Saint Mary of The Angels Academy

My first memory of St. Mary’s was getting measured for the school uniform. I couldn’t get away from wearing uniforms. I wore a different uniform in Catholic Elementary School. But, on the upside, I wasn’t wearing hand-me-downs anymore. The first year I attended St. Mary of the Angels Academy, a private, Catholic, all-girl high school in Haddonfield, NJ, was the Fall of 1965. I spent my freshman year going to high school in a house that used to be a boarding school for rich girls. It was a Victorian house on King’s Highway in Haddonfield—a town where wealthy people lived.

The house was Victorian. It had winding staircases, bathrooms with claw-footed tubs, and fireplaces in the classrooms. It was a unique experience. About 200 female students attended the school. Most were from well-to-do families in Southern, NJ, which included Haddonfield.

My dear mother is the kindest person I was lucky enough to have for a mother.

My family was not wealthy. My father worked for Septa, the Philadelphia Transportation Company, as the district manager for over thirty years. My father took a second mortgage out on our house so we could attend St. Mary’s. I believe my mother wanted to keep us away from the boys.

I became even shyer and avoided boys altogether—however, the rest of the SMAA (ST. Mary of the Angels Academy and most of the rest of the student population were obsessed with boys. Spending endless hours discussing how to meet boys, kiss boys, etc. It was the sixtie,s make love, not war generation.

I had an “elite” group of friends: Christine Conn, Mary Beth Elliot, Delores O’Hearn, Anne Marie Rafferty, and Janice Short(who left after Freshman year. My sister, Karen, had her own friends, a more popular group. I spent most of my time at SMAA complaining about the nuns trying to avoid taking showers and going to the gym.

When I entered 10th grade, the house (school) was demolished and knocked down, and a vast new school was erected, state-of-the-art for that time period. But it certainly lacked the charm of attending school in a Victorian house with chandeliers. I did not excel in school as I lacked confidence in my intelligence. As I had spent my childhood hearing from my father that he didn’t know if I was lazy or just plain stupid. Karen probably did better, but probably would have done much better if she hadn’t procrastinated and spent so much time avoiding her school work. Let’s say that both Karen and I did not livie up to our potential.

The nuns(or sisters, as we called them) who taught the students were Franciscan, which was a difficult job. Their highest concerns at the time seemed to be keeping everyone’s hair out of their eyes and making sure the tuition was paid on time. This concern became more understandable when the school went bankrupt the year after we graduated.

It is difficult for me to remember the good times. I can’t really say that high school was an enjoyable experience for me. Although I had my own group of friends, I wasn’t really accepted into the general population of the school. I was shy and had a somewhat offbeat sense of humor, and I was received differently than most kids my age. I never experimented with drugs or alcohol, as some kids my age were doing.

My life at home stayed pretty much the same. All my siblings were out of the house except for my twin, Karen. My siblings had all married and had families of their own. My parents got along by having very little conversation at all. My father continued to work for SEPTA until he was 62, and then he retired. My mother worked at Wanamaker’s as a cook in the employees’ kitchen until my senior year of high school. I believe she was fifty-nine at the time. She worked hard all her life for our family and never even whispered a word of complaint. I often wondered how much happiness she experienced in her life. I fear precious little at all.

There was a great deal of turmoil politically at that time, 1969. The war in Vietnam was in full force. Many of my grade school friends (boys) were drafted. Many did not return alive or were permanently altered. There was a great deal of drug experimentation going on at the same time. I was not a participant in any of it.

My senior year of high school, I was offerend a full-time job at Dr. E.G. Wozniak, a local dentist I Oaklyn, New Jersey. I was offered a job at his dental office as a dental assistant and receptionist. I stayed there until I was twenty-one. I had a quiet life. When I was twenty-one, I met a boy through my brother-in-law, David Gatelein. He was about one year older than I. He gave me my first kiss—no big thrill. But I had little knowledge of sex. And my first experience with him was not great. Probably, because I hadn’t formed any real attachment to him, it turned out that David, though a nice looking boy was pretty screwed up. He had spent three years in Vietnam. He was given a dishonorable discharge because he attempted to “frag” (kill) his commanding officer. He dumped me like a bad habit. And I was deeply hurt by the whole thing. It took me a long time to get over it. But, eventually, I did. It turned out that he was an alcoholic, and once I found that out, I stopped talking to him. And that was the end of that.

After I quit Dr. Wozniak, I got a job at Ancora State Mental Hospital through my brother, Harry, who had worked there at one point as a psychologist. I was trained as a nurse’s aide with females in the active psyche ward. I had hoped to work with emotionally disturbed children. It didn’t last long, and it was a very bad experience.I only stayed at Ancora for a year.

Then I found a job working for the Ellis Brothers, who sold high-risk Auto Insurance. It was not a difficult job, and for the most part, I enjoyed working there because the Ellis Brothers didn’t have very strong work ethics and often wanted to go out and do something fun, including going out to breakfast every workday. And they paid.

In early 1972, my best friend Joanie set up a date with her first cousin Bob Culver, who had just left the Navy. I had a crush on him since I was about ten years old. That was the beginning of a whole new chapter of my life, which will be published next week.