By now I had friends at Saint Pete’s who lived in the Fayette Street
neighborhood, so on Sundays at Wallaces’ I did not lack playmates. I remember
especially Ernie Kieffer, Leo “Skinny" McGann, his cousin Bernard McGann and
Francis “Penny" Shaffer.
An exciting event had taken place in that 1930-31 school year. A new
school building was to be built! Our ancient school on Fayette Street was torn
down in 1931 and the classes were farmed out to two or three available buildings
in the area. The fourth grade was
among those that finished out the
school term in the former Allegany
County Academy on Washington
Street, a white building with fat
pillars in front. (It later housed, and
still does in 1994, the Allegany
County Public Library.) In May
1931, the cornerstone of the new
school was laid.
When school reopened in
September 1931, I went into the
Fifth Grade in our big new shiny
red-brick school building on Fayette
Street, essentially where the old
building had stood. Could we brag
now! Did the Publics have anything
this keen. No other elementary
school had a gymnasium (even
though it was mainly for the girls’
high school, Ursuline Academy,
which was also housed in the new building). And we didn’t have to go outside the
building to play—our outdoor playground was on the roof of the gymnasium! More
than ever I was glad I had transferred to Saint Pete’s.
My fifth-grade teacher was Sister Anton, she with the sallow complexion, a chronic
sniff and a midwestern accent. Thankfully, she was in that hypothetical “Likes Boys"
column. And I liked Sister. The next year, when she was transferred to a school in
Nebraska, I wrote to her and received a sweet reply, which is among my memorabilia.
Little roly-poly Sister Richard taught me in the sixth grade. I confidently credit
her with pounding into me an indispensable groundwork in “higher" mathematics,
like decimals and percentage. And it was she who thoroughly prepared me to become
a “soldier of Christ" through reception of the sacrament of Confirmation.
39
Charles William Rohrer, age 11 (1932)
