St. Therese School

The beginning year

Patrick did not attend St. Therese for Pre- school. We were first time school parents and had a lot to learn. Catholic School week was announced with registration all week. Having never done this before, we did not realize time was of the essence. As luck would have it, the following year they were moving classrooms around and placed the pre-k class in a smaller room. Enrollment was limited and siblings of other students were accepted first. There was no room in the Inn!! Since we were totally unprepared for this, Sr. Irene and Mrs. Doody recommend St. Mary’s school in Dumont, which was close to us as an alternative. We had been parishioners for ten years and never considered any place else. They registered him for kindergarten for the following year in order to calm me down. Our school life had begun like much else in an unpredictable way!.

In May, Patrick went to visit St. Therese’s kindergarten. The day we visited, Mrs. Ryan was so concerned because it was an active class, and they were having a bad day. Overjoyed just to know we were registered as a student, I remember thinking “as long as she is not teaching communism what does it matter.”

That August, Marianne went to the school in a panic not knowing how to pay the tuition. This was before computers and bill companies and it was handed in to the secretary. Mrs. Venskus (the junior high history / religion teacher) was on the steps and stopped to talk. She asked me if I was nervous and sad to send him. I was so proud that we had worked so hard and he was going to start school on time at five years old that there was only joy. Five years later when sending Daniel to Kindergarten I realized then that we should have kept Patrick back a year but we were ignorant about child development back in those early days

Kindergarten began September 1990. Mrs. Ryan had transformed herself into a vision of loveliness with a navy blue dress with a white collar and her long, long hair in a braid. She had each child give their parent a gift to take home to remind them of their child on their first day of school. As Patrick gave it to me, his eyes filled with tears and he turned to climb those stairs for the first of many times. Thirteen years later he would be teaching confirmation and the proud possessor of the new key to the gym as coordinator of the parish basketball program. On that September morning, he was a little boy leaving his mom and entering a new world of strangers. At his graduation, 9 years later he would call St. Therese his home.