From the archives: Cathedral Grade School celebrated 150th anniversary with fond memories
Editor’s note: Former BND reporter Doug Kaufman interviewed Cathedral Grade School alumni during the school’s 150th anniversary celebration in 1997-98. His story is being republished in light of news that the Catholic Diocese of Belleville is closing Notre Dame Academy, which resulted from the merger of Cathedral and two other schools, due to decreasing enrollments.
Bill Schaab will never forget his years Cathedral Grade School in Belleville. Especially 1958, when he was in second grade and the new school building had just opened.
“It was pretty exciting to go to a brand new building, because we had watched this thing being built from the ground up, literally,” said Schaab, 46, now a teacher at St. Clare School in O’Fallon. “It was really exciting, just to walk into this brand new building, knowing that nobody else had ever gone to school there before.”
Second grade was also the year Pope John XXIII was elected.
“We used to get to listen to things on the radio,” Schaab said. “And they were talking about how when the new pope was elected, there’d be white smoke coming out of the Vatican.”
On that day, the students were back at work within view of the school’s boiler room.
“There was this puff of white smoke that came out of the boiler room, the smokestack there,” Schaab said. “I remember one kid standing up and shouting, ‘The new pope’s been elected. Look, Sister, there’s the white smoke.’ And, of course, she very lovingly explained to this kid that no, that wasn’t what it meant.”
That was just one of the lessons that countless students have been taught at Cathedral since its humble beginnings 150 years ago.
The beginning
In September 1847, the Rev. Caspar Ostlangenberg started what would become Cathedral Grade School in the basement of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Belleville.
Over the years, the school has been held in several different locations and has survived a devastating fire in 1884 that killed some students and teachers, the Great Depression and the effects of two World Wars. Generation after generation of Belleville students have received a strong start to their education at Cathedral.
“Our graduates have done excellent in all three high schools (Althoff and Belleville Township High School East and West),” said Sister Deanne Stratmann, Cathedral principal since 1989. “We’ve always had honor students there, and award students, in all three of the high schools. I think that’s a good tribute to their grade school education, because that’s where it begins. What’s really nice is the parents will let us know they’re grateful for the scholarship (their children) got to college because of the good foundation they had.”
Now, as the school prepares for sesquicentennial activities including a reunion and dance next weekend, people who have been part of the Cathedral education process look back fondly on what the school has meant. Three students who represent a 65-year period of Cathedral history — Belleville residents Amy Pfeiffer, Bill Schaab and Aurelia Biehl — took a few moments to share their memories.
‘I wanted to run away’
Aurelia Biehl, 79, graduated from Cathedral in 1933. But starting kindergarten in 1924, she almost didn’t get out of the gate.
“The poor nun, Sister Pacifica, had a little difficult time,” Biehl said. “She had trouble with me. I wasn’t a very good pupil, because I’d run away all the time. I wanted to run away. I didn’t like school. And she told me if I didn’t stop running away, she was gonna tie me to a tree.”
Did Sister Pacifica ever have to get the rope?
“No,” Biehl said, laughing. “She just threatened me that she was gonna do that. I was a nuisance in kindergarten.”
Sister Pacifica’s exasperation was understandable. There were three Aurelia Maries in the kindergarten class of 1924-25. Two of them grew up to marry Biehl brothers, ensuring even more confusion. Sister Pacifica had 40 to 50 students that year, all of whom had to learn their ABCs and to count to 100 to graduate, Biehl said.
After kindergarten, the boys and girls were separated for grades 1-8.
“We weren’t even supposed to look at the boys. ... That was just the way the nuns taught us,” Biehl said.
Many of the students lived on farms, including Biehl.
“I was going to school when the Smithton Road was being paved,” she said. “My dad would take us to school, as far as the city limits, with a team of horses and a wagon. And then I had an aunt and uncle that lived in town, and they would pick me up (in a little Ford roadster) at Stover’s Lake and take me on to school. And then I would stay in town with my grandparents, who lived about six blocks from school. I stayed in town the whole week. I would walk to the Cathedral from Sixth and Main Street.”
Times were tight, even before the Great Depression began. The cafeteria sold soup for a nickel and sandwiches for a dime, Biehl said. Biehl dressed in all the latest styles — from the feed and grain store.
“My grandmother made most of my clothes for school,” she said. “My dresses that I wore to school. Some of them were made from printed feed sacks, that they would get flour and different things from the grainaries. ... It was a closely woven cotton sack. It had flowers and designs on them. ... When you picked them up, you’d try to get two sacks that were alike so you’d have enough to make a dress or something out of it.”
At school, the kids did what the nuns told them to do. When the dismissal bell rang in the afternoon, an eighth-grader would walk to the Victrola in the hallway and put the record “When The Monkey Spins His Tail Around The Lamppost” on the turntable.
“It’s a march, and we marched out of school with that record every day,” Biehl said, laughing heartily.
Biehl, whose six children all attended Cathedral, graduated with honors from the Academy of Notre Dame in 1937. With the Depression, there was no money to go on to college. But Biehl doesn’t mind, because her Cathedral education was so good.
“We had excellent teaching in the grade school, because the nuns were very dedicated. We definitely got a thorough education. I know that I can do math problems three times faster than any of my grandchildren.”
Marching at arm’s length
Bill Schaab graduated from Cathedral in June 1965. His first day of kindergarten was in September 1956.
“I remember being a little scared, but I remember being kind of proud because I was one of the few kids that didn’t cry,” he said.
Schaab has two enduring memories of kindergarten, both involving longtime teacher Sister Pacifica, who taught first grade and then kindergarten for over 50 years at Cathedral. He remembers being confused when a student arrived from Germany and Sister Pacifica spoke German to the new boy. Sister Pacifica would have a birthday party each month for all the students born that month. She would also choose different days throughout the school year to celebrate summer birthdays.
Recess time was fun, but the discipline was never far away.
“After recess, ... when the bell rang, we had to line up in a double line. We had certain areas of the playground where we were supposed to line up.”
School principal Sister Ilona Pfeiffer would direct the students inside.
“The commands she gave were attention, arm’s length, which meant we had to stick our arm out in front of us and get the distance between each other. Then the third command was arms down. And then you marched into the building after recess,” Schaab said.
In addition enjoying the new school building, which opened in 1958 and is still in use today, Schaab said the teachers at Cathedral were all very qualified.
“The teacher I had for reading was excellent,” he said. “And more than just learning how to read, she instilled in me, anyway, a love of reading. Something I still do a lot of today. All the teachers, up and down the line, in mathematics. I think I had a very strong mathematical background.”
Schaab, who wrote a history of Cathedral for the 150th anniversary, said the education there was the best.
“I don’t think I could’ve gotten any better foundation any place else,” he said.
Schaab went on to graduate from Althoff in 1969, Belleville Area College in 1971 and Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville in 1974 with a degree in physical education. In November 1974, Cathedral principal Sister Patricia (Stephen Ann) Callahan offered him a teaching position. Schaab accepted and taught at Cathedral until June 1983.
Schaab has taught at St. Clare Catholic School in O’Fallon since 1986 and has a daughter, Beth, attending Cathedral. As the current Cathedral school board president, he is involved with steering Cathedral successfully toward the future. The big upcoming projects are a new roof for the building this summer and new windows next year. Beyond that, the goal is to continue to give the students the best education possible.
“We plan on keeping up-to-date with technology, in terms of computers and Internet access — all kinds of stuff like that.”
‘I didn’t want to go’
Amy Pfeiffer, 22, graduated from eighth grade at Cathedral in 1989. She vividly recalls that first day of kindergarten in 1980.
“It was so funny,” she said. “I remember walking with my mom, and it was the most terrifying thing. I didn’t want to go and I was crying. You know, the whole bit. And she said, ‘Oh, it’ll be fine. It’ll be fine.’ And once I got in there and saw all the kids, and started playing, I was fine. The next day I went in there and I wanted to go back. It was just the initial thing of leaving mom and leaving everyone and going to a place that was totally different to me.”
Pfeiffer’s early memories of Cathedral involve playing with friends on the asphalt playground bordered by Lincoln and First streets. Playground games included kickball, dodgeball, tag and Red Rover.
“We were all sectioned off, with grades. ... (I) was always looking amongst the older children and wanting to play with them,” she said. “We had our own little grade group, always playing together and having fun.”
But Cathedral was more than just play. Pfeiffer was at Cathedral when the first computers, early Apples, came in.
“I think it was my last year there, when we got the computers,” she said.
Pfeiffer said the Cathedral education was a solid start.
“I had a good experience there, and it helped me move into high school, definitely,” she said.
Pfeiffer attended Althoff Catholic High School, graduating in 1993. She is majoring in special education at Eastern Illinois University and is scheduled to graduate in December 1998. She worked at Cathedral Day Care the summers of 1994 and 1995 and came full circle by coaching cheerleading at Cathedral in 1994.
“It made me feel like an authority figure to these kids. They looked up to me as a role model. It just made me think of when I was in athletics there and I looked up to my coaches.”
