Winter 2006 - Sacred Heart Schools

What a difference
50 years make!
A day in the “Fourth Academic” year of Diane
Lovegrove (SJSH‘52, SHP‘56) and a day in the
Senior Year of **** ******** (SJSH‘02, SHP‘06)
Diane Lovegrove (SJSHʻ52, SHPʻ56)
6:45am: Wake up and get dressed in
my uniform: a light blue skirt and blue
bolero with a white blouse, gray sweater,
and brown saddle shoes.
7:30am: Walk to school, then go to
study hall and put my books in my desk
(there were no lockers). Curtsy to the nun
at the front of the hall. (Once in a while
we got to come back to study hall to do
some homework – in silence of course.)
8:00am: Literature and English
Composition class, taught by Mother
Welch, who now resides at Oakwood.
She was a really good teacher, and very
down-to-earth. We wrote one essay every
Friday.
9:00am: French IV with our only lay
teacher (until Mr. Brown came our senior
year). All the rest of our teachers were
nuns and we called them Mother. Madame
told us firsthand about places in France,
which developed my curiosity. When I
finally did go to France after college, I
couldnʼt believe I was really there.
10:00am: Religion class with Mother
Schaffer, a young nun who also taught
sewing and ceramics on Saturdays.
11:00am: Logic class with Mr. John
Brown. When we were seniors we
suddenly had a man teacher for one
semester! This was quite a shock since no
boys were allowed on campus, not even
the brothers of the boarders. This tall
lanky young man didnʼt sit at a desk and
teach. He paced back and forth in front
of the class!
12:00pm: Lunch downstairs in
the cafeteria. We all ate there, and
it was our time to talk and visit. The
Sisters fixed the food. (The Mothers
were our teachers while the Sisters did
the menial tasks.) We all bought lunch
and there werenʼt many choices. We took
turns drying the silverware after lunch.
We all loved to help Sister Christine.
1:00pm: Chemistry lecture or lab. We
had lectures three days a week and lab
two days. Lab was the first experience
we had where we worked collaboratively
with another student.
2:00pm: History class. We had no
breaks between classes, only time to walk
to the next class. We never left campus
during school hours. There was no reason
to. School was extremely rigorous, and
we learned excellent study habits which I
carried all the way through grad school.
3:00pm: Music class in the Little
Theater— I had Glee Club with Mother
Cronin.
4:00pm: After-school activites, including
field hockey, soccer, volleyball
and a wonderful game that involved
throwing a rubber ring over the net to
another girl. I think this game originated
in Central America and was brought to us
by the boarders.
5:00pm: I changed out of my gym
clothes, gathered up my books, and
walked home. Before dinner, I practiced
THEN & NOW: Diane
Lovegrove in
1956 and in 2006
the piano for an hour.
6:00pm: I helped
make dinner and then
ate with my mom and dad. After dinner,
I studied for 2 or 3 hours. Sometimes
I watched my favorite TV shows: I
Love Lucy, Jackie Gleason, and The Ed
Sullivan show.
10:00pm: Go to bed.
We did not have class officers. We had
a system of ribbons: blue ribbons for the
upperclassmen and green ribbons for
the lower classmen. There was a voting
system to see who earned them. We did
not have yearbooks, nor were there any
clubs. We had only one dance a year, and
it was chaperoned by our parents.
Once a week we had Primes. We all
wore our white uniforms and sat with our
classes in the Little Theater. Reverend
Mother Deming or Mother Williams
presented us with awards for the week.
They were little cards that said Très
Bien, Bien or Assez Bien. To receive our
awards, we walked down the steps from
the hard wooden benches, down the
parquet floor and up the steps to the stage
where Reverend Mother was seated. We
curtsied whenever we went by her and
when we received our awards.
In my senior year, I had to choose
between College of Notre Dame in
Belmont and Dominican College in San
Raphael. I chose Notre Dame. In my
senior year of college, I applied to USC,
UCLA and Stanford and was accepted at
all these universities. I chose to attend
Stanford, where I earned my MA in
Education. In 1993, I earned another
degree from the University of San
Francisco— an MA in Pastoral Ministry.
There were 32 girls in my graduating
class.
18 Winter 2006