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March
6, 2006
VOL.
44, NO. 5Oakland,
CA
Alums recall their days at Notre Dame and St. Joseph
While some people would just as soon forget their high
school days, Claire Robles looks back on her years at Notre Dame High
School in Alameda with nostalgia and humor.
“I talked too much and so every Friday my name was on the detention
list. I cleaned the school along with all my friends,” said Robles,
75, before dissolving into laughter. “But those were very happy
years,” she added.
Robles, class of ’49, will be among the many alums gathering March
26 to celebrate 125 years of Catholic education in Alameda. Bishop Allen
Vigneron will preside at a noon Mass at St. Joseph Basilica. A potluck
lunch and open houses at St. Joseph Notre Dame High School and St. Joseph
Elementary School will follow the Mass.
Alice Hickey, 81, a member of Notre Dame High’s class of 1943, recalls
that she and her classmates would often look out the windows of their
all-girls school, operated by the Notre Dame Sisters, to watch the boys
from neighboring St. Joseph’s High School, founded by the Marianist
Brothers in 1935, wait for the bus. The two schools never dismissed their
students at the same time, she said. The school’s merged in 1985
to become St. Joseph Notre Dame High School. The Notre Dame Sisters founded
the first Catholic school in Alameda in 1881.
“You hear these stories about how the nuns were so strict, but I
have no memories of that," said Robles, who graduated from the grammar
school in 1945. “I only knew they were all wonderful women.”
One of her favorite teachers was Sister Mary Frances. “She loved
the kids; you could tell she loved us all,” she said.
Years later when she returned to work at Notre Dame High as a staff member,
she saw another example of dedication and caring in the person of Sister
Adrienne Marie, who served as principal for 12 years. “They called
her top sergeant, but she really wanted discipline in the school. And
yet, she was right there, she stood up for those students if anything
was ever wrong. She was a wonderful principal.”
Decades later Jim Davis, who graduated from the elementary school in 1993
and SJND in 1997, noted that the faculty and administrators continued
to uphold standards of excellence with compassion. Davis, currently in
a Ph.D. program at DePaul University in Chicago, said many of his memories
as a youngster involve former principal Raymond John.
John was “the kind of person who really understood how kids operated,”
said Davis. An ex-Marine, he was a “tough guy – you definitely
couldn’t get away with things.”
But John also brought fun into the school. A rabid fan of the San Francisco
49ers, he let the students wear red and gold clothing – the team’s
colors – when the Niners went to the playoffs.
The Alameda schools also greatly benefited over the years from a built-in
closeness that comes from being parish-based.
“We had a student body of 144 people,” said Dolores Hickey,
71, a 1952 graduate of Notre Dame High and Alice Hickey’s younger
sister. Everyone knew everyone else no matter what grade they were in,
she said, noting that friendships begun in high school continued long
after graduation. The surviving members of her graduating class gather
for reunions every five years.
Family ties also remain strong at the schools. Tim DeGrano, 40, who spent
four years at the grammar school and graduated from the high school in
1983, was preceded at the schools by his father, aunt and an uncle. DeGrano,
a San Leandro police officer, is continuing the tradition. He met his
wife at the high school and now their two children are students in the
elementary school.
The Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur started St. Joseph Elementary School and Notre Dame Academy for girls in 1881 and continued to serve in the elementary school and Notre Dame High School until 1990.
