10/23/20 - Friday Forget-Me-Nots by Jim Silcott

Photo Caption: Sixth Grade Girls Enjoying the Weather and 4 Square.

Dear Our Lady of Peace Family:

Mount Saint Agnes Academy is the only Catholic school on the island colony of Bermuda. It is a K-12 school with a history that goes back to the nineteenth century. Occuping a city block in Hamilton across from St. Theresa Cathedral it draws from students all over the tiny island who come by pink bus and motor scooters. Morning assembly includes the students singing “God Save the Queen” as Bermuda, although largely self-governing, is still crown colony of Great Britain, one of the last outposts of the empire.

I had the opportunity to serve as Mount Saint Agnes’ Principal for two years from 2005-2007. Yes, Bermuda is a beautiful island. Yes, the sand can appear pink when the light hits it just right. Business men do wear suit coats, dress shirts, ties, dress shoes, knee socks and Bermuda shorts. No, it is not the Bahamas but its’ own little land mass, the top of an extinct volcano, 600 miles east of the Carolina coast.

Bermuda is a small country with a population of 50,000 on a small island. It is 24 miles long and two miles wide. It’s not like you can take a drive out of town for the weekend. That feeling of being stuck there, as beautiful a place as it is, is referred to as “rock fever.”

Being the only principal of the only Catholic school on the only island in that area of the Atlantic Ocean, I was a person of note there. I knew the Premier of Bermuda, the U.S. Counsulate and the President of Bermuda College personally. The head of our School Board was the President of the Electric Company which serviced the entire island. As someone who likes to keep a low profile this was, at times, a little disconcerting.

One Saturday night, alone in my apartment watching television I got a call from the assistant principal of the school, Andrea Chambray. “Jim,” she said. “They are talking about you on the radio.”

It seems that a minor disciplinary action I had taken with some students that week became the prime point of discussion on the Saturday night radio call-in show that evening. Everyone was dissecting my actions and decision. People with absolutely no knowledge of the real facts were dishing out alternative facts that no basis in reality. Others were simply bashing the mean old, bad old principal from the States. Rock fever indeed!

I was reminded of that Saturday evening many years ago this past weekend when the Columbus Public Schools Teacher Union Facebook page had one of those color captioned attention seeking headlines on it. “Our Lady of Peace School just quarantined their whole first grade and they are setting up Covid Testing at the Fairgrounds.”

Not sure what to say there. Why do they care about us? What does this have to do with testing at the fairgrounds?  It’s like the classic false syllogism: All birds sing. Taylor Swift sings. Taylor Swift is a bird. I don’t think that they are setting up testing at the Ohio State Fairgrounds because we had to keep our first graders home.

Good news floats like a leaf in a curbside stream of water. It meanders and stops, It is slow moving and slow. Bad news gushes like a burst water pipe, dousing everyone in its path. I understand that. I should be used to that. But sometimes, like the radio show in Bermuda, I just shake my head and say “What?”

The pandemic is still very much an issue in our community and our world. I have no advance knowledge of how this is all going to turn out. I do know that our plan at Our Lady of Peace School is working and that our intent is to continue having students in our school in person whenever we can, and keeping students and staff home for a time when the protocol dictates it.

Thank you to all of our parents who have been wonderfully cooperative about all of this. I know that it is not an easy to task to keep your children home when they are not sick or when their symptoms are mild. Going to the doctor for a runny nose is a pain. I so appreciate that we are working together to keep our school safe. The Diocese of Columbus, of which Our Lady of Peace is a part, is committed to keeping our schools open where our students can learn and see their friends.

I also want to give a shout-out to our eighth grade class. They have been exemplary this year and I know it is not easy for them not to be able to enjoy some of the eighth grade traditions. Hopefully we will be able to have a graduation Mass for them this year!



Unfortunately, this is not going away soon, but next Friday we are one quarter of the way through the school year. Let’s all keep up the good work!

Jim Silcott