Bonds That Withstand the Test of Time

Former students from Holy Cross Grammar School in Charlotte have been gathering every year for decades. In September they marked their 70th annual reunion

By Mike Costanza

 

Beverly Anne DiPietro-Carpenter fondly remembers being a student at Holy Cross School.

“The nuns were phenomenal, my classmates were great,” the 84-year-old said. “We were just very, very close, you know, in those days. It was like a little community.”

DiPietro-Carpenter graduated from Holy Cross in 1956 and organized her class’s first reunion in 1966. Since then, she’s brought her classmates together every year to reminisce about the good times they had at the Roman Catholic elementary school and catch up with each other.

“I love, love, love my classmates and I love the fact that they appreciate each other enough to want to be together,” said the retired dental hygienist, who lives independently in an apartment at The Highlands of Pittsford.

Most of the reunions have been held at classmates’ homes or in other less formal settings, but the ones held every 10 years have been gala events. On Sept. 19 members of the 1956 graduating class, some with their spouses, gathered at The Highlands of Pittsford for this year’s reunion.

Bright smiles and good conversations filled the retirement community’s dining room as they enjoyed drinks and dinner with the people with whom they’d graduated 70 years ago.

55-PLUS interviewed some members of the graduating class prior to the reunion and others at the event.

Located on Lake Avenue in Charlotte, Holy Cross School has prepared a huge number of children and adolescents down through the years for the next step in their education. The school housed eight grades in the 1950s, nuns of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas taught the classes and students wore uniforms. Upon graduating from the eighth grade, they left the school to go on with their education. The setup and the school’s focus upon religious instruction helped students develop strong relationships.

DiPietro-Carpenter enjoyed sleepovers, birthday parties and other fun activities with her classmates, and was even a cheerleader for Holy Cross School’s all-boy basketball team. She also grew very close to the school’s nuns.

“They were very instrumental in everything I did,” she said. “I actually helped the nuns in the church set up [priests’] vestments, clean the altar.” The Holy Cross Church sits right next to the school.

Sharon O’Toole and her husband, Ted, have attended every one of the class of 1956’s reunions.

“It’s wonderful to listen to where other people are coming from and what their lives are doing,” the 85-year-old Lyons, Wayne County, resident said. “This is kind of a…renewing time for me.”

Ted also has had a good time with his wife’s classmates.

“They have this wonderful experience of being together for all these years,” the 89-year-old said. “It’s just fun to see them get together.”

In addition to gaining an education at Holy Cross School, Sharon developed a connection to the Sisters of Mercy that has lasted well beyond her time at the school. For the past 30 years she has volunteered for the order as a Mercy Associate.

“I do workshops…spiritual retreats and I do spiritual direction on a full-time basis,” she said. “In spiritual direction the focus is between the person you’re meeting with and God and I’m there to kind of midwife, if you would, their relationship, listening and then helping them discern what comes out of their prayer.”

Michael McKain spoke of the “good Catholic upbringing” he received at Holy Cross School.

“The sisters made sure that we said the rosary, said our prayers…go to nine o’clock mass at Holy Cross Church every Sunday,” the 84-year-old retired teacher and golf instructor said. “We had to go to confession and we celebrated all the holidays, so it was a good way to stay together.”

That regimen helped students develop strong bonds.

“We all were under the same discipline, the same rules that everybody was having to face so it was a tight-knit class all the way through.” the Spencerport resident said.

An incident that occurred when he was in the eighth grade helped create another kind of connection. The winds were so strong that day that one of his classroom’s windows blew in.

“There were some people who were knocked down out of the chairs,” McKain said. “Glass flew all over the place. There were people cut.”

He and other students helped their classmates get out of the room.

“To this day, we sometimes look back and say that it was a bonding incident for us,” he said.

The memory can also bring a smile. When the window blew in Sister Justin, who was teaching the class, left the room carrying her birdcage.

“We often laughed about it because the first thing she did was grab a parakeet or whatever it was and run out the classroom,” he said.

Tom O’Grady spoke of Holy Cross School as “a close neighborhood.”

“We had class that was only first grade, the only second grade, the only third grade, all the way up, so we were always together,” the 83-year-old retired baker said.

Though O’Grady eventually “left religion,” as he put it, the religious instruction he received at the school benefited him.

“It was a good beginning to a childhood to have that kind of discipline, which you could only really get from…the nuns,” he said.

O’Grady lives at Ellen’s Place, a part of Episcopal Senior Life Communities that offers apartments for independent seniors in East Irondequoit. Nancy Magee-Pearson, his neighbor at Ellen’s Place and classmate, sat opposite him at the reunion. When asked about Holy Cross School, she couldn’t seem to praise it enough.

“I absolutely loved school,” the 84-year-old said. “I loved the nuns, I loved my friends, I loved all of the activities, I loved the church spirituality part of it.”

She also complimented the reunion’s organizer for bringing the 1956 graduating class together year after year.

“We just are such a close-knit group, and we owe all it to Beverly, who has been the glue that has kept our class together all these years,” Magee-Pearson said.

As the festivities proceeded, DiPietro-Carpenter told those gathered the news of their classmates. She then read aloud the poem I Love to Live, which she’d found among the belongings of her late mother, Mary DiPietro, who died in 2010 at the age of 91.

“She was just talking to our Lord and saying she wanted to live past 90 and she did,” DiPietro-Carpenter said after the reading.

In recognition of DiPietro-Carpenter’s work for her classmates down through the years Magee-Pearson presented her with a book on the history of the Holy Cross School and in honor of her willingness to help her classmates stay connected, a bottle of glue. She accepted the items to applause.

The festivities ended with a performance by the New Horizons Clarinet Choir. Though the choir invites people of all ages to join it, most of its members are seniors. When they began performing that night McKain was in the back playing his bass clarinet.