Revisiting Lessons Learned

In the midst of graduation season 2024, I roll around in memories from way too long ago.

I have an unusual – and treasured – wine glass. It bears a line drawing of the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose haloed head bends toward a dove in her hands. Her robes fall in graceful folds. Beneath her image are the Latin words, “Funda Nos in Pace.” Lead us in peace. And curved around it is the name of an institution that was formative for me: East Orange Catholic High School, known to most everyone as EOCH (EE-ock). 

I arrived at EOCH in the fall of 1969 after eight years at our parish grade school. Both my older brothers had gone on to an all-boys Catholic high school and the assumption was that I’d do the same, with the obvious substitution of girls for boys. In those days, we took a stress-inducing exam as eighth graders to see which Catholic high schools would accept us. I got into one that was too expensive, one that felt too provincial and EOCH. My future was sealed.

When I left elementary school at 13½, I believed my career choices were limited to occupations traditionally filled by women: teacher, nurse, secretary. My lack of patience, math skills and paperwork talents would have doomed me in any of those jobs. Even then, I knew that spending a lot of time at home was not for me. But I saw no evidence that girls could do anything else. I’d spent my childhood being told to line up behind the boys in the class, and to sit still while the boys got to serve on the altar during Mass. I’d watched a meaningless classroom election of officers devolve into a discussion of which boy would be president. Everyone knew girls weren’t presidents. Meanwhile, the outside world reflected the lessons I was absorbing about the role of women and girls – in those days, American women could not get credit cards separate from their husbands, attend Ivy League universities or serve on a jury in most states.

Then I walked into EOCH, where there were – no boys. We were hundreds of girls in battleship-gray wool blazers that sported the image of Mary and the dove on a front-pocket patch. In the warmer months we traded the blazers for pastel shirtwaist numbers we called “washerwoman dresses.” The school was run by the Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth, which traces its lineage back to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in 1809. The sisters have never taken the education of women lightly. The order founded the first secondary school for young women in New Jersey in 1860 and the state’s first four-year liberal arts college for women in 1899. Today, the sisters list education, social justice and ecological integrity among their areas of focus. No wonder EOCH was a good match for me.

In an EOCH classroom, everything was a challenge. 

From the beginning, it was clear my religious education would not replicate the Baltimore Catechism questions and answers of my parish school days. I don’t remember the name of the enthusiastic young religion teacher who held up a Bible and said, “You all know not to take the creation story literally, right, girls? You know it’s a story that’s meant to be a lesson?” I do remember the sudden feeling that it was OK to question what I’d always been taught; that the doubt that had nagged me since my first-grade religious instruction did not need to stay hidden.

I mentioned in a sophomore English class that I had read Gone with the Wind. The response from my teacher was swift: “You need to read Jubilee to get a different perspective.” As soon as I could get it from the library I read Margaret Walker’s novel, which uses the oral history of her family to give readers a realistic view of slavery in the American south. The look-at-both-sides lesson came in handy when I later became a journalist.

As a junior at EOCH, I rejoiced when our young history teacher, Susan Dominic Murray, who was the coolest member of the faculty, wrote, “Brilliant!” on the cover of my research paper about how the North won the Civil War. Despite the stellar review, she called on me to explain more about how Civil War bonds worked. She could tell by the way I had written about them that I didn’t know what I was talking about. So, I went back to the books – not to get a better grade, but to understand it because Mrs. Murray expected me to.

The other life-altering takeaway from EOCH came from the absence of boys. It meant girls were – everything. They were the achievers, leaders, artists, performers and athletes. They were also the clowns, troublemakers, slackers and outcasts. We really could do it all. 

After four years at EOCH, I thought I could be anything I wanted. My thinking hasn’t changed. That’s why, last fall, I drove four hours south to New Jersey on a warm fall weekend for my 50^th high school reunion. Between a Saturday dinner for our class and a Sunday afternoon all-class reunion, I reconnected with scores of women who had walked those halls with me.  

I bought my wine glass. We sang our alma mater. We got teary over the searing loss of our beloved Mrs. Murray, who had gone on to a business career before she was killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11.

During my junior and senior years, after I broke out of the quiet bubble I’d been in for 15 years, Mrs. Murray often suggested I was louder than I needed to be and that if I wanted to succeed in life, maybe I should change my ways. It was distressing that she rolled her eyes at my laughing exuberance. But when you’re 16 and you discover that life is full of possibilities, it’s hard to keep quiet. 

I saw Mrs. Murray at an EOCH reunion about 25 years ago. I didn’t think she’d remember me. When I reached the front of the line of former students waiting for a moment of her time, I smiled sheepishly and said, “Hi, Mrs. Murray. Don’t worry, I turned out OK.” She laughed and pulled me into a hug, saying, “Oh, Claire dear, I knew you would.”

Probably because she and EOCH had a hand in it.