A More Abundant Life

A Holy Cross Girl Returns to her Roots

“I am come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly.” -John 10:10

The Academy of the Holy Cross

For the past sixty years, the Academy of the Holy Cross (AHC) has been blessed to occupy its spacious and beautiful campus in Kensington, Maryland, but AHC’s story reaches back much farther. The all-girls secondary school is currently celebrating its 150th anniversary. For its entire history, AHC has been lovingly administered by the Sisters of the Holy Cross. Before moving to Kensington, the campus was based in Washington DC – for fifty years in and around an imposing brown brick Tudor- Gothic structure that still stands on Upton Street N.W.

Upton Street Reunion

On a lovely Sunday afternoon in October 2017 AHC alumnae who studied at the former campus were invited to return to Upton Street for Mass and fellowship. More than 50 women were able to attend accompanied by spouses, family, and guests. Current AHC students and staff welcomed and honored the returning alumnae. Among the more senior attendees was AHC graduate Patricia, accompanied by her classmate and friend Rosemary. Though each had often passed by the site, it was to be the first time they would enter the actual building in many decades. Howard University purchased the property in the 1970’s and they graciously allowed use of the campus to both commemorate the 150th Anniversary and celebrate the women who graduated from Upton Street.

Upton Street Memories

Pat remembered their years at Upton Street as a time of shortages, shared sacrifice, and uncertainty. “Even so,” she remarked, “We had a wonderful time here.” The United States’ involvement in World War II began early in their freshman year and did not conclude until the summer after their graduation. Rosie remembered gas rationing. “It seemed everything was cancelled, [but] we had the Junior-Senior Prom here. We took the bus in our long dresses and the guys in their tuxes. We sang and danced and had the best time. A lot of those boys were going off to war.” Pat lived in Silver Spring, Maryland and attended Holy Cross grade school for a time, then also located at Upton Street, before enrolling in the high school. She remembered passing an all-boys school on the way from the bus stop on Connecticut Avenue. “We would put on lipstick, which was not allowed, then take it off when we got to school. We were afraid Sister Fernanda would catch us.” “Sister Fernanda was a terror,” Rosie agreed. Pat remembered Sister Rose Viterbo with fondness, and her favorite class was French, which inspired a life-long love of travel.

“There was a lot of spirit here,” Rosie remarked. She remembered playing basketball, “At the time, boys would use the whole court but girls only played half-court.” Pat remembered playing tennis on courts that were behind the school. A fellow alumna pointed out the stone retaining wall along the driveway. “I had to come see the wall! During break time we’d sit on the wall and talk. I’m glad it’s still here.” As they walked toward the old “Our Lady of the Roses” shrine to which they often paraded during Marian feasts, the women pondered the past and chatted. “There were a lot of grounds here,” Pat recollected. “It’s been built up so. There was a lot more walking space then. We’d sometimes walk down to Peirce Mill.” Pat, who commuted each day by bus from Silver Spring, remembered bowling at some nearby lanes and hanging out at the Hot Shoppes on Connecticut Avenue, a casual restaurant where you could eat-in or have food run out to your car by young carhops, or “curbers.” When asked what she remembered most about the Hot Shoppes, Pat exclaimed “Butterscotch Ice Cream Cake!” In his Streets of Washington blog, John DeFerrari  wrote that the Connecticut Ave. Hot Shoppes “was a low, orange-roofed structure in the center of a large parking lot. The curbers brought it to life. When it opened the shop had 50 curbers; 40 girls and 10 boys. It soon had to add 50 more. In the midst of the Depression, the jaunty Hot Shoppe with its exuberant curbers was among the city’s trendiest destinations, particularly for high school and college kids looking for inexpensive eats.” The bowling lanes Pat remembered were at the Chevy Chase Ice Palace (later the WMAL Channel 7 television studio.) “Throughout the war years, a steady stream of servicemen and civilian workers would wend their way up Connecticut Avenue on their free nights to take in the twin attractions of the Ice Palace and the Hot Shoppe,” wrote DeFerrari.

Travel and Tragedy

After graduation, Pat attended Georgetown Visitation Junior College and graduated from Catholic University, interestingly among the first few women (excepting nuns) to receive a degree from that school. Only later were undergraduate lay women officially admitted to Catholic University. “I came in through the back door,” Pat mischievously grinned. Inspired by her French studies, Pat took a job working in U.S. servicemen’s clubs in post-war Germany, where she met and married a young soldier, not surprisingly a Frenchman with U.S. citizenship. Together they served in Fontainebleau, France, briefly returned to Washington DC, then were posted to pre-war Vientiane, Laos, where her husband tragically died. Now a widow, Pat returned to Washington and worked as a Congressional Aide on Capitol Hill. There she was introduced to a Foreign Service officer and widower with five young children whom Pat would raise as her own. Family postings to Brazil, Ecuador, and Portugal culminated in an empty nest in the lovely small town of Lincoln, Massachusetts and regular trips to their lakeside vacation cottage in Maine.

Her idyllic life was again interrupted, and Pat returned to the Washington area, where she has lived ever since. “When I came back from Boston, I started taking some classes at the Smithsonian.” There she met a widow with whom she traveled extensively through the Elder Hostel program, which included morning classes and sightseeing. “We did some incredible trips” including Russia, (“I never, ever thought I would be standing in the middle of Red Square! I still remember that sensation,”) China (including Tibet), Norway and Sweden, Poland, Egypt, and a return to her beloved France after a long absence. As survivors of separate family crises, the women found healing through their joint friendship, learning, and travel.

Living Her Faith

Pat continues to live out her Catholic faith as taught and nurtured by the nuns at Holy Cross. She has hosted foreign exchange students and once took a trip to Ireland to visit “her relatives,” the family of a young lady she twice accommodated. Pat is a regular daily Mass attendee at her local parish and gives generously to charitable foundations. She greets everyone she meets with a gentle kindness. “I like to know about people no matter what they’ve done,”  she remarked. Pat still feels honored and proud to have spent her formative years at AHC, and privileged to have returned to Upton Street, if only for a day. “I’ve lived a good life,” she gratefully acknowledged, “Not to say I haven’t had my share of tragedy. And to think it all started here. So many of our classmates have passed on. We’re lucky to be here, and on such a beautiful day.”

 

Author’s Connection: Pat is my customer and my friend. I was privileged to escort her and Rosemary to the reunion. My mother Mary Ann Grayson Guevara (1942-2015) attended AHC from 1956 to 1958. Hers was the first class to attend the Kensington Campus. I was pleased to represent her, and wish she could have been there too.