Pathways • Summer 2016 • www.DuluthBenedictines.org
5
Sister Lois Ann’s fourth grade put on a play about the Mass. All the girls, she
remembers, liked the handsome boy who played the priest. Sister Barbara
remembers an annual Halloween parade where everyone was in costume. In
the eighth grade she posed as a grand dame and won the coveted prize. For no
particular occasion but periodically, the Sisters of most if not all of the schools
made wonderful taffy suckers in pastel colors—pink, green, crème—that students
could buy. Class picnics to celebrate the end of the school year were also a big hit.
Recess. Some schools had large playgrounds which allowed for outdoor
exercise. Sacred Heart, in the middle of the city, lacked such a playground, so
children jumped rope and played marbles on the sidewalks or narrow grassy
spaces lining them. Sister Claudia relates that every noon recess Monsignor
Byrnes came to the playground and the children “would all run to hold his hand
and follow him like the Pied Piper.”
Special events were securely xed in some memories. Sister Clare Marie’s
rst grade teacher, Sister Benedicta, brought each birthday child a big cookie on
that special day. After Mass on First Fridays, Sunrise Bakery in Hibbing delivered
to Assumption classrooms cocoa and sugared raised doughnuts for breakfast; the
doughnuts according to the number each child had ordered the day before. After
school at Marquette, Sister Augusta taught interested students, including Sister
Agnes, how to crochet.
Interestingly, academics didn’t pop onto
the top of school memories. However, when
talk turned to “schooling,” the conversation
was primarily of language and literature, the
Baltimore Catechism, and music. Sister Lois
recalls excitedly the rst time she actually read,
and that Sister Mary Martin let her take the
book home to read, so proudly, to her parents.
Although Sister Arlene does not remember
sounding out letters from phonics charts
as Sister Jane does, she believes that Sister
Hermina must have been the world’s greatest
teacher of reading because since rst grade she
has been an avid and voracious book lover.
Writing, reading, and visits to the library
are cherished memories. Everyone enjoyed
diagramming sentences and thereby learned
English grammar well. When someone
mentioned the Palmer Method, moving from
printing to script, arms were in the air, mimicking the miles of slanted line and running oval exercises that haunted us,
as well as the sense of being grown up with our rst dips of pens into inkwells.
Almost everyone cherishes the memory of her teacher reading aloud to the class. Stories often settled the children
after noon hour or rewarded good behavior at the end of the day. Sister Agnes loved Clementia’s “Berta and Beth”
stories that Sister Lucy read to her second and third grade; later Agnes checked out the whole Mary Selwyn series
herself from the school library. Sister Clare Marie remembers bi-weekly walks, class by class, the two blocks to
the Cloquet public library. Sister Sarah will never forget Isabelle Thouin, children’s librarian at the Hibbing public
library, who hosted each class during Book Week to display all the new books and magazines. A child could reserve
a n y b o o k , e v e n t h e n e w e s t L a u r a I n g a l l s W i l d e r, t o t a k e o u t b u t o n l y w h e n B o o k We e k w a s o v e r.
Sister Arlene recalls that Sister Mary Martin expected her seventh and eighth-graders to memorize poetry, and
both Sisters Jeanne Ann and Lois Ann remember Miss Lenz, who visited their classes every two weeks to teach them
poetry, to read it with expression, and to memorize it.
Of course, religion played a major role in all curricula. Emphasis was on the Baltimore Catechism; the questions
became more complex as we advanced in grades. We memorized and recited answers, which had to be word perfect.
Sister Agnes was keenly interested in the discussions that followed the recitation, a privilege most of us did not enjoy,
although we all are grateful for having learned well the basic theology of the Church. Diocesan catechetical contests
brought representatives from all the schools to compete in recitation of answers. Sister Clare Marie did Our Lady of
the Sacred Heart proud when she took top honors in the diocesan catechetical contest.
Continued on page 6
Sister Sarah Smedman’s 7th grade Class of 1944. Sister Sarah front row,
third from right.
Sister Barbara Higgins dressed
at Halloween as the grand dame.