9/13/24 - Friday Forget-Me-Nots by Jim Silcott

Photo Caption: Gym Class

Dear Our Lady of Peace Family,

As we celebrate our Parish with our Fall Fest, I thought I would share a reminiscence of the history of Our Lady of Peace from Jim Drake: 

We moved from Holy Name to Our Lady of Peace parish in December 1953, midway through the 1953-54 school year. At that time, the current school was already housing grades 1-8, but the second church (our present gymnasium) had not been completed as yet, and therefore Masses, first communions, confessions, etc., were held in the Army-surplus barracks that Father Foley had acquired when the Diocese, then under Bishop Michael J. Ready, had created the new parish and had named Fr. Foley its founding pastor. 

I remember my first day of school at OLP, in Grade 3 as the proverbial “new kid.” The Principal, Sr. M. Lucille, brought Julie and me to our classrooms and introduced us to the nuns who were our new teachers, and also to the other kids in our grades. 

At that time, the first and second grades had separate classrooms, but the other grades shared classrooms—grades 3 and 4 were in one classroom, as were grades 5 and 6. Grades 7 and 8 were also in one classroom. 

I can remember the names of the nuns I had as teachers from 1953-1958, when I graduated from elementary school: Sr. M. Dominic (Grade 3), Sr. Maria Goretti (Grade 4), Sr. M. Cephas (Grades 5 and 6), and Sister M. Macaria (Grades 7 and 8). By 1956-57, Sr. Macaria had succeeded Sr. Lucille as Principal. 

Although the parish had a custodian (James Ramey, whose kids went to OLP), there were no janitors because Fr. Foley assigned pupils from grades 5 through 8 to clean the school cafeteria, the classrooms, and the church floors. He named his student-janitorial service “the Rockpile,” and any student in those grades who caused trouble in school were also assigned to the Rockpile. 

The weekly Rockpile sessions began at 9:00 a.m. every Saturday, and ended about 1:00 p.m. after Foley had inspected every room and, if he judged them to be clean enough, would “reward” the student-janitors (two girls and two boys, each pair assigned in alphabetical order, plus any other students who had been put on the Rockpile by their teachers) with a Coke and a bag of Fritos or potato chips from the cafeteria. 

The Rockpile was year-round, so during the summer, when your turn came in alphabetical order, you spent Saturday morning being a student janitor. After the second church was completed, that part of our student-janitorial work was comparatively pleasant because the new church was air-conditioned. The school was not—and to save money, Fr. Foley had the heating system turned off from Friday evening through Sunday evening, which made it decidedly cold to be cleaning tables and chairs and sweeping floors during the wintertime. 

Every few years, maybe every three years, we “Rockpilers” worked with Fr. Foley during the summer to paint the interior walls and exterior trim of the school. A few weeks before the painting was to begin, he would announce from the pulpit that any parishioners who had cans of interior and exterior enamel paint, even cans that were half-used, were to bring them to church and deposit them with him and custodian Ramey. 



When the day came to do the painting (usually two or three successive Saturday mornings), we Rockpilers would help him sort the paint cans into two groups, exterior and interior, after which we (and he) would pour the cans into two galvanized washtubs—one for the exterior cans, and the other tub for the interior cans. Whatever color resulted from mixing the array of paints in each tub became the color of the interior walls and the exterior trim of the school and its basement cafeteria—which doubled as the then-illegal bingo headquarters. 

One Rockpile assignment all of us hated would take place on the first warm, dry Saturday morning in the late spring. The large, open field between the DeSantis greenhouses and the north wall of the church and the rectory next door to the church, had pebbles and rocks that had accumulated all over that field during the winter months. 

Before Fr. Foley could mow the field (which he always did himself—we weren’t allowed near his two power mowers), every rock and pebble had to be removed from that field so that it could be used for baseball practice and for Boy Scout drills (Troop 132 was the OLP Boy Scout troop). 

All of us hated that Rockpile assignment because we were given a cafeteria cart and had to meticulously find, pick up, and place on that cart even the smallest pebble in that field. Fr. Foley would inspect the field afterward, and if he spotted one pebble that we missed, he would make us push that cart up and down that field until he was satisfied that we had been through enough. 

As harsh and unpredictable as Fr. Foley could be, all of us who went to OLP admired and even liked him, then as well as now, because he was always fair to us. 

I don’t know how many times we were told in grade school that unless we said the rosary every day and said this and that prayer over and over, the Blessed Mother would no longer be able to intercede with Christ, and the atheistic Soviet Union would annihilate the entire U.S. with hydrogen bombs. 

All of us remember time after time when Fr. Foley would barge into classrooms and tell us stories about the trouble he had gotten into as an adolescent in Boston. One that we especially remember was about him and some of his friends throwing rocks at penitentiary guards and calling them “screws.” 

Years later, we realized that he would tell us these stories in class to make us realize that if he had done improper things as an adolescent, and he was now a priest and pastor, we weren’t going to be consigned to Hell for breaking windows, cursing, getting in fistfights, etc. He was all about giving and taking punishment if and when it was clearly warranted, but afterward being sorry for it, being forgiven, and then having a fresh start.

It is good to know our history! 

Jim Silcott