by Consorcia Burgos, Class 1953
Fatima High School was the premier name of La Salette of San Mateo. For two years, it carried this name. The first two years of this school to me are the golden memories that I hold of her forever.
The school was formerly located at the Old Centro. Fr. Emery DesRocher, was the Director. he was a tall, lanky, bespectacled, blue-eyed and very aristocratic pries of Dutch-American lineage. Having grown in Massachusetts, one of the New England states, he awed us with his "r-less" manner of speaking: My dea' boys and gi'ls, mo'ning Conso'cia. Soon we started to mimic him. "The'e you a'e. You all impo'tant to me ..." and the like ... and a few of us were trying to speak through our noses!
Fr. Emery's office was located at one end of the building which served the Fathers as chapel and convent. Anyone who came up to the building would always be seen by Father. One old woman used to come to visit the chapel to pray. Whenever she passed by Fr. Emery's office, she'd genuflect before him and greet him: "Good mo'ning, Pader!"
For four years, Father Emery served as Director of the school; and I want to believe, that he had played a great role and influence in our youthful upbringing and values. When Fatima High School was transferred to its present site, the lot was being farmed and there were clusters of bamboo trunks in it. The road to it was muddy which buried our feet up to our ankles. To clear the school campus of the bamboo stumps, anybody who came in late to school would be punished by removing a couple of those stumps. For the girls, writing for a hundred or more times would suffice. Credit that to character building! No one ever complained. We were an unspoiled lot, mind you ... there were no tricycles or bicycles. There was only the calesa or plain walking to your destination ... and we must keep up to the American time of the school.
We had a very intelligent, personable batch of teachers. They spoke to us in English, in and out of classes. Compound that with the priests who were our teachers in English and Composition. Fr. John Pelissier was our grammar teacher. Fr. Conrad Blanchet, the Fr. Superior, was our English teacher. He would read to us a portion of the book published in the Reader's Digest, then required us to write a theme on what he read to us on only two pages of our theme notebook. Fr. John was very fond of making us debate on very serious issues like sports ... over a can of candies ... for a prize.
The school introduced us to winnie roast or corn parties. swimming picnics and participating at the parish social fund raising dances. We wore gowns during these occasions. On one such social dance, Francisca Ramoran, the belle of the school eloped with his soldier boy friend. Fr. Emery was so saddened by this, he sat all night by the barracks of the brigade - begging, to no avail, for Francisca to come out. He was like a real parent - if he could, we would have gotten into the barracks to carry her bodily out from there. How we all grieved on that incident.
La Salette was where the community first experienced klieg lights and well-prepared stage presentations - complete with painted backdrops and changing lights, all engineered by Fr. Emery and by Mr. Maximo Caday, the artist teacher. Father too had a prompters tunnel under the stage. Here, during our performances, he set and prompted us when we forgot our lines or coached us to smile by smiling at us. Oh, our dear, Fr. Emery suffering the mosquitoes in his prompter's seat.
Every Friday of the week, we looked forward to the afternoon dancing sessions - no rock 'n roll or gyrating, please, dancing the all too proper waltz at arms length from your partner - under the eyes of everyone - teachers and the priests. We had our glee club and choir under the direction of Fr. Emery. The faculty and priests joked with us, played and ate with us in our Halloween and Christmas parties - ala cowboy, or hobos in attire. There was one big joke we used to play on Fr. Emery, the girls all wanted to dance with him, much to his embarrassment - he would run away while we gave him a merry chase. He never danced of course, but he would chivalrously ask one of the boys to stand in for him.
Yes, we had loved everyone a lot, joked a lot with our Director and our teachers and among ourselves. We had very strong esprit-de-corps because of these. We also cried on occasion.
We had a Maths teacher, Mr. Joseph Hammond, whom everyone just adored. He was the binding agent in all that we did for the school. He was very talented and had a very good singing voice. He was the epitome of loyalty and dedication to the school. Because of an altercation between him and another teacher, he left La Salette. The students, especially the boys were all there by the highway, tearfully, to see him off, but not without some physical struggle - when his bus came, some held on to his legs, grabbed by the waist and held on to his arms in a last ditch effort to make him stay but to no avail. That was our big heart-break and when Fr. Emery was transferred to another parish, I particularly bawled over for him.
As pioneers of La Salette of San Mateo, these painful and bitter-sweet memories continue to live in our minds and hearts. Father Emery once taught us this song - adapted from Love's Old Sweet Song - and I write it because it encapsulates my feelings and thoughts and appreciation for La Salette as one of its pioneer graduates.