3/11/22 - Friday Forget-Me-Nots by Jim Silcott

Photo Caption: Lenten promise.

Dear Our Lady of Peace Family,

I was assistant principal at Bishop Watterson on September 11, 2001 teaching a drama class in the Little Theatre when Russ Catalfamo, the maintenance man, told me about the first plane flying into the tower. That morning we followed the news in the main office when the gravity of that day became clear. I remember remarking to myself, “The world has just changed.” And indeed it did.

On Friday, March 13, 2020 I had missed school that Monday through Thursday with a touch of pneumonia. I was back at Our Lady of Peace to close the week when it was announced by Governor Dewine that all of the K-12 schools in Ohio were closing for an extended spring break of three weeks. Students liked the sound of more vacation than usual. Teachers, at first, considered it like a snow day; an opportunity to maybe sleep in, relax and enjoy some kid free time. On that day, unlike 9/11, I didn’t think that the whole world had just changed.

As the long spring break turned into having the building empty for the rest of the year it did suddenly become clear that the whole world had just changed. Our teachers, God love them, pivoted to doing as best as they good with the new world of on-line learning. Parents, God love them, had to adjust to having their school aged children not at school but in their home. Many of those same parents found themselves working along side their children at their jobs. And our students, God love them, attended those zoom classes, doing the best that they could to adapt to the new reality.

There was so much we didn’t know that spring of 2020. Do we wear a mask or not? Do we wipe down our groceries? Do we put our mail in a plastic bag for three days before opening it (“Sorry the payment for our bill was late. It was in quarantine.”). Many of us became friends with Urgent Care facilities which was one of the only places that you could get tested. All of a sudden we were separated from our friends, our extended family, our workmates and classmates.

I was in school every day that spring holding the proverbial fort down. I taught myself how to make You Tube videos so that we could still pray together and announce Tiger Tributes and birthdays. In the afternoons I rode my bicycle. Traffic in the city back then was equivalent to the volume of a Christmas day, but the weather was better. I got into a good routine with that-until a blue van at the corner of Summit and Chittenden made an illegal right turn, shattering my collarbone and breaking four of my ribs.

That summer of 2020 we assembled a group of teachers and parents and staff to figure out how to keep the school open, each and every day, during the 2020-2021 school year. Iur community came together. Our middle school and special teachers travelled class to class. Our students settled into one room not only for the academic day but for lunch as well, being released only for physical education class and recess. Masks were now mandatory. But we got through our days with a can-do attitude. I couldn’t be prouder of the Our Lady of Peace family.

By the end of that school year, we thought we were clear of it. But to quote Al Pacino in The Godfather Part III, “Just when I thought I was out of it, they pulled me back in.” Delta and Omicron came along.

Now, on the two year anniversary of that March 13th date, we do really seem to be, for the most part, looking at Covid from the rear view mirror. But just as 9/11 still impacts us today in many ways, the significance of 3/13: medically, economically, politically and socially, has changed the world in ways we can’t yet fully comprehend or appreciate.

I’ll let the doctors and historians figure out the big issues and changes wrought from our two year adventure. Educationally, I don’t think the full impact of these past three school years on our students will be known until they are adults. I am hoping that in our little corner of the world on Dominion Blvd. we helped our children to keep learning, keep laughing, even through the masks, and keep facing the world with the glass half full rather than half empty. I would love to see our second graders, who have never known formal schooling without the spectre of Covid, come back to our school in 20 years and teach a history lesson to the second grade class of 2042 about “those days.”

As we go through this weekend and head into our not yet spring break please remember the strength and resilience of our school community and hold each other in prayer. Our Lady of Peace is a strong and wonderful place.



Jim Silcott