MartyDigs – SMS – Save My School!

The end of the world was supposed to happen on Saturday, it didn’t, but rapture jokes replaced Charlie Sheen jokes in the social media stratosphere. I am glad to know we weren’t all sucked into the ground from an earthquake, and happy that Jesus is waiting to make his second coming. I kindly pray that he at least hold off until I break the high score on the Ms. Pac-Man machine at my local pizza shop. However, my community got some very bad news about the end of a very special place in many hearts- St. Mary’s school in Gloucester City, New Jersey is going to be shutting its doors ^[1]after this school year.

 It’s a sad trend that is happening all over the country, Catholic schools and churches shutting their doors or consolidating. And let me preface this all by saying I will not be stepping up on any soapbox or pulpit and discussing any of the political or religious causes of this. All I can say it that this makes me, and many wonderful people that I know and love very sad. Some people may have bad memories of St. Mary’s, and for that I am sorry, because for me, St. Mary’s made me the person that I am today. I owe the friends I made, a happy childhood, and about a million fond memories to an old pile of bricks with a bell on top in downtown Gloucester City.  

We found out via the school website, through a message from the bishop that the school was closing. This came after a whirlwind week of rumors, speculation, solemn whispers, and text messages. One of the saddest things for me about all this is that St. Mary’s is where we planned to send our son Jack for school. My friends Chad and Mary Beth Rettig, classmates of mine in grade school and high school, have a son Brendan who was born on the same day and in the same hospital as Jack. We were all so excited to have our boys grow up and go to St. Mary’s and share their own good times and create memories together. I still want them to go to school together, but without St. Mary’s, it just isn’t going to be the same. Chad and I have always been friends, and were basketball teammates, swim team members, birthday party attendees, and have a yearly tradition where we watch the “Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas” together. I pray that Jack and Brendan could be as lucky and blessed to have this kind of friendship.   

There is public school, of course, and I am certainly not going to knock the public school in my town. After all, my dad is the elementary school principal, my mom is a teacher, my girlfriend is a teacher, and my sister Meghan runs an after school program there. Sure, the technology at a Catholic school can’t compare to a public school – for all I know, they could still be using the Commodore 64’s we had back in the 80’s. And the Sex Education wasn’t very thorough, which is why at age 35 I am still a bit confused as to where exactly babies come from. It’s just that like my parents, I value the Catholic education, the discipline, and the traditions and history of St. Mary’s school. And throughout my childhood, my siblings and I were relentlessly prodded by public school kids with the question “why dontcha go to yer dad’s school?” That question is finally being pushed out of my subconscious by the Thomas The Train theme song, courtesy of Jack.  

 I remember my first day of kindergarten ^[2]almost vividly. I wore a Phillies jacket, had a Popeye bookbag, and was the only boy in class who had saddle shoes on. In addition to the saddle shoes I was forced by my parents to wear, I was pissed off that my friend Jeff Kenney wasn’t going to be in my class. But my friends Chad and Mark Collins were going to be there, which eased me up a bit. Once I got to school, for reasons unknown to me, I gave Pat Burkhardt (who is now and has been one of my closest friends) a hard time. The principal Sr. Patricia, an Irish nun, came up to me in class to introduce herself (my dad was vice principal of the public school down the street) and for some reason, she reminded me of Darth Vader. For almost my entire St. Mary’s career, I was basically the shortest kid in class (outside of a few puberty bursts in 6^th and 7^th grades). I had a gigantic mop of blond hair on my large, solid Irish noggin. And have to admit, I was a pretty cute little kid. Cute enough to not get excommunicated when I called my teacher Sister Christine “Boss Hogg” because she was wearing an all white suit like the character from “Dukes of Hazzard”.

In first grade, I experienced 15 minutes of fame – and it was literally the 15 minutes on the playground before school. The night before, I told a joke on a show called “Double Muppets Hold the Onions” that was some local Philadelphia comedy show that played after The Muppet Show on Sunday nights. Giant eight graders were coming up to me, and everyone made a point to pat me on the back and tell me they saw me on TV. Then, in 1986 during fourth grade, there was a picture of me skateboarding ^[3]in the Courier post. The school hung it in our lobby with the note “way to go, Marty” written on it.

St. Mary’s had a wealth of traditions, and one was the talent show. The “talent show” used the term talent with an almost blatant disregard. One year, probably 1984, my friends and I did “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson and all we really did was lip synch the words and moonwalk the entire time. In 1986, we did Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On a Prayer”, again lip synching, but this time wearing black sunglasses with poorly tied bandanas and playing guitars crudely made out of cardboard. In the mid-80’s, two big acts for students were break dancers and Cailfornia Raisins ^[4](kids wearing trash bags and walking around doing a dance while “Heard it Through the Grapevine” plays). The height of absurdity came one year when they just consolidated all those acts and it was about 50 kids on stage break dancing, dressed as trash bag raisins, bumping into each other, and wrestling. Some of the Raisins lost interest in the line dance and just started break dancing.  

My school was outrageously and unabashedly Irish Catholic. We had Irish nuns with stern and austere Irish accents. The names of some of my friends and classmates read like a roster for the Irish Mafia – Kevin Cleary, Michael and Megan McSweeney, Joseph McCall, Mark Collins, Jeffrey Kenney, Mary Beth Riley, Kelly Brandt, Kelly Green, Katie Byrnes, and Katie McShane. And we celebrated this Irish-ness every year with Irish night ^[5], a night full of Irish song, Irish dance, and then pizza, hot dogs, and carnival games of chance in the school gym. Regardless of what your ancestry was, Irish Night was everyone’s favorite event- at least the party afterwards was. (I think some of the shy kids despised going up and singing in front of hundreds of smiling and half-toasted parents) It was a rare chance to be seen out of uniform, so I always made sure I had my Members Only jacket, my Swatch on, and the coolest outfit that 15 dollars could buy from Strawbridge’s.    

There were Sunday night basketball games, and before I played, these games seemed like the most important thing in the world. There was Sister Marie-John, an ancient nun who collected the money for soft pretzels who I was firmly convinced was just a wax dummy with a palm full of quarters. There was All-Saints Day, where on Halloween, instead of dressing like ghosts, goblins, and Spuds McKenzie, we dressed as our patron Saint. There was Big Jim, the school caretaker, who I was pretty sure made his residence in the mysterious boiler room. We had track meets against schools that outnumbered us by the hundreds, and we always held our own. The girls had some “Ribbon Dance”, that apparently was the greatest honor for a gal to be a part of. Once, we let balloons go with messages – and while I dreamed my balloon would make it to China, it was cool enough to hear back from somebody two towns over. There was the eighth grade yearbook ^[6], where you got to list your nickname (that nobody really called you) and your favorite quote (that you never really said). My sisters and I can still recite from memory almost everybody’s nickname and saying from class of ’86 to ’92.      

Then there was one magical day in 1986 that will live in infamy. It was the only time in history that I was allowed to defy the nuns. It was “Ethiopia Day”, and to raise awareness for the starving poor black kids in Africa, a bunch of well-fed middle class white kids were going to make a sacrifice to show our unity to them. We weren’t supposed to bring lunch or snack, and at lunchtime had to eat a typical meal that these kids would get. It was an event dreaded by the entire student body for weeks. My mom, in a stunning act of defiance, raged against the machine and packed me a granola bar for snack, and a heavier than normal lunch bag. 25 years later, she still holds her ground and kind of gets fired up “it was ridiculous, I wasn’t going to let you starve that day”.  So while my classmates were miserably eating rice, mush, and skim milk with flies buzzing all around them, I was washing down my ham and cheese and Butterscotch Krimpet with a Hi-C juice box.  

The nuns and teachers were always right in my parent’s eyes, and always wrong in mine. Begrudgingly, I listened though, because if I didn’t there was hell to pay at 940 Gaunt Street when I got home. There was a direct network between the principal offices of Sr. Patricia and Mr. O’Connor, it was sort of like a post-Cold War relationship similar to Reagan and Gorbachev. The schools were located two blocks apart, and Sr. Patricia wasn’t afraid to throw my dad’s name around if I was in hot water. Looking back, the discipline was strict, but now very much appreciated. In fact, I still straighten up and stand at attention when I talk to any of the nuns. (And am still a bit intimidated by Irish accents)

A St. Mary’s rite of passage was becoming an altar boy – it was truly a distinguished honor. I was so happy when I was old enough to be amongst the ranks of the older kids who were altar boys. I couldn’t wait to be shuffling along with the priest in an alb two sizes too big, carefully balancing a lit candle, and making the most solemnly serious face possible. Since I didn’t have an older brother or an older cousin like most of my friends, I had Tom Porch as my trainer. He is one of the nicest people you could ever meet, and was a big influence on me and part of the reason I attended college at Mt. St. Mary’s. Along with him, I had a ton of unofficial older brothers- Joe McComb, Alex Tedesco, Jason Barron, Joe Riley, Bill Rettig, Steve Burkhardt, Brian Leeds, and Joe and John Collins. Who all hit me with snowballs, knocked me around, beat me in sports, and basically treated me like a younger brother. But they all looked out for me and that’s one of the things I love most about St. Mary’s – the family, friend, and community connection. My grandparents went to St. Mary’s – my great grandfather did, my mom did, my uncles did. And that’s how it is, and was for so many people I know.  

The friends I have made are beyond life-long friends. These guys are like brothers to me. My dad always reminds me how rare this is, and as I get older, I do realize how indeed unique it is. I don’t know too many other people whose closest friends have been the same since age six. But that’s happened with older guys from St. Mary’s, and I can see it with many of the younger guys who went through St. Mary’s. One story that happened recently has stuck with me like no other. I visited my high school friend Kevin Krumm in Chicago a few years back. The first night we were catching up about funny stories, high school, and college. He surprised me when he said that he envied me and the St. Mary’s guys because we were all so tight. Something clearly that back then, as a pimply 14 year old kid, I didn’t truly appreciate. There wasn’t much to envy about me at age 14 – I looked like Curious George and only made the freshman basketball team because my Gramps was friends with the coach, and was a benefactor to the school’s sport program. But I did have a tight group of friends, and that night, Kevin helped me realize how lucky I was.       

And I was never prouder of my St. Mary’s compatriots the day I invited my friend John Sullivan to sit with us at lunch. Little do they know that their goodwill helped one of my closest friendships blossom. Back then, John was a self-proclaimed chubby and nervous kid who was in the Honors program with me. He didn’t talk much, but would always crack up laughing at the antics of Dan Malloy, Pat Burkhardt and I in study hall. For that alone, I liked him from the get-go and was infuriated when I heard some jackasses from our class were picking on him and giving him a hard time at lunch. He asked if he could sit with us, and believe me, I had my reservations, not about John – but this was the St. Mary’s table. There were no outsiders allowed, that was an unspoken rule. But when I approached the group about it, they welcomed him with open arms and some of them were almost uncharacteristically friendly with him. I was never more proud of these guys in my life, and in my mind I thank them. Because John was almost at the point of leaving Gloucester Catholic and our friendship and making new friends with the St. Mary’s crew was one of the things that saved him from leaving.   

I admire all the people who devote, or have devoted, their time and energy to St. Mary’s. As a father who is still learning the ropes of fatherhood, I have so many people to look to as positive examples. My friend Pat’s brother Steve and his wife Dawn (who works at St. Mary’s) and my friend Mark’s brother Joe and his wife Bridget (who has worked at St. Mary’s), are two families who have kids in St. Mary’s and get so involved with the school and their children. Anytime there is an event you can count on them being there, helping out, and participating. Mike Raube, my friend Kevin Cleary’s cousin, was my idol as a kid. One of my greatest childhood memories was being down in Stone Harbor in his Camaro with Kevin, shooting water guns at people out the window, while “Hear I Go Again” by Whitesnake was on. And now, I admire Mike because he and his wife Jen (who was a classmate of mine) send their two kids there, and are also super involved and active with St Mary’s going-ons. Stuff like this, family and community involvement, is why it hurts to even think about St. Mary’s not existing anymore.

 These were just some of my memories, I welcome you to leave some of your own here in the comment section. I know my sisters and brother could tell a thousand stories, my friends, my parents, and people from town could all do the same. It’s hard to see so many good people who are now scrambling to find a new school for their children. Are they going to find somewhere just like St. Mary’s? That would be impossible, but I know they will send their kids somewhere they feel comfortable with and has the same values at St. Mary’s. This is a place with over a hundred years of traditions, service, and history- so it isn’t an easy or pleasant task. Hopefully, the war is not over and St. Mary’s will stay open and continue to serve Gloucester City. And I know my friends, my family, and my community – we are a strong, proud, and fiercely devoted bunch, so I am confident that ol’ St. Mary’s School won’t go down without a fight ^[7]. ^[8]