St. Jude Church/School Nostalgia

**jcole** · March-30-09, 02:16 PM

I misspelled the title on the other thread I created so please use this one and let the other one fall off the board. Thanks

**jcole** · March-30-09, 02:20 PM

Did anyone know that the old Guardian Angels school is the St. Jude Home for Boys? I was searching for Mayfield St. and found an entry for it.

**12468_laing** · March-30-09, 02:41 PM

so, how is it they still have a school there and we lost ours?

**jcole** · March-30-09, 02:47 PM

It's part of something called Wolverine Human Services. I just thought it was interesting that it's called St. Jude's. Here's a link to their company info.
http://www.manta.com/coms2/dnbcompany_8jccmm

**zitro** · March-30-09, 04:00 PM

This is a test of the National Broadcasting System. If this had been an actual emergency.....

**jcole** · March-30-09, 04:17 PM

Welcome to the dark side.

**7andkelly** · March-30-09, 08:27 PM

We had the distinct priviledge of attending Mass this weekend at St. Jude. It still feels like home. And I wasn't even thinking about my car like I always do when I park it somewhere because I was told by a reliable source the lot was secure. The church is beautiful, and Fr. Robert is the right pastor for this parish in these times. I keep missing the bread and soup, Polish food and spaghetti they sometimes serve after Masses, Stations, and other services. Gotta get me a schedule.

**kellyroad** · March-31-09, 01:12 AM

JC: It looks like I found the thread. Thanks

**7andkelly** · March-31-09, 07:36 AM

There's plenty of thread. It's the button that's missing.

**jcole** · March-31-09, 07:43 AM

7, I think that if you are going to post pictures, you need to change your settings to do so. Go into CP, go to Settings and Options, Edit Options, Scroll down to Display Options, and select ShowImages under Thread Display Options

**jcole** · March-31-09, 07:44 AM

KR, hail, hail the gangs [[almost) all here.
C'mon CFG, join in.

**kellyroad** · March-31-09, 10:57 AM

....What the heck do we care, we're all going to be here.
hail, hail, the gangs all here.....

**jcole** · March-31-09, 11:54 AM

Gang?? Yoo Hoo, Gang...

**Eastburn** · March-31-09, 01:42 PM

Posted on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 - 9:59 pm:

I graduated from SJS in 1958. Well remember 60+ kids in every classroom. Big rooms but Sr. Mary Magdalene could still throw a blackboard eraser corner to corner to clip a talking kid in the back of the head. Spent 7th grade in the "portables" in the parking lot which was also the playground. Swings, slides & monkey bars on asphalt. No sissy kids back then. You fell, broke your arm - no big deal - no lawsuit. The class of '58 had great 25 & 30 year reunions but I've heard nothing about a 50th this year. Maybe I'm the only one still alive?????????????

**jcole** · March-31-09, 02:01 PM

And so it begins again....

**12468_laing** · March-31-09, 03:10 PM

I once had a boss who always used to say the only thing that stays the same is change - think he had this forum in mind. Hope everyone is able to log into this.

**kellyroad** · March-31-09, 06:18 PM

I thought I'd give the St. Jude Post another chance, this time with a few photos added periodically. St. Jude parish and school were at one time the largest in the Arch Diocese of Detroit with about 13,000 parishioners and more than 1600 students enrolled in grades 1-8 [[circa late 50s-60s). Some of the first and second grade classrooms had 61 students x 4 classes per grade [[over 240 students per grade)... I know, I was one of them. 31 nuns, 4 priests and 2 visiting priests tended to the school and parish. The photo below is of Sr. Leonita [[1963), the principal 1960-67. A few months ago the Michigan Catholic ran an article about her. At the time she was 104 yrs old living in Adrian..a writer of children's books and a big Red Wing fan.

Please share a few of your St. Jude memories. If you know of anyone who is not a member of the Discuss Detroit Forum and were a member of St. Jude ask them to join. Hopefully, this post will continue on. St. Jude was and still is a rich part of the northeast Detroit community,

**kellyroad** · March-31-09, 06:21 PM

Let's not forget our founder.

My memories of Fr. Ording are from a perspective of a grade schooler and altar boy. He had a very authoritative aura about him, liked golf, and had a close knit circle of friends. If he wasn't a priest he probably could have been a CEO of a fortune 500 company. He didn't "scare the dickens out of me" but yet wasn't the most approachable priest either... he was a leader. Again, this is from a perspective of a young kid. I did respect him as our pastor. St. Jude school would always get the feast day of St. Joseph off because that was J.J. Ording's namesake.

**Eastburn** · March-31-09, 06:40 PM

Hey, we're trying to hit 10,000 posts on the old forum before noon tomorrow.

Get back there.

**7andkelly** · March-31-09, 10:07 PM

7&kk would have gotten a kick out of these reruns on this new forum. Too bad he died. May God rest his soul. I never got around to telling him how I knew of him from the old days. I don't remember the cool bike he had, but his HO set in his Dad's garage was awesome. Heck, I even spoke with him a few years back.

Remember how interested he was in the "relics" at St. Jude? And how he joked about standing up there in that empty statue alcove on the outside of the school on 7 Mile by Rex. I just know if I look up there when I drive by I'm going to see him standing right up there ... waiving at me. And I will just waive right back. I missed last years clean-up day, but he was there, enjoyng every minute of it, I'm sure.

**kellyroad** · April-01-09, 12:00 AM

7K: A nice way to connect the two forums. The 7 Kid on Eastwood was still very much connected to St. Jude even years after he left. His presence is still very much felt.

**kellyroad** · April-01-09, 01:30 AM

Posted on Tuesday, April 01, 2008 - 12:18 pm:

Hi. I'm Jokerman's brother, Rick, SJS class of 66. Got my nickname "Duck" because, in eighth grade, I shot baskets "like a duck." The name stuck through high school at Notre Dame and Denby. Even today, some old friends still greet me as such. Although I made the football and basketball teams in eighth grade, I sucked at sports. Mostly, I was a bench-warmer. But, under the lights, in the Blue Jug Bowl game of 1965, Coach Steve Gerbe put me in for one play and I intercepted a pass. In basketball, I scored a total of two points the entire season. But it was a "swish."

In first grade, I had Sr. Madonna Marian, she was so nice. Second grade, Mrs. Zola. In third grade, I had Sr. Stella Coeli. I was an honor student with many pins to prove it.

Again, in fourth grade, I had Mrs. Zola. She couldn't believe how I changed from a "nice little Grade A student" to a "discipline problem."I got several green slips in conduct. "Richard is slipping," she wrote home to my mom. Once, she tried to grab my hair to correct me. But it was too short. So she pulled my ear. Yow!

Fourth grade was also the year I got kicked-out of cub scouts. [[Den 8, pack 420.)
We were crafting an Easter egg popsicle-stick cart in-tow by a cardboard bunny. I told the den mothers it looked like a "beer wagon." Then, I called them by their first names. That's when they called my dad to come and pick me up.

On the first day of fifth grade, I was greeted with " I've heard about you, mister. I'm going to keep my eye on you," by Sr. Marie Francis. She was a dominatrix of a nun. She was big, tall and tough. Although she had a slight lisp because of her overbite, her deep, raspy voice was like a cross between Dick Da Bruiser and Louis Nye. She wasn't going to take any "guff" from any of us. "You're all a bunch of babies. You're bold as brass. More crust than all the pie factories in the United States."

She would rap her nun ring on the window at other students playing outside of our portable classroom. It was almost as if she were flipping them the bird. It all might have been an attempt to teach us obedience to authority and conformity. And it probably worked for a while. But it might have helped to instill the very roots of the anarchistic theory that many of us espoused to in the late sixties.

In sixth grade, we were all so cool. I was fortunate, I thought, to get Mr. Fleming, the only male teacher at SJS. He addressed everyone by their last names. I thought it was pretty cool. Until, at least once a week, he'd point his number two pencil at me and say, "Pesta, I'll see you after school." During these detentions, we had to write a million sentences about how we wouldn't screw around in class anymore. Once, we had to write the definition of "time" from Webster's dictionary [[because we "wasted his.") It's about two pages long.

I got kicked-out of Mr. Eck's boys choir that year, too.

In seventh grade, I had Sr. Mary John. She was nice and politically intuitive. Very much into civics and government. We held mock elections for the 1964 presidential election. I was the committee chairman for LBJ. Michael K. was chairman for Goldwater. Just as in the real world, our team won by a landslide.

My friend Chuck T. and I got busted for smoking cigarettes in the restroom by the crying room in the church. Got reported by an eighth-grade duty girl. Sr. Leonita made us go see Fr. Ording. We thought we really in for it. But he was cool. He just made us pick up litter outside the church. We were done in five minutes.

In eighth grade, I had Sr. James Marie. She was matter-of-fact and to-the-point. Tough. Fair. Rigid. She had a deep manly voice with a slight New Jersey accent. She was a sports fan. She invited all of the football players to stand up during class and receive applause from the rest of the class. Although I sat the bench, I got to stand up. "These are real men," she'd say.

One day, there was some sort of parental event occurring after school. All the eighth graders were in the gym. Coffee was brewing in the big vats in the kitchen. Sister caught me with my hand on the spigot as half the coffee was draining out. She slapped me down in front of the entire class. I didn't cry or anything. And I said nothing.

A few minutes later, she discovered what I already knew. I didn't turn it on, I turned it off.

So she, with the utmost eloquence, commended me, in front of the whole class, for "taking it like a man" and not "ratting-out" the guilty party. My face was still red from the slap-down. That's when I felt like crying.

God bless St. Jude School.

By the way, three years later, I got kicked-out of Notre Dame High School. I graduated from Denby, graduated from Wayne State University and I've been a writer in advertising for more than 30 years. Married for 33 years. Three kids, all college graduates. One grandchild and one more on the way.

Now, I'm a conservative republican in Grosse Pointe Woods. And, at times, I attend Mass at St. Jude Church.

[[Message edited by Duck on April 01, 2008)go today [[April 1, 2008)

**kellyroad** · April-01-09, 01:34 AM

The above post from "Duck" IMHO really "captured" what St. Jude School was all about in the 60s. What a coincidence that the post was exactly one year ago today. Happy April Fools.