September 18, 2002
Old school chums reunite
St. Francis class of 1939 holds small reunion
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Raised during the Great Depression, veterans of World War II both at home and overseas and the generation that sparked the post-war boom, members of the St. Francis High School Class of 1939 gathered Saturday evening for a reunion.
Sharing dinner and friendship at the South City Limits restaurant, six members of the graduating class, two spouses and one grown daughter reminisced about their formative years together. The group, which was 25 strong at graduation seven decades ago, now numbers 11. They have met annually since their 50th reunion in 1989, which also coincided with St. Francis High School's anniversary of their first graduating class in 1889.
Not able to attend this year were: Rosemary Akey of Detroit, Leona Ashley of Grand Rapids, Barbara Cook of St. Charles, Isabel Fritz of Valencia, Calif. and Robert McDermott of Traverse City.
Dorothy Fifarek of Traverse City attended St. Francis schools from first through twelfth grades. There was not tuition at the time; families in the parish who regularly gave donations on Sunday could attend for free.
Fifarek said members of her class formed lasting friendships, perhaps because of both hard times and good times they shared. From Latin declensions to Latin Mass, the students forged bonds for life.
"I was aware of the Great Depression, knew that my parents were sacrificing, as were all parents," Fifarek said, noting good times include toboggan parties, ice skating and gatherings at classmates' homes for games and snacks. "We endured shortages of food or gasoline we couldn't get, but school was a happy time for me."
"We were a class that did a lot of things together and throughout the years, we've stayed close," she noted.
Norma Rasmussen was a country girl who came to St. Francis High School in the ninth grade. Previously, she attended the Maple Grove one-room schoolhouse on the Old Mission Peninsula. Some of her cousins went to St. Francis, so she did not feel totally left out, but her distance from the school precluded extracurricular activities.
"I lived in the country and didn't really participate in a lot of things," she said, adding that her mother also attended St. Francis, with her parents reimbursing the convent for her room and board with a side of beef.
Rasmussen contrived rides to town, sometimes catching rides with the husband of the Maple Grove teacher, sometimes with a peninsula resident who had an old school bus to the shuttle kids. By her senior year, however, the parochial school students were allowed to ride public school buses. She also stayed with relatives during the week, exchanging baby-sitting for room and board.
Despite the hardships, she remembers her high school years as happy times.
"We didn't have TV, hot lunches, school buses, computers, sports in the lower grades, vending machines and very few cars," said Rasmussen, a lifelong resident. "I feel like we had an excellent education, we didn't have a lot of choice but to study."
Both Fifarek and Rasmussen said that the Dominican nuns who taught all the grades ran a tight ship. Students always stood when either a nun or priest entered a room and they stood whenever called on in class. Daily mass, a strict uniform code (ties and shirts for boys, navy dresses with starched collar and cuffs for girls) and a heavy homework load kept students out of trouble.
Students would be sent home for any infraction of the dress code, Fifarek recalled. One young man used that to his advantage: if he did not have his homework done, he would remove his tie and get sent home.
"We really didn't dare act up," Rasmussen said.
At that time, nuns taught all the classes. Students in all grades shared a two-story building, located at Cass and 11th Street. The first floor housed first through eighth grades, with two grades to a classroom. The second floor held the high school students, where a different nun taught each subject.
Some students took classes not available at St. Francis at Traverse City Senior High, which was located in the current Central Grade School building. While St. Francis High School is now a football powerhouse, the class of 1939 did not have a team. Basketball was big, though, and three cheerleaders kept the spirit high.
"We had an excellent basketball team and one year they won either regionals or state," Fifarek said. "It was a big thrill for the school."
By their senior year, World War II was already looming and students in the school were well aware of it. Fifarek remembers the sermon by a Monsignor before graduation, warning of the coming hostilities.
"I was very appalled at the time of the Monsignor's sermon to think that, my goodness, we were so young and my father had gone through World War I - we kids were going to have to go through that," she recalled.