St. Joseph and Me

I can only admit this now. I was a terrible teacher. 

I'm coming clean at last because I'm retiring. What can they do, fire me? My former students from eons ago are able to testify to my many deficiencies as a young teacher, and I thank them for being loyal to me all these years later.

When I first arrived at Central Catholic as a 22-year-old kid, I didn't have any idea what I was doing. All the student teaching in the world didn't prepare me for my own classroom and the responsibilities of a first year instructor.

GICC 1980 classmates at a 
recent reunion: from left - Jerry Dunn,
Martin Rogers, Steve Ryan

Like every brand new teacher, I agreed to take on any 

available extra duty to get the job. Not only did I teach sophomore English, but I was yearbook and newspaper advisor, Sharon Zavala's assistant volleyball coach, the seventh and eighth grade girls' volleyball, basketball and track coach, and the sophomore class sponsor - which meant selling concessions three or four nights a week.

God knows I tried, but I'm not sure those sophomores learned a dang thing. Thankfully, they were the greatest kids in the world if you were an ill-prepared first year teacher. Jerry Dunn, Colleen Chapman, Jeanie Jablonski, Ellen Dolan, Trish Costello, Pam Willman, Cathy Bockhahn, Pat McGuire, Maureen O'Malley, Pam Maciejewski, Ronny Golka, Shari Lewandowski and Steve Ryan were all students in that wonderful class and were so good to me. They are good friends to this day.

Even as an English major, I'd never taken a single grammar class. At Central Catholic I learned grammar as I taught it, but it took a while.

"I don't get 'who' and 'whom'," the kids would groan in class. 

"Just a minute," I'd say. "I have to use the restroom." Except that I didn't use the restroom. Instead, with book in hand, I ran straight to Sister Margaret Ann down the hall. No matter what she was doing, she'd stop everything and explain the mysteries of grammar to me. She was a language nazi, that dear lady, and taught me so much. I'd pop in regularly a couple of times a week, desperate and pleading.

More of the class of 1980 from 2023 reunion: from left - 
Mike Schmitz, Martin Rogers, Pat McGuire, Karen
Smollen Hooper, Pam Maciejewski Benner, Steve
Ryan, Becky Augustine Schipman, Trish Costello
Curran, Maureen O'Malley Wagoner, John Wardyn
and Ellen Dolan Merrill

I remember one day puzzling over a kid's question about adverb clauses. Stumped, I knew I'd have to make a quick run to Sister Margaret Ann. That evil smart alec Steve Ryan caught me in the act.

"Miss Brown," he drawled, "do you need to visit the restroom?"

My first classroom, ironically, was my husband John's current classroom - the old Physics lab. There was no teacher's desk, only a black-topped scarred old counter at the front of the classroom with a rusty sink in the middle. I didn't care. I loved the big airiness of that room. The only adornment in the place was an ancient framed print of St. Joseph and the Christ Child hanging on the wall. That was it.

Besides the sheer exhaustion of a first year teacher's typical year, there were other bigger challenges in life. My sweet mother Patti Brown had been diagnosed with breast cancer the previous year. I was grateful to be living at home right out of college and to be close to Mom and Dad and my many young siblings. I worried especially about my four youngest brothers and sisters - Terri, Carry, Tommy and Jeff - who were all under 12. Jeff was only six when Mom was diagnosed. My sisters Deb, Mary and Terri were at Central Catholic. Every day I witnessed the hollow sadness in my little siblings' eyes as Mom slowly lost her battle to cancer.

One afternoon after school, weary and full of despair, I happened to glance up at my classroom wall to see Joseph and the Christ Child, and for the first time I was struck by it. I'm sure that painting was as old as Central Catholic. Did Father Naughtin, our GICC founder, choose it? Did he find it discarded in the attic at the Cathedral and believe it would speak to the teenagers who would flood through the doors of the new Central Catholic school?

I only know on that day that I felt the comfort of St. Joseph. Just as he gazed so lovingly on the toddler Jesus encircled in the safety of his arms, so I felt he protected me.

My mother died that year. Somehow we all got through it with the help of so many wonderful people at Central Catholic - our principal Hugh Brandon and his wife Fran, Howard Schumann, teachers Pat and Julie Kayl, Peg Ley, Doris Rempe, Mary Wiles, Sharon Zavala, Fred Northup, and the good Sisters: Sister Margaret Ann, Sister Sue, and Sister Mary Leo. So many people at Central Catholic embraced my little brothers and sisters and helped us look after them. My students, who deserved a far better English teacher, were light and life to me in those dark, bleak days.

Not long after, with schedule changes and the additions of new classes, I moved to a new classroom. In all I moved seven times at Central Catholic. Every time I took St. Joseph from the wall, carted him under my arm, and took him to my next dwelling. He's been with me for 47 years.

Even now he resides above the long double cabinet in my classroom. Just outside my big window, GICC's brand new grade school is nearing completion. As I write this, the pre-school playground is being constructed, and making it all official is the bright new sign - "Central Catholic Elementary School." It could make you cry, that lovely sign.

Photo courtesy of Principal Dr. Jordan
Engle

I'll tell you the truth - I really want to take St. Joseph home with me next month after John and I retire. He's been with me not only through the losses of my mother and father but through the days I met Mr. Howard - the tall, sarcastic history teacher who would charm me off my feet - the births of our children Kenny and Tommy, the deaths and departures of all those old friends who were such bullwarks to me during my days as a bewildered, young teacher, and now the days in which John and I have become the "elders" of the staff. Not a single day has passed at Central Catholic that I didn't have my friend St. Joseph by my side.

I'll leave him here, though. Surely he's comforted seventy years of students who have survived their own bleak days, and now he looks out upon a grade school that will be home to hundreds of pre-schoolers and grade-schoolers. They'll need his comforting ministrations as much as I did.

He needs to stay here. But I'll miss him more than I can say.

Thank you, my constant old friend, and thank you to the many St. Joseph's of Grand Island Central Catholic who helped a struggling young teacher on her way almost 50 years ago.