By William King, Jr. - St.Joseph's, Garden City, NY
What do I recall from my days at St. Joseph's in Garden City, NY? One recollection was recently prompted by the death in 2022 of a great figure, Sidney Poitier.
Sidney Poitier starred in the film, Lilies of the Field, about a black man who is drafted by a group of nuns to build a church for their mission.
Three of our St. Joseph SSND teachers - Sisters Marie Emile (now Ann Weber), Dismas (now Denise McGraw), and Othilia (dec. 1996+) - assembled their 5th and 6th-grade classes, each with 60 students, to march a mile to the Calderone Theater in Hempstead, NY, to see the film during school hours.
I can imagine the scene of more than 150 uniformed students marching two by two down Franklin Avenue to see the movie. I hope that we were in good order. It must have been an impressive sight!
I wonder why our teachers were so intent on taking their students to see the movie.
Was it to see the sisters focused on bringing a Catholic church to a back country setting?
Or was it to see a black man with a commanding presence working with the sisters to construct their new church?
I'm sure that it was a combination of both. The memory stays with me some 60 years later.
Years later I was a pre-confirmation teacher at St. Augustine's in Brooklyn. The film, Glory, was showing at our local movie theater. My childhood memory came back as I walked my class to see the film down Flatbush Avenue.