Talk:Franciscan High School

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In 1929 I attended the 2nd, 3rd and 4th grades of Ladycliff Academy in HIghland Falls, N. Y. I was from Scranton, Pa. We wore West Point uniforms and were drilled by cadets in the World Wqar I squads formationws. We were housed in a special section and used to descend to our playground on irona fire-escape-like msteps. The chapel in which I made my first Holy Communion was one of the few areas of the main building we regulariy visited. I also remember a large veranda like room which afforded a magnificent view of the Hudson; Highland Falls, as the name suggests, is on a cliff far above but near the beautiful Hudson. There, of a nice May evening, I was happy to help serve the nuns their tea and act as messengers as we watched speed boats whizz by far below. Those in charge of the serving made sure I got genraousl portions of the goodies which went with the tea.

Our playground is, from memory (I visited the West Point Visitors complex when the main building became Olmsted Hall when West Point bought the property in the 1980's with funds donated by a class mate of my father in law Colonel Milo G. Cary), in sight of Highland Falls' main street which dead ends into the Thayer Gate of W.P. It is now a parking lot. I remember seeing, as we played, the funeral procession of a Catholic cadet who had been killed playing football for W,P. proceeding to the Catholic church in town because W.P. did not have a Catholic chapel in those days.

And most vividly I remember saying good bye to my father in June of 1930 within steps of the entrancxe to the present Museum after we had watched a horesmanship display at W.P. The following Sunday he dropped dead in Scranton while playing golf. I did not go to his funeral and did not return to Scranton until 1946.

I carried away from my three year stay at Ladycliff an addition to my Scranton accent, a genuine lower East Side dees, dem and dos accent. In 1936 when I was sent to high school in England, (Beaumont College, Old Windsor, Berks, England ) they called me, behind my back, "the American gangster" because of the Hollywood movies they had seen.

Those were the days. We thought they'd never end.