by Nenita Diego-Ignacio, Class 1956
La Salette, You have left traces of nostalgia. A longing ... a yearning ... To once again feel that warmth, that joy ... that strength; And peace in your arms. Yes, as we grow old, they are mementoes of a life, so treasured and kindled!
And here are vivid memories from the most treasured moments I spent in my Alma Mater, from 1952 - 56. I was 12 years old when I first entered the gates of Fatima High School (now La Slatte of San Mateo) way back in 1952.
There was a familiar scene as one gets inside the campus. There was an oval (now reduced to one half its former area) where the flagpole was mounted on a cement foundation. Facing the street was the statue of Our Lady of Fatima and that of Jacinta, Lucia and Francisco (the children to whom Our Lady appeared). Sometimes, at the end of the afternoon session, students would be seen sprawled on this lawn waiting for the operetta or glee club practice, which sometimes lasted til 8:30 p.m. One such night I will never forget. It was raining cats and dogs and we had no umbrellas so we could not go for personal necessity to the comfort room. What did we do? Well, we just did "it" beside the down spout. Bro. Donat did not know nor Miss Ramos. Had the boys known what we did, boy! That would have been a shame!
There was one place in school we loved to stay. It was at the back of the Library, right under the acacia tree (still there). WE called that place Papa Emery's nook. It was an ipil-ipil grove ... very cool ... very vozy. We used the ipil-ipil branches for see-saw so the branches were all bent because of our weight. This was also the same place where we ate our "baon" for lunch and which we enjoyed doing as a group.
I remember that I was given a permanent excuse slip because if my father could not bring us to school (because of early sick calls) we had to hime from Old Centro to school which is 2 kilometers.
Particicpants or contestants would be exempted from exams (but had to make good for the rest of the year) when we had to practice for out-of-town competitions and programs. Half-baked presentations were never allowed by our Directors then. Fr. Emergy would be there for practices especially for dress rehearsals. That was when I was in first year. Bro. Donat would demonstrate dance steps in his cassock. You should see him dance to the tune of Lily, Rose and Columbine ..." One of the songs in "The Forest Prince" operetta. That was my solo dance number and I had to do it as he demonstrated. WEll, we presented operrettas in other places .. imagine we had to bring our side scenes, curtains, foot lights and all the props we needed including our own costumes. But it was fun. How could one forget those days! We really had great teachers, directors, actors, actresses and dancers.
I was personally coached and trained by Bro. Donat for clamations and orations. I was in his special class of Forensic Arts and Phonetics where we were taught the correct diction and enunciation of words ... oh, we had a lot of tongue twister exercises like: "The haughty daughter of Senor Yanta ... Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper ... She sells se shells ..." and a lot more for good public speaking.
School days would be 7 days a week for us because of our extra curricular activities. We had to help in the Library (book binding ... book classification, and putting library cards, etc.)
We had funny experiences in class ... one was: one of the boys was caught sleeping at the back during our English class, so to wake him up, Miss Betty Piedad asked: "_____, to what gender do you belong?" They nudged him so he woke up and in his dreamy state answered, "Neuter gender, Ma'am" and since then, we called him "It".