Former students reminisce ahead of St. John-Ascension Grammar School reunion

By Bill Doyle
CFP Correspondent  

WORCESTER – Mark Andrews has plenty of memories of attending St. John-Ascension Grammar School. So does Dan Deedy, but he also has a brick from when the school was torn down.

Mr. Deedy keeps the brick in his garage at his June Street home and it could serve as a metaphor for how he feels about his grammar school education.

“It laid the foundation for our Catholic faith as we matured from very young, to young adults to adults,” he said. “The buildings are gone, the brick is in my garage, but more importantly the foundation on which our faith is based, of which we try to practice as Catholics, remains resolute. I do believe in that.”

Mr. Deedy attended seventh and eighth grades in the early 1970s at the former St. John’s High School building across the street from St. John Church on Temple Street. He remembers looking out the window and watching the trains roll by and viewing workers wheeling huge slabs of beef into the former Cowans Meat Market where the St. Francis Xavier Center now houses the St. John’s Food for the Poor Program.

Mr. Andrews recalls playing outside during recess and having to stand still when the church bells rang during The Angelus Prayer.

“The entire schoolyard, everyone, got completely silent and froze in place,” he said. “If you were running in mid-step, you would just freeze and remain silent until the bells stopped ringing.”

Lots of other stories will likely be told during the St. John-Ascension Grammar School All Years Reunion on Sunday, Oct. 19. The reunion will begin with the 4:15 p.m. Mass at St. John Church, followed by a 5:30 p.m. reception at the White Eagle on Green Street, with light appetizers and a cash bar. Tickets cost $25 and the event will benefit the St. John’s Food for the Poor Program.

Mr. Deedy and Mr. Andrews are members of the reunion committee with Mary Wasgatt O’Neill, Mary McNamara, Maureen Baldwin and Sharon Cain Faucher.  

Mr. Deedy helped organize the previous reunion in May of 2012 which included a reception at Fiddler’s Green Pub following the 4:15 p.m. Mass at St. John Parish. About 70 people attended and Mr. Deedy hopes that roughly that many turn out for this reunion.

Their old grammar school has quite a history.

St. John’s Grammar School and Ascension Grammar School merged in 1963 to form St. John-Ascension Grammar School in the former St. John’s High School.

In 1972, St. John-Ascension merged with Sacred Heart Academy and St. Peter School to form Worcester Central Catholic Elementary School. Grades one through five were held at the former Sacred Heart Academy on Gage Street and grades six through eight were housed on Temple Street at the former St. John-Ascension building. In 1976, Worcester Central Catholic Elementary School moved into the original St. Peter Grammar School at 865 Main St., where it remains today under the name of St. Peter Central Catholic Elementary School.
 
St. John’s High School moved from Temple Street to Shrewsbury in 1962 and Ascension Central Catholic High School for girls on Vernon Street closed in 1970.

Mr. Deedy, 66, of Worcester, graduated from the eighth grade at St. John-Ascension Grammar School in 1972. Mark Andrews, 70, of Worcester, began at Ascension Grammar School and graduated from the eighth grade at St. John-Ascension in 1968. They both went on to graduate from St. John’s High School and Holy Cross.

Mr. Deedy is a parishioner at Blessed Sacrament and Mr. Andrews sings in the festival choir and folk group at Christ the King Parish.

Mr. Deedy recently retired after working as a school business manager in Athol, Auburn, Leominster and Leicester.

Mr. Andrews retired five years ago after a career as an elementary school teacher and principal, including teaching seven years at Our Lady of the Angels Catholic School in the 1980s.

Mr. Andrews remembers that St. John-Ascension didn’t provide food service so students brought their lunches, except for one day a week when mothers of students boiled hot dogs and made club sandwiches.

It didn’t cost much to attend St. John-Ascension. Mr. Andrews said when he entered the first grade in the early 1960s, tuition was only $5 a semester. At some point, tuition was raised to $10 a semester. Even though Mr. Andrews was one of three siblings to attend the school and Mr. Deedy was one of four, the cost was very affordable.

Mr. Deedy remembers wearing old St. John’s High School basketball uniforms when he played for the St. John-Ascension seventh and eighth grade team in the St. John’s gym on Temple Street or the St. Joseph’s gym on Grafton Hill.

While walking home from grammar school, Mr. Andrews and his fellow seventh and eighth graders sometimes bought slightly damaged, but still edible, single-serving pies at Table Talk Pies for three cents each. One day, they decided to act like the Three Stooges and have a pie-throwing fight.

“Most of the memories are stuff outside the class,” he said.

Most teachers at St. John-Ascension were nuns.

“They were very strict and very insistent on the rules and being respectful,” Mr. Andrews said. “Sometimes that was difficult.”

It could be difficult for the nuns as well because the class sizes were large. Mr. Andrews recalls having more than 40 students in each of his classes in the early years.

When Mr. Andrews attended Ascension Grammar School for grades one through three, he attended Mass at Ascension Parish next door and he would see the nuns from the school there. If the nuns needed to talk to the parents of the students, they could do so after Mass. So he knew he needed to behave.

Mr. Andrews remembers a nun imploring the students to read such Bible stories as David and Goliath.

“As far as the education and the academics, the fundamentals were very strong, the reading and writing,” Mr. Andrews said. “The Catholic faith, certainly that was a huge part of it.”
When Mr. Deedy graduated from the eighth grade, the school yearbook dubbed him “Pope Daniel I.”  

“They thought that I’d be at least a priest,” he recalled.

He said he never even considered the possibility. He and his wife, Anne, have two sons and a grandson.

Father John Madden, St. John Parish pastor, Mr. Andrews and Mr. Deedy are among those scheduled to speak at the reunion reception.

Checks for tickets can be made payable to Mark Andrews or Daniel Deedy and mailed to P.O. Box 20052, Worcester, MA 01602 no later than Sept. 30. For more information, contact Mr. Andrews at mkjandrews@charter.net or Mr. Deedy at danfdeedy@gmail.com or 774-239-7375.