Goodbye, GICC

The last day of school was Friday, and I didn't cry once. 

Not when I hugged the kids goodbye. Not when I cleaned out my mailbox. Not even when I spotted the can of Coke Mr. Lowry left on my desk. 

The thing about crying is that once you start, you can almost never stop. That's why I had to wait until Sunday - when no one else but me would be in the building. There was unfinished business to take care of, and Principal Jordan Engle kindly allowed me to keep my keys until I had completed one final task. I had to say goodbye to all the good folks I started with at GICC. 

Once upon a time, I was the new kid. Sixteen years old and fresh from Denver, I first entered the halls of GICC with my brothers Joe and Mick in 1971. Dad's business transfer to Grand Island, Nebraska, was a cruel trick, we grumbled. Snatched from the only home, church and school we'd ever known in Denver, our seven youngest siblings and we had been thrust into the Middle of Nowhere hundreds of miles from everybody we knew and loved. Even before I stepped foot in Central Catholic, I decided to hate it.

Until very gradually, I didn't.

In fact, I didn't hate it so much that I came back after I graduated from Kearney State College to teach. Mom was sick and dying, and I only wanted to be with my family. It was an answer to prayer to be able to come back to the familiar old high school I had unwillingly grown to love.

At 22-years-old, I was the youngest teacher at Central Catholic. Pat and Julie Kayl immediately took me under their wing, and Principal Hugh Brandon and his wife Fran were so kind to me. My favorite teacher from high school, Peg Ley, was still there as was my old history teacher Fred Northup. Howard Schumann was the new athletic director, and Sharon Zavala had recently been named head volleyball coach. Harry the Janitor, bow-legged and bent, pushed his mop slowly and deliberately through the hallways.

Sister Margaret Ann tutored me through the grammar lessons I was required to teach sophomores. Sisters Sue and Mary Leo managed the office, and Tom Wetzel strode through the gym in his mesh shirt. Bookkeeper Beata Moore reigned in her little office upstairs next to the girls' bathroom. Kay Janzen and Elaine Wieck started their first year at Central Catholic right along with me. We learned the ropes together back in 1977. Down the hall from my own classroom, I could hear Mrs. Janzen alerting her math students to a new concept with her own special signal.

"Bells and whistles!" she'd call out. "Bells and whistles!"

Dr. Elaine Wieck, tall and elegant, was a premier reading teacher and so gifted that she actually taught our students Japanese. Both those women were adored by the kids.

I'm so thankful that Julie Kayl, my best friend in the world, is still with us. Because of her retinitis pigmentosa, she can't see a damn thing. But it doesn't prevent her from puttering in her garden from dawn to dusk. Peggy Ley is 99-years-old living with her wonderful son RJ and daughter-in-law Barb in Arizona, and we speak frequently. She can't see either, but she's still beautiful and sharp as a tack. Hugh Brandon resides in Lincoln with his lovely wife Mary - Fran died four years ago - and follows all the events of his Omaha kids and grandkids. Doris Rempe still remains active with Teammates, PEO and her grandchildren. Howard Schumann, thank God, still makes regular appearances at GICC and even helps coach basketball.

The rest of those wonderful friends from my first year at GICC - Pat Kayl, Fred Northup, Sister Margaret Ann, Sister Sue, Sister Mary Leo, saintly Mary Wiles, Beata Moore, Kay Janzen, Elaine Wieck and Harry - are all gone. I think of them often and hope they're keeping an eye out for Central Catholic from Heaven.

Last Sunday I said goodbye to them. 

"You'd be proud of this old place," I assured them strolling silently to each of their classrooms. "The new grade school's finished, and that old leak in the gym ceiling, Pat?" I reminded him. "It's finally fixed!" Poor Mr. Kayl waged battle with that leak for years.

Before I turned in my keys, I walked down to my own classroom. And that's when I cried. On my white board was one last message from my good friend down the hall, James Lowry. Somehow, in all the last day commotion from Friday, I'd overlooked it.

"I am going to miss you," it said. "JL". 

It hasn't escaped me that in 47 years I went from being the youngest teacher in the building to almost the oldest. Those wonderful friends I started with are gone, but James Lowry and all our young colleagues - many who could be my children - have become every bit as important.

My final stop was the old school office - where Principal Brandon used to smoke behind his door, Sister Sue shushed us when it was time for Big Bucks Bingo, and Sister Mary Leo searched the trash cans for scraps of paper. 

I laid my school keys on our principal's desk, locked the office door behind me, and took a long last look down the Central Catholic hallway with its ancient scuffed tile - the same tile my classmates and I trudged over more than 50 years ago. Then I quietly departed to go home to John.

Long ago, on that warm afternoon in September when the Brown family first arrived in Grand Island, Nebraska, my brothers and sisters and I thought it was the end of the world. We'd been driving for seven hours in the old brown station wagon. My little brother Tommy and sister Carry were squeezed in the crack between the second and third seats, and Mom was holding our infant brother Jeff on her lap. There were no seat belt laws or child restraining seats in 1971. We were ten tired kids dying to get out of that hot vehicle. Dad, however, insisted on driving us downtown. A sea of Nebraska red filled every store front in pure anticipation of that 1971 season. We'd never seen anything like the wild enthusiasm of Nebraskans for football.

Next, we went to Central Catholic. 

I remember how Dad pulled into the circle drive and all of us craned our necks to stare up at the sign - Central Catholic High School. Sick with fear and uncertainty, I nevertheless fervently promised myself that one day, when I was old and had money, I'd move straight back to Denver where I belonged.

I didn't know then - none of us knew - what GICC would eventually mean to us. When our mother died a few years later, the school folded us in its arms - especially my little sisters Deb, Mary and Terri - and helped us to heal. It's because of Grand Island Central Catholic that I have my smart-alec husband John, my children, a community that I love, and the best friends I will ever have in this life.

My brother Rick once reminded us how fortunate we were to move to Grand Island and to become part of the Central Catholic community.

"We were so sad to leave Denver," he remembers, "but when we moved to Grand Island, we were really just coming home."

He was so right. Central Catholic has always been home.

It always will be.

Goodbye, my wonderful old school.