High School- LaSalette Seminary, Cheshire, CT

Why seminary?  What was I thinking?  I thought that I was supposed to be a priest.  Now, there is a whole school of theological thought that's convinced that God (yes, that God- the Master of the Universe, the one on the Throne in Heaven) actually calls individuals into his service.  That's why it's called a "vocation."  It comes from a Latin word, no doubt, meaning something like "called by God."  And I thought that He had called me.  It was so easy to believe that, when all your teachers were nuns.  Even thinking about being a priest opened one up to so much positive reinforcement! 

This was LaSalette Minor Seminary in Cheshire, Connecticut.  This building was only a year old in 1962 when I went there.  The closest part in the picture is the priests' residence, with the chapel on the right.  The next wing sticking out to the right is the nuns' residence (there they are again!) at the far right, and the kitchen on the left.  Between the chapel and the kitchen was the priests' dining hall., and north of the kitchen was the students' dining hall.  For some reason, the dining halls were called "refectories."

There was a laundry chute in the hallway running from the chapel toward the refectory.  The standing joke was that it was where the nuns kept their dirty habits . . . Our nuns at LaSalette were Spanish speaking, no English.  On the rare occasions that we saw them, they seemed happy; laughing, smiling, content with a cloistered life.  Would that they could have cooked!

To the left of the student refectory was our dormitory (great big room where people sleep).  There were bathrooms and showers at both ends.  The bathrooms were called "chats."  That's pronounced "shats," like the beginning of the French word "chateau," which was sort of a castle, and a castle has a throne-room, and the "chats" was where the thrones were . . . it's a reach, I know.  It was even then.

The wing sticking out to the left in the back was the gym.  Basketball, movies, theatrical productions, such as they were.  Basketball was an important part of LaSalette.  This was the varsity team my freshman year . . .

The priest is Father James Lowery.  He was the coach (duh!).  On his right, far left, front to back, Michael Verengia, Michael Donahue, Donald Delery.  Next, Michael Callahan, Gary Jackson, Phil House and Robert Oblon.  On Coach's left, I don't remember the names of the two guys in the back, but 23 was John Miller, next to him is Gary Mooney, and in front, Steve Rogowski.  In my sophomore year, LaSalette won the Class C Small Schools State Championship!  This is that team:

When I went to LaSalette, I sort of had this idea that everyone would be pious, holy, praying all the time.  Silly me.  The people I went to high school with were just like the people I went to grade school with.  Some of them were actually pretty decent, some of them were just ok.  A few of them should have been in jail.  (I wonder sometimes, what I looked like to them . . .)  But whether it was fun, which it often was, or miserable, which it also often was, underlying it all was the knowledge that there was something that I just didn't quite get, that if I could just get that something, I'd be ok.  But I didn't. 

Given what I'd learned about hell, and the ease with which a Catholic could end up there, you'd think I would've run the other way.  But I didn't.   I ran right at it. I thought that if I just learned enough about being a Catholc, I could stop going to hell.  I figured that maybe if I got totally immersed in my religion, I could figure out how to be close to God, how to want to do the things I was being taught God wanted me to do.  So I went to Seminary. 

I was 14.  What did I know?