April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
PERSPECTIVE
Save St. Augustine's
St. Augustine's School in Lansingburgh is facing hard times.
During my formative years, everything I needed to know about life, I learned at home and at St. Augustine's. When I was a child in the 1950s and early '60s, the school thrived.
For the children of St. Augustine's parish, the church and school were part of a core trinity that centered our lives and kept us grounded: faith, family and friends. Life lessons at home were reinforced at school. Our religious and academic education in the classroom was supported at home and in the neighborhood.
Tuition was $5 a month per child, with a discount for large families. At the time, that was a struggle for some families. There were 50 students in each class, two classes per grade. The school was staffed by Sisters of St. Joseph: dedicated women in black serge, with wimples, starched bibs and rosary beads that always alerted us to their presence before we could see them.
The sisters were strict. Some could have been professional baseball pitchers, getting the attention of a talking child in the back row with one toss of a chalk-filled eraser without missing a beat. We were also sure they really did have eyes in the back of their heads, as they seemed to see everything!
Through it all, in that pre-Vatican-II era, we learned the Baltimore Catechism by heart. We learned discipline. We learned to share and to help one another. We received a first-rate education in spite of the large class size. We made lifelong friends.
Because the values the sisters taught us in school were reinforced at home, what happened in school stayed in school, unless a note from home was required.
For assemblies and Mass, we traveled in two straight, silent lines, like a scene from a "Madeline" children's story. We dutifully stood, knelt and sat in unison to the sound of sister's clicker.
My generation came of age as the changes made by Vatican II were being implemented. The Ten Commandments were still in force, but we learned about a God who loves all of us unconditionally. We learned about the plight of the poor and about social injustice. We were encouraged to live Gospel values not as a set of unyielding rules and regulations, but within the context of our daily lives.
It was a fascinating time. The sisters now wore street clothes; the Mass was now in English. Parish priests took off their Roman collars to play baseball in the park, basketball in the gym and even get a good soaking at car wash fundraisers for CYO basketball.
Augustinian Fathers James Martinez and Eugene DelConte modeled Gospel values in their interactions with us; but, most important of all, they listened to our teenage concerns. The children of St. Augustine's, learned, played and prayed together, forging friendships that have endured the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, and the challenges of our adult lives.
We lost our innocence, as did the nation, during the Age of Aquarius, as the Vietnam War filled our television screens. We buried brothers and friends. We danced to rock-'n-roll and the folk songs of the era that called us to make the world a more tolerant, just and peaceful place for the next generation.
We embraced the values we had learned and spent our adult lives following through as teachers, doctors and nurses, as social workers, public servants and more. Some accepted a calling to religious life. Others quietly modeled what they had learned at St. Augustine's in their homes or as volunteers in the community.
Our parents planted the seeds of faith at home and sent us to St. Augustine's, where those seeds blossomed into our life experiences. Since the Civil War era, generations of Lansingburgh Catholics have given from sometimes meager coffers so their children could get a solid faith-based education and become good citizens of the world.
It is time for this generation to step up and preserve this sacred institution for those who will follow in our footsteps.[[In-content Ad]]
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