On Sunday, I drove down to Belleville, Illinois with Dr. Patricia O'Connell, her mother, Eileen and Frances Farraher. All four of us are State Officers in the Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians, an Irish Catholic Women's Organization. We were going down to support the annual fundraiser of the St. Clair County L.A.O.H. It was a lovely event and well organized. Thouroughly enjoyable!!
Pat was driving and Eileen was her navigator and Fran and I were in the backseat. Fran and I went to school together at both St. Pats and AOL, our mothers were officers in the Women's Guild together and were friends. Now one of the things I like best about Fran is she has an amazing memory, she brought me back to times I had forgotten and I enjoyed my time with her.
One memory that she brought up was about the St. Patricks Day plays. I went to the southside St. Patricks school for Kindergarten and First Grade - we moved up on the bluff for a couple of years - and then back for Fourth through Eighth Grades.
Right after the beginning of the new year, Mary Margaret O'Hern, would come to the school and teach each class Elocution Lessons. Most of the speaking parts were played by Eighth Graders and the other classes came on and off doing a musical number or an appropriate Irish poem that fit in the storyline. Mrs. O'Hern wrote the script, and decided what songs and poems were performed. The Sisters decided which class would do what and practiced during music time in the classroom. (Our brother, Richard - who turns seventy tomorrow - was in first grade and rushed home, burst in the backdoor shouting to Mother: "I have the lead in the St. Patricks Day Play!" "You do?", she asked, knowing that those parts went to older kids. "Yes", was his excited reply, "I lead everybody on the stage and everybody off!")
Next, we then went down to the meeting room in the basement of the school and practiced singing and gestures and then on the Fifteenth of March we walked down to Roosevelt Junior High School where we rehearsed on their stage and then again the next day and that was the sight of our performance for family and friends.
Mary Margaret had jet black hair, was married to an attorney and always smelled slightly of a wee touch of Irish Whiskey. She could be a stern task master and we were all a little in awe of her. She was very attractive - although as I now remember, that black hair sometimes had a little gray around the hairline. She usually wore her hair back with a black headband.
It was a big time for the Scovil kids, because we got a pair of new shoes. Our Easter shoes, that we wore for the performance and couldn't wear again until Resurrection Day itself. I remember surreptitiously getting the - most always - the black patent shoes out and wearing them around the bedroom in that interval between St. Patricks Day and Easter. There was no way I would put them on where my Mother could see me.
I don't remember who had the leads the year I was in Eighth Grade, it wasn't me, I may have had a line or two. I do remember thinking that when I was young and saw the Eighth Graders, that they looked so old and grown up but we didn't seem grown up at all. Another memory is of Jimmy Mason, a classmate, who had an amazing tenor voice, sang "Jerusalem" at the intermission. I have always loved that song.
The Play was always held on the Sixteenth of March and at the end of the evening, Msgr. Patrick O'Culletin, our Pastor, in his lilting Irish brogue, would come on stage and tell us and our parents what a wonderful job we had done and that we had the next day off to a cheering Grade School and polite applause from the parents.
Thanks, Fran, for helping me remember about one of the high points of the Grade School year, The St. Patricks Day Play.
No comments:
Post a Comment