Category Archives: 50 years ago

‘A True Cathedralite’

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Our Student Handbook contained a lot of information. I’m sure we all had read it and knew it well. 🙂 It also provides a lot of context about our days and years at CHS. There were sections on

  • School History
  • Philosophy and Objectives
  • Spiritual Development
  • Intellectual Development
  • Moral Development
  • Cultural Development
  • Physical Development

Msgr_LearyOpening the section on Spiritual Development was this picture of then-Rev. Timothy J. Leary. He later was named a monsignor. Wrapping up that same section was the “Pledge of a True Cathedralite,” beginning with “I pledge:

  • To cooperate with divine grace in forming myself into a true and perfect Christian
  • To think, judge and act constantly and consistently in accordance with right reason illuminated by the supernatural light of the example and teaching of Christ
  • To be aware of the need of supernatural aid and desirous of obtaining it through prayer and good works, and above all through attendance at Holy Mass and frequent reception of the Sacraments
  • To be clean in speech, in action and appearance, transcending all that is vulgar and unbecoming a Christian lady or gentleman
  • To do honor to Cathedral High School by my dignity, publicly or privately observed, whether it be at official school functions or outside of school jurisdiction
  • To possess the desire for increased learning, and the initiative to pursue it through exercise in clear, accurate and logical thinking under the direction of the faculty of my school
  • To preserve the ideal of honesty in my own soul and in the souls of my school associates by scrupulous devotion to exclusively personal effort in school work
  • To be respectful of the authority of properly constituted officers of government and willing always to make any self-sacrifice necessary to promote the common good of our community and the whole nation
  • To respect and tolerate the rights and opinions of others regardless of race, religion, political affiliation or social standing
  • To be loyal to my school, its directors and faculty, having always the best interests of Cathedral High School at heart and shunning anything that would bring disgrace upon it.”

 

Thanks for Thanksgiving

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Fifty years ago, this was a short school week. We had Monday off, because of the JFK funeral, and probably went back to school Tuesday and Wednesday (does anyone remember, for sure?) before the Thanksgiving holiday.

Bullwinkle at the Macy's parade, 1963

Bullwinkle at the Macy’s parade, 1963

Do you remember Thanksgiving then as different from previous ones? More subdued, or more thankful for being together with family?

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was on TV that morning. In color! College and pro football was on, too. Some things don’t change. Texas walloped Texas Tech, 49-7. Detroit and Green Bay played to a 13-13 tie, and, in the AFL, Oakland beat Denver, 26-10. President Lyndon Johnson gave a special Thanksgiving Day address to the country.

Best wishes to all for safe travel and a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Back then

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By mid-November 1963, early in our senior year at Cathedral, the world was setting us up for a very “interesting” time. Looking back, it may have been near the “end” of something and the beginning of something very different.

Joan Baez and Bob Dylan perform at August 1963 civil rights rally in Washington, DC.

Joan Baez and Bob Dylan perform at August 1963 civil rights rally in Washington, DC.

Martin Luther King had given his “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, DC, that August. The Second Vatican Council was underway. President Kennedy received the final report of his “Commission on the Status of Women.” And, at the beginning of November, in South Vietnam, a place still pretty obscure for most of us, its president, Ngo Dinh Diem, was arrested and assassinated in a coup tacitly accepted by the US.

In more popular arenas, the LA Dodgers swept the Yankees in the World Series, with Sandy Koufax winning two games. New shows on TV that fall included The Outer Limits, The Fugitive, The Patty Duke Show, and Petticoat Junction. It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World had debuted in theaters on November 7. Louie, Louie by the Kingsmen was very popular at the time, as was the Ronettes’ Be My Baby. The Beatles were still in England.

Check out the page “Back Then” for more on what was going on in our world in 1963-64. What about at Cathedral? In Springfield? Western Mass.? That’s harder to find, and remember perhaps. What was big at school in fall 1963? Anybody have old copies of the Cathedral Chronicle?