whatever you did throughout your life. It was not for everyone but for those who wanted to learn, the opportunity was there.

I always referred to as the “Gulag.” I did two years there - seventh- and eighth-grade. They were not shining moments in my academic life.

Coming from a small school of less than 250 students to a school with well over a thousand required a tremendous adjustment.

I did learn a lot despite my uneasiness.

From the Science Teacher, Russell McLaughlin, I learned a great deal about Alaskan Sled Dogs. Miss Grace Scott, the art teacher made me realize that art would never be my forte. She announced to the class that I should never be allowed near any paints or easels.

I almost electrocuted Mr. Miner when I presented him with what passed as a wrought iron lamp we had made in class. Mr. Smith shook his head and tried to figure out why my footstool didn’t look like anything known to man.

I was in Mrs. Andrews class when I first realized that teacher’s are human too.

We were in the midst of a class on the afternoon of Nov. 22, when news came that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. Mrs. Andrews bravely fought to hold back her tears as she sent the class back to homeroom.

had opened in 1963 so when I arrived to begin High School, everything still seemed new. There were just under 600 students attending the school.

The corridors of Brady always had a very unique smell in their cleanness. I wondered whether or not there was Holy Water mixed in with the regular soap and water. When I revisited the school in late 2010, the smell was still prevalent and instantly transported me back some 40 years, without the need of a DeLorean.

The school had an interesting mix of nuns, priests, brothers and lay teachers and the four years I spent at the school was the best educational experience I’ve ever had. It was so good in fact that I asked Sister Alfred, the school’s principal, to allow me to repeat my senior year, so reluctant was I to leave. She declined.

With the exception of some religious instruction, Brady was just like any other school, developing quite a reputation for their sport’s teams and academic standards.

Many of the schools I attended still stand and continue to provide quality education to thousands of students. The city of Concord has always been fortunate in having available an excellent school system that not only provides an education but a roadmap that can help you realize dreams that may have once seemed unattainable.