First Day At Boarding School

The first day of boarding school was a culture shock for me. I was still just a ten year old kid who had lost his Daddy 9 months previous to arriving at Morris and, to me, it appeared that I was beginning to lose my mom. I didn't have clue how fortunate I was but I eventually found out how smart she was for sending me and how lucky I was to go.

After meeting Brother Cyprian Hill, a Franciscan who was in charge of the school, I went to the boys dormitory and was assigned a bed. I'd never seen 50 beds in a single room but learned rapidly that it was, in it's own way, kinda cool.

Even though I'd heard great stories from the time my Uncle Charles and Uncle Joe was there, I had a different first impression. I walked into the boys bathroom at the gym and to my amazement, I ran into a gorilla. There was a huge guy shaving in one of the lavatories. His name was Falici and he looked like he'd just arrived from Al Capone's house. He was in the 9th grade and had hair on his back. Holy Moses, I thought.

After a quick pit stop, I went back to the gym and saw another strange sight. There were strange looking humans there. They weren't anything like the people I'd seen before. There were boys there from Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, Costa Rica and even Cuba. I didn't know it at the time but was happy to learn that they were actually from the wealthy elite class of South Americans whose parents had sent them there to get an education and the discipline that was impossible to get in their own Countries. I soon became friends with all of them even though, during my first impression, I thought they looked more like inmates than cool guys to go to school with.

Not long after that, I met a kid who arrived at Morris as the result of a Plea Bargain deal with a judge in Chicago. I don't remember his name but I do remember that he'd been caught pissing in the water tower at the Baby Ruth plant. As it turned out, he was more of a prankster than a gangster and all of the kids eventually proved to be great school mates except one. His was from Chicago too and his name was Saparito. He was a bully and being bigger than I was, he picked on me off and on during my first year there.

Throughout the year, I began to learn the ins and outs of boarding school. The teachers were all men of the cloth and there wasn't a single nun anywhere. In addition to liking the class room, I began to like the idea of doing some of the chores that the kids had to do at a self supportive school. By that I mean, we had a dairy, a hay farm, a boiler room that generated the steam to heat the entire school, a huge swimming pool, a full sized gymnasium, and a well stocked library that contained books of every pilot that became heroes in World War II. Before I ever made it through the fist year, I'd read the accounts of Dick Bong, Joe Foss, Gabby Gabreski, Zempke's Wolf Pack and Butch O'Hare. They reminded me of Joe Messina and sometimes I would get homesick for the Downtown Airport.

One of the Brothers was a history nut and taught us a lot about the American Indian. He showed us a map that depicted some mountains where an Indian tribe used to have "look outs".  They were placed there to keep an eye on the areas east of the school to make sure that the Indians coming from Memphis westward weren't coming to invade or hunt their food stocks. He had the best collection of artifacts I'd ever seen including those that I saw at Subiaco.

In any event, despite a great education and a very structured life style, I missed my family, home and my buddies from kindergarten and grade school.

When winter time came, they took us squirrel hunting. We weren't going on a hunt for food, we were going to catch the little ones so we could raise them as pets. All the kids did that but not all were successful in catching one to raise. I was lucky and found a nest on my first try. I climbed the tree and was amazed at what I saw. When we first caught them, we called them pinkies because they still had their eyes closed and weren't yet covered with fur. The Brothers explained to us that the Arkansas winters were harsh and many of the babies would never make it during that time. When I went home for the Easter break for a holiday visit, I took my squirrel with me and went back to my old grade school to see my buddies before they took off for the holiday. I had the squirrel on my shoulder and would alternate his location from there to my shirt pocket. It wasn't the return of St. Francis of Assisi but the kids were blown away by the fact that I had a trained squirrel.

Toward the end of the year, the Brothers took us for an overnight camping trip to Letona Bluffs. It was rock star cool. We climbed mountains, explored caves, went frog gigging and were given a huge history lesson about the Indians who had lived there 100 years before we arrived. We had inner tubes and floated down the river. It was the NUTS and we all loved it.

Despite the many really good times there, I still missed home and managed to talk my mother into letting me come home and attending Jesuit during my 8th grade year. I was sick of Saparito beating my ass on one too many occasions and I wanted to return to the luxuries of living in Broadmore Subdivision and Shreveport.

I'll have to stop now as it's 7 a.m. Friday and I have a boat load of chores to do including lunch at the Petroleum Club with friends. I hope this first year report has given you a sample of what it was like to lose a father at age 10, go off to boarding school and effectively lose two sisters, a brother and my mom. Despite that awful sounds of that, I have more to explain and tell you why I thanked my mother for sending me there until the day she left us. Overall, it was the best thing that happened to me during that time of my youth. 

More to come.