Dirt Farmer's Son. Terry A. Maurer
the commandant, on the cover of this book.
Since Mother’s Day was the only time my parents came to visit and there was visiting every Sunday, that is if the students’ parents could get to Monroe. Most students were from a reasonable driving distance; that’s from Detroit, Toledo, and other towns within sixty to seventy miles of Monroe. Paul Hebert and Tim Gillett were from Mt. Clemens. Michael Day was from Cleveland, Mike Sweeney, and the Saab twins, Arthur and Allen, were from Toledo. Most of the students were from wealthy families. The wealthiest in my class was Everett Fisher from Detroit. His father was one of the “Fisher body” brothers, and his mom was part of the Briggs family. His mom’s family-owned Briggs Stadium, later to be called Tiger Stadium. My classmates would invite me to join them and their family for dinner or some other outing nearly every Sunday. The Fishers would come in their Flying Dutchman, a first-class motor coach, the size of a Greyhound bus. It was always a memorable day when I’d get to ride around Monroe in the Flying Dutchman.
One of the most accomplished graduates from the Hall of the Divine Child who I met in the ’80s was Jay Wetzel. Mr. Wetzel was a 1950 graduate who was picked by General Motors’ chairman, Roger Smith, to be the first Saturn employee. Jay told me he was allowed to select any seven leaders from sales, manufacturing, finance, marketing, research within GM, to assist him setting up the new Saturn car company in Tennessee.
As it happened, fresh out of Bowling Green University in 1991, my son, Stephen, was one of the first Saturn sales associates for Saturn of Plymouth. Jay Wetzel’s Saturn car sold very well. Steve frequently was the lead salesperson, corporate-wide, even outselling Mary Wetzel (Jay’s daughter), who was at a different Michigan dealership.
Perhaps the most popular students at HDC during my time were the Schoenith twins, Tom and Jerry. Their father, Joe, owned the Gail Electric Company, which sponsored the Gail hydroplane racing boats on the Detroit River. Later, their Roostertail Restaurant was a very popular spot for the Motown crowd, including the Supremes, Smokey Robinson, and Marvin Gaye.
In the summertime, some of these HDC families would visit our family farm in Roscommon some two hundred miles north of Monroe. My dad always enjoyed showing these rich city folks our flowing wells. One of the parents told my dad in 1955 that the artesian water tasted so good that he should bottle it and sell it to the folks in Detroit. My dad would laugh and go back to the barn and shovel some more manure, knowing that what he was doing was far more important than listening to the crazy city people. It would be another thirty years before Terry Maurer (me) would put the first of this most remarkable artesian water in a glass bottle and offer it for sale as deMaurier and later Avita.
In seventh grade, we were considered upperclassmen and could play on the varsity sports teams, if we were good enough to make the team. My brother and I both played varsity football. However, my most memorable year on the team was in eighth grade when HDC went undefeated again. Our 1955–1956 team was led by Paul Ewing as quarterback. I was first string left half back. I scored three touchdowns in one game against the weakest team in our CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) league, St. Michael’s from Monroe. Even so I remember that Joe Turowski called me the hero of the game. Joe’s gorgeous older sister had a date with Kirk Douglas on a vacation to Los Angeles in 1955. I don’t remember the final score.
In another game that year against our toughest rival, Trenton, I made a game-saving tackle on defense. Here’s what happened: we kicked off late in the game, and the biggest guy on Trenton’s team received the ball and was speeding through all our defenders. There were two “deep” defenders, me at 4'10" and either 5'8" Gordon Rebresh or Willis between their goal line and a game-winning touchdown. I could see the Trenton fullback turn toward my side of the field at full speed. I knew our coaches, and everybody on the sideline was watching the action. There was no way that I could fake a tackle and lose the game, so I decided not to wait for the Trenton full-back to reach me. I ran full speed directly at him and left my feet and hit him like a torpedo in the midsection. He went down like a sack of potatoes. He couldn’t believe that the little defender did not chicken out. Well, when I got to the sidelines, our coach was bragging to his assistant about the great tackle which Tom Kulick just made. Tom Kulick is just about my size, but it was my tackle, not Kulick’s. Only my friends knew I saved the game, and I never told the coach it was me.
As an adult, Paul Ewing could play the piano like a concert pianist, and he was a very successful businessman in Detroit, manufacturing automotive and heavy equipment fasteners at his NSS Company. His wife, Mary Sue, sang for the Detroit Opera. They both entertained us at our home, Paul playing and Mary Sue singing. The music was remarkable.
Also, a turning point in my future education was developing for me during seventh grade. Ironically it involved a girl, Linda Wells, from St. Mary’s Academy who saw me serving mass at the IHM Convent on Sunday and for all of the Academy girls, all four hundred of them at their chapel. As it happened Linda decided to send me a bracelet with both my and her name engraved on it. Now, it is true we never spoke to each other either before or after the gift. It was all about eye contact as I held the paten under her chin when I was the altar boy for Monsignor Marron at the girls’ mass. The bracelet arrived in my hand through one of my classmates who had a sister in Linda’s class at the Academy.
It was probably the next week that the new Mother Ursula, head nun, pulled me out of my seventh-grade religion class into the hallway, grabbing my wrist and my bracelet. She said, “You are being expelled from school for making contact with a girl from the Academy. The commandant will take you to the train depot this afternoon.” I was shocked! She also said, “The girl has already been sent back to Ann Arbor, expelled, gone for the breaking this unholy rule about no contact between the boys and the girls.” The new mother superior was making a statement, letting everyone know how tough she was. Much like Bowie Kuhn, commissioner of baseball, suspending Denny McClain in 1969. Go after the popular kid, and then everyone will fear you. It happens all over the animal kingdom.
Mother Ursula had to inform my brother that I was being sent home. The mother superior told me it would be later in the day before I would be taken to the depot. During that time, my brother Tony was able to convince this new disciplinarian that I should not be kicked out. What happened instead was a formal military court-martial. I got busted. Tony was on the battalion staff as a first lieutenant. The battalion staff was like the joint chiefs of staff in the real military, a big deal. So on the scheduled day, I appeared in front of this four-member group. A fellow named Valmassi was the chief of staff with my brother and two others. I remember Valmassi reading something about the bracelet from Linda Wells. I said something like “I didn’t ask for it” and “never really met the girl.” No luck, they told me that I broke the rule and my rank would go back to buck private. At least I was not kicked out of school. So although I was not happy that my own brother voted against me, it obviously was the best compromise and did stop the immediate expulsion. At Thanksgiving vacation that year, our friend Floyd Millikin gave Tony the raspberries for busting his own brother. That same day, my friend Paul Ewing also got court-martialed, and I learned later directly from Paul that it also had to do with a girl from the Academy who lived in Monroe.
My days and years at the Hall of the Divine Child Catholic Military School in Monroe, Michigan, were happy days. I had many good friends and got a good elementary education. The opportunity to play all the sports, learn to swim, and have picnics in the big woods and the little woods. I did not mind all the marching and day uniforms and Sunday dress uniforms. We were always told to wear our dress uniforms when we went to mass on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter vacations in our hometowns. Maybe the uniform code was to advertise the school or so that we would not forget how to behave. The uniform has a way of improving one’s behavior. My parents always, I am sure, were proud to show us off. Well, you can’t blame them for that because we were only home for a short time during the nine months of the school calendar. It seemed we were forever catching the train, coming or going between Roscommon and Monroe.
Last-minute projects sometimes made us late for the midnight train out of Roscommon. On one particular vacation night, the steam engine was already about to pull out of our little village, population of 750 in 1955, when we arrived in a big hurry in Dad’s old red GMC pickup. All five of us, Dad, Mom holding Louie, Tony, and I were in the one-seater. As we crossed the tracks in front of the train on