Dirt Farmer's Son. Terry A. Maurer
Bernard Maurer, Dr. Bernard Godfroy and Mac Godfroy: 1942
Mary Ann with her parents and grandparents: 1942
Me with Saxophone
Chapter II
Military School (1950–1956)
Harry S. Truman (1945–1953)
One day in early September 1949, I heard Dad telling Mom that the boys (my brother and I) would be going to a Catholic military boarding school in Monroe (Tony was eight and l was six). My mom cried and replied, “No, they can’t go.” My dad said that the decision had already been made and that we would be leaving in seven days. He told my mom that Uncle Doc would be paying the tuition ($500 per year for nine months room and board—a lot of money in 1950), and the boys would get a good education, better than at the public school in Frederick. Also we would not need to ride the school bus seventy-five miles per day anymore. He then called Tony and me to tell us the news. I remember Dad saying, “There will even be kids from Detroit at this school,” as if that would impress a six-year-old like me. But I could tell by the way he said Detroit that it meant something to him.
Pauline, Louis, Tony, Bernard, and Terry in 1954.
We drove to Monroe, probably in Uncle Doc’s Buick. We only drove that two hundred miles two or three more times in the next thirty-one round trips, which I made over the next six years. It was always the midnight train from Roscommon with a four-hour layover in Detroit’s Grand Central Station and the same in reverse when coming back to Roscommon for the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter furloughs. We got to know every inch of Grand Central Station’s ground floor. We saw the trains go from the transportation of choice with its fancy conductors in uniform and clean seats with fresh white paper-covered headrests on every seat to something less by 1956.
I continued to ride the trains from 1956 to 1961 when I went to high school in Holy Trinity, Alabama, and then first year of college in Monroe, Virginia. For sure, by 1957, one could observe the decline in service and less attention to detail in all areas of train travel. The era of air travel was getting started for not just the rich but even for some of the privileged poor. That’s what I thought of myself. I didn’t get on a commercial plane until I flew to Mexico City in 1962, but one could see that the passenger trains were not the future.
The first night at military school was memorable. I was assigned to one of the special tower rooms with its one-foot window ledges and eerie tall ceilings. It held four students. There was a big thunderstorm passing through as we heard “taps” for the first time, and then I could hear my bunkmates crying. I am not sure if they were scared of the storm or scared of being alone away from their parents for the first time. I don’t think I cried. I would always cry when I saw my parents. Tony would always cry when he left them. Neither of us cried at the same time. My parents told me they were going to be spending the night with Uncle Doc’s aunt in the city, so I knew they were not too far away that first night. School got started the next day, and I did not see any parents again until Thanksgiving vacation nearly three months later.
Third grade was the year that most of my classmates started classes at HDC. Mike Sweeney started in first grade, but my best friends, Cadets Paul Ewing, Dennis McIntyre, Eugene Willis, Paul Hebert, Tim Gillet, and John Vandegrift, started with me in third grade. Gordon Rebresh started military school in the fifth grade. Sweeney was also one of my best friends. He and I were altar boys together, and in sixth, seventh, eighth grades, we were always paired up to do the serving for the annual first communion mass, usually for the second graders.
I remember thinking I was too old to play in the sandbox with some of my classmates who thought it was really cool. We never had a sandbox on the farm—who needed a sandbox? There was dirt everywhere—but I did fall asleep in the chicken yard once and woke up when a rooster pecked at my bare feet.
In 1950, we learned to play soccer. Our fourth-grade nun, Sister Thomas Ellen, had a brother who was a professional soccer player, and she knew all the rules. I also saw the movie The Pride of St. Louis about Jerome “Dizzy” Dean, the St. Louis Cardinal player who won thirty games pitching. I started pitching then and didn’t stop until 1960. I even got Denny McClain’s autograph with my son, Stephen, when Denny won his twenty-eighth game for Detroit in 1968. Denny finally beat Dizzy Dean’s record by winning thirty-one games that year. I thought I was so good that I even took my confirmation name in 1954 after Mr. Dean. The name was Jerome. My first grading period in third grade was not pretty. I was a straight-A student in Frederick, but at HDC, the nun said I was so far behind they wouldn’t embarrass me with a grade for any of my classes.
I don’t remember much about that first summer back home. However, I was ready to go back to Monroe for fourth grade. I did and I improved in my classes, and I was made a corporal that year. Maybe it was even sergeant. Sister Thomas Ellen was our fourth-grade nun. She was probably not yet thirty and not bad looking (even covered head to toe in the traditional religious habit), in my opinion, as a mature eight-year-old.
One day, as our fourth-grade class was getting into outdoor play clothes in the basement locker area, I said to Eugene Willis, “Sister Thomas Ellen gets to watch us boys take our pants off every day. I would like to see her take her pants off just once.”
Well, Willis immediately ran up to Sister, and I saw him whisper something in her ear. I presumed it was verbatim what I had just said, but nothing happened until later. After play period, Sister came up to me and said, “What did you say earlier?”
I said, “I can’t tell you.”
So we went to the refectory, and again after supper, she continued, “What did you say earlier?”
I said again, “I can’t tell you, Sister,” getting a little worried now.
As study hall was ending, Sister Thomas Ellen came to my desk, tapped me on the shoulder, and said for the third time, “Tell me what you said earlier,” and she added, “If you don’t, you will have to go see Sister Hermann Joseph, the mother superior.”
Well, I knew what that meant, probably expulsion and a trip back to Roscommon on the next train. So I figured she already knew what I said and just wanted me to repeat it. So I started to cry and through my tears told her exactly what I said expecting the worst. I said, “Sister, I told Eugene Willis that you get to watch us take our pants off every day, and I would like to see you take yours off just once.”
She stood up straight (she had been leaning over my shoulder) and said, “Okay then.”
Nothing more was ever said about it, either that night nor that school year, nor the next four and one half more years at HDC. My guess is that at the evening gathering of the nuns, Sister probably told the other nuns, “You’ll never believe just what one of my students said.”
In the fifth grade I started playing the tenor saxophone and was good enough to play in the school marching band. Our band was invited to play in Briggs Stadium (later called Tiger Stadium). We also played in the Marion year parade in Windsor, Ontario, in 1954. I have included a picture of myself playing the tenor sax, which appeared in the parade section of the Detroit Free Press. Tony played the trombone and traveled to the same events.
We didn’t see each other every day, at least not to talk. His class of about forty to forty-five students were moving through the halls of the Hall independent of my class. We marched everywhere in two files. We would bump into each other for band practice, later for football practice and games. We also both played on the school team. Of course, when it was time for vacations back up north in Roscommon, we would either take the taxi together or our military drill instructor, Lieutenant Hyland, might drive us