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. class of 1951 .
. class of 1952 .
8.5.09
The Girls from Ames has an Aquin Connection
The newly released book by Jeffrey Zaslow (coauthor of "The Last Lecture"), "The Girls from Ames" has a link to Aquin. Madonna (Fishe) Highland graduated from Aquin in 1947. She is the mother of Cathy Highland, one of the 11 girls from Ames. Cathy is a makeup artist in Beverly Hills, CA.
Cathy's uncles, are twin brothers Keith & Ken Fishe who graduated from Aquin in 1952. Cathy's aunt, is Nancy Fishe Robertson who graduated in 1957.
Reports are that everyone that has read the book, absolutely loved it. Once they started reading, they couldn't put it down.
Click here for the book's website.
Click here to watch the book release at Border's in Ames.
. class of 1953 .
. class of 1954 .
. class of 1955 .
. class of 1956 .
Sr. Patricia A. Bauch, OP, class of 1956, celebrated her Golden Jubilee at St. Thomas Parish, Freeport, on Sunday, July 19, 2009. Following is her 'Recollections of Childhood', excerpted from the St. Thomas Parish, July 12, 2009, Bulletin.
I have fond memories of growing up in St. Thomas Aquinas among dedicated and saintly women and men, intimate childhood playmates, and intelligent and talented teenage friends. I still experience the joys of membership as the daughter of my 91-year old mother, Eva Bauch, and sister Mickey Martin and her son Danny, who are still parishioners. When I enter the church with them I always notice the statue of Our Lady on which I bestowed a floral wreath as the eighth grade 'May Crowning Queen' following a procession of the school children singing 'O Mary We Crown You with Blossoms Today.' The sisters anxiously stood around the church making sure we all 'got it right,' given our many afternoons of practice. It seems we were always practicing for processions and ladies in the parish washing, starching, and pressing our white gowns--Holy Thursday (we each carries a lily), the Feast of Christ the King, as well as the May procession. And, don't forget those red beanies!
The Stations, too, bring back thoughts about class stations of the cross during Lent plus Friday evening Stations of the Cross again! I think we spent half our young lives in church. Saturday afternnon was always confession time. Later, when a new young pastor arrived, he started a parish bulletin which he brought over to the then church and school building and left on the radiator in the lobby on his way to the confessional. Although it didn't quite happen this was, Bishop O'Neill still likes to joke that for my penance, I had to take the typed carbon upstairs to the school's ditto machine and run off whatever number of copies were needed for distribution after the Sunday Masses. As the parish grew and the bulletins got longer, the smudging, rerunning, and folding process became a family affair!
Looking back, St. Thomas of the 1940s and 1950s was a second home to me. Besides attending school and Mass every day (and Mass on Saturdays and Sundays), as a youngster you soon learned that you belonged, not just to the school, but to the parish as well. There were always generous adults volunteering their time to clean the church, altar, and sanctuary; wash windows, paint, and mow the grass; and in winter to plow and shovel snow. As young girls, we were often invited to help, whatever the job. My four sisters and I sang daily for Maud Brown, the parish organist, even in summers and Satrdays until we eventually became old enough to play the organ. In those days we sang a Requiem Latin Mass every day except Sundays and Holy Days when we sang the 'Mass of the Angels.' If Fr. McIsaac thought we were singing off key or began a selection too soon, he did not wait until the end of Mass to tell us, but did so in front of the whole congregation. During my first year in high school, the sisters arranged my classes so that I could play the organ and sing at the 8:00am Mass at St. Thomas before I began my long walk to Aquin High School in time for my second class period, the first having been my study hall.
Maud Brown did not just teach us to sing and play the organ, but she and the other adult volunteers befriended us, such as Bernice and Vince Labinski, Mrs. Raines, and our faithful 'block rosary' group--Mrs. Fusco, Stella Luedeke, the Scotts (I know I am leaving out lots of people), as we earnestly prayed weekly for 'the conversion of Russia'. (It was serious business!) We had to hurry and get our homework done before we could set out in the early evening to whatever home in our neighborhood was hosting the rosary that night. We had faithful and creative Brownie and Girl Scout leaders (Mrs. Sullivan, Mrs. Scanlan and others) who opened their homes to us one night a week.
In those days, getting around the parish or the town was always 'on foot,' or later by bicycle. It didn't seem a big deal to have to walk from St. Thomas Aquinas to St. Mary's Convent for our piano lessons, each Bauch girl and brother Fred being the last student of each day for a string of music sisters over the years, since St. Thomas did not have a music teacher. One year, Sr. Marie Theodore and later Sr. Marie Eugene, wrote piano pieces for our recital so that three or four of us could play together at the same piano. Practicing at home became quite a laugh! If you were pushed off the piano bench at one end, you just went around and got on the other end while each child adapted to the change by shifting from one part of the music to another. Unbelievably, we had two pianos in the same room at home, which allowed us to begin our practicing schedules before school in the mornings with the last two practicing into the evening. (I don't know how my parents put up with it!) Recital night at St. Mary's was a big school and parish event and we who were from St. Thomas did not want to be outperformed! Even the Sisters from Aquin came for the event, a legitimate reason in those days for the sisters to be out in the evening.
Of course, in those days the sisters did not drive, so parishioners took turns driving them to the grocery store, doctors, dentists, library or wherever they had to go. When we acquired a shiny new maroon and blond wood station wagon, my mother took her turn, too, and later I became a driver. The sisters were always a challenge in trying to see how many of them could fit in our station wagons. (No seat belts in those days!) I often made trips to Aquin, or St. Mary's, or St. Thomas, or all three, depending on who phoned for a ride. Memorial Day Mass with Monsignor Conelly at Calvary Cemetery was always a big deal, for which people from across the town gathered. I remember trying to get the car as close as possible to the altar so the sisters would not have to walk so far, but it seems I never quite got them all collected early enough and it if had been raining the night before, they had to walk through mud, which was about how I felt.
The sisters tried to keep their decorum in public, but sometimes things got out of hand and everyone enjoyed a good laugh. For my senior recital, I played a jazzy, clip-clop piece entitled 'The Donkey Serenade.' Another girl played two pianos with me for Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," but what brought down the house was my pink high-heeld shoe tumbling from the top edge of the stage down to the bottom of a half dozen steps or more, which I had to turn around and retrace my steps to retrieve just prior to my donkey piece. The irony of it didn't hit me right away. I could not figure out why the sisters, sitting in the front rows were all shaking with blunted laughter. You could just see this ripple effect of heaving black as they lowered their heads! Just like one Sunday morning when Fr. O'Neill began his homily with the words, "In this morning's gospel" causing the sisters in unison to stand, followed by the entire congregation. Fr. O'Neill, addressing the sisters bluntly stated: "I already read this morning's gospel." We were sitting respectfully a couple of rows behind the sisters and I think they did not stop laughing during the entire sermon. I know Fr. O'Neill was quite aggravated with them, which I am sure the more they thought about it, the funnier it became!
We spent so much time in the convents, especially at St. Mary's that one day my sister Kay asked me if we were going to pray the Office, too, after I instructed the younger children about each one's "duty" on Saturdays when my parents were at work--a term the sisters used to refer to their convent chores. Sometimes a sister would have to dust around one of us in the late afternoon if we were waiting for our piano lesson or our parents to pick us up. If the car was late in coming, we got to listen to the sisters chanting the Office as the first wafts fo their evening meal drifted into the sitting room.
At the time I entered the convent at the Mound to become a Sinsinawa Dominican Sister, I think it was the fun, humor, and playfulness I found in the sisters that I admired the most. They were always playing jokes on one another in which sometimes an unwitting student became a part as he or she was sent on a trusted errand carrying a dubious note from one classroom to another. (We only had three classrooms in those days, with two or three grades in a room for grades 1-8.) The sisters lived at Aquin and had to eat their noon meal at school since St. Thomas did not acquire a convent for them until the mid 1950s, which some of us helped clean and prepare for them alongside the women in the parish. The boisterous talk and laughing that sometimes came from their school kitchen (where the ditto machine was housed) was delighful, but if a student had come back to school early after our long lunch break, the sisters could become quite serious in a flash! As we got to know them better as individuals, it was a strain not to smile at their attempts to discipline some rowdy student, of which there were very few.
Today as I walk through our large dining room at the Mound, it is difficult to get from one end to the other, as my mother will tell you. It wasn't just the sisters from St. Thomas, but Aquin and St. Mary's as well, that the Bauch kids all knew and loved, who are now retired at the Mound. And then there were nine more Bauch kids coming up along the way from St. Thomas through Aquin, the children of parishioners Bob and Rosemary Bauch, my cousins. The sisters ask me about them, too. Greeting everyone with Freeport connections takes quite a while! Through the years, the sisters who liveand taught in Freeport often told me that it was their 'favorite mission.'
I am grateful to this parish--the priests who served here over the years, the sisters who taught in the school, and the parishioners who gave of themselves for the school kids and for the parish. All were prime examples of what it meant to be a faith-filled community in the days before we talked about such. The kids, too, were special as we were such a small age group (there were six in my eighth grade graduating class!) that everyone knew one another and many have stayed in touch or renewed those connections recently. A wonderful example of what it meant to grow up here with a small, intimate group of friends, was demonstrated recently by my sister Cherie's last supper with her Freeport girl friends who cooked her favorite meal and brought it to Provena. They all talked and laughed about their happy times together just a few days before my sister died. (If my friends don't show up for my last supper, I hope Cherie's friends will!)
Those who have touched my life as I was growing up here, and especially my parents and siblings, in some way or other contributed to who I am today. I celebrate the 50 years since I took my first vows as a Dominican sister mindful of from where I have come and I am grateful. Thank you to those who have passed away over the years and many of you who are still around. Didn't we have fun! That's what I remember as I celebrate with you and keep you all in my prayers.
. class of 1957 .
8.5.09
The Girls from Ames has an Aquin Connection
The newly released book by Jeffrey Zaslow (coauthor of "The Last Lecture"), "The Girls from Ames" has a link to Aquin. Madonna (Fishe) Highland graduated from Aquin in 1947. She is the mother of Cathy Highland, one of the 11 girls from Ames. Cathy is a makeup artist in Beverly Hills, CA.
Cathy's uncles, are twin brothers Keith & Ken Fishe who graduated from Aquin in 1952. Cathy's aunt, is Nancy Fishe Robertson who graduated in 1957.
Reports are that everyone that has read the book, absolutely loved it. Once they started reading, they couldn't put it down.
Click here for the book's website.
Click here to watch the book release at Border's in Ames.
. class of 1958 .
. class of 1959 .
Peter Shianna has another book published. Read all about it!http://www.petershianna.com/books.html
Love Tag
A drama of pride, ambition and betrayal, LOVE TAG ultimately celebrates courage, love and hope.
What readers have said about LOVE TAG—
“It has been a long time since I’ve lost myself so completely in a novel. Shianna is a brilliant writer, a masterful weaver of words. His characters are blood-and bones real. There is not a false note between the covers of his beautifully crafted book.”
Esther Luttrell, author of Murder in the Movies
Take Off—A Time for War, A Time for Love.
While millions around the globe fight the battles of World War II, Max Bonner, a young pilot, fights his battles on the home front.
What critics and readers have said about Take Off—
“Sharp-edged and passionate in its intensity, Take Off is most assuredly a maturation novel reminiscent of Faulkner at his best. A first novel, Take Off shines with the promise of a bright future for its author, Peter Shianna. The writing is crisp, clean and refreshingly spare. Congratulations, Mr. Shianna; this book will be read and remembered!”
—Under the Covers Book Reviews
“Peter Shianna captures the feel of wartime America in Take Off. A sparse, straightforward narrative style pulls the reader into Max’s world and breathes life into the characters who shape that world.”
—4 Stars! – Affaire de Coeur
. class of 1960 .
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