Regarding the Last Posting...

Oops!  The photo to which you were referred in the last blog was not there.  How is one to imagine the adventure of crossing the roof when one can’t see the reality?  (Blogger remembers crossing it a few times in the blazing sun of summer, and what an adventure that was!)  So here is the photo.

 

 Now imagine packing up the contents of a building this size and moving it about two miles away as the crow flies.  But, of course, crows the size of moving vans don’t fly anywhere, so now imagine moving all the packed items.  Sr. M. Reina gave a few insights: first, furniture items were sold as they were no longer vital to teaching/living.  Desks were sold for 50 cents.  In the cafeteria a buyer could find, grouped according to category, other memorabilia.

Packing went on along with the teaching, i.e., one taught one’s scheduled classes, then went to the assigned task of packing (everything well organized, of course).  The Sisters worked in partners facilitating the packing, moving, and later unpacking of the boxes.  Everything had to be clearly marked to avoid later mayhem. Boxes of packed items went to the gym (remember the room made from two classrooms and having the ceiling height of every other room in the building).  The library posed a particular challenge.  The packers used trough trays in packing the books shelf by shelf and marking them according to a designated system.  At the Hilton Dr. end the books were put on shelves as they arrived.

And how did the Sisters get all those boxes to the new site?  A huge debt of gratitude goes to the parents and other friends of Notre Dame Academy who generously went back and forth from 5^th Street to Hilton Drive until the monumental task was complete.  The librarian was able to recruit about 20 van drivers for the library challenge.  Perhaps you have a “moving experience” to which you can compare this one.  Which would you choose to do again if it were demanded?

Questions still linger as do many, many stories of those days.  What happened to all the statues?  They went to the new home in Park Hills.  Many are still around; one valued statue got damaged over the years and deemed beyond repair—the Sacred Heart statue that stood in the 5^th St. cafeteria (blogger thinks) and then in the H. Dr. cafeteria for several years.  A few of the statues are lovingly kept by the Sisters in their 4^th floor residence.  Were all the desks sold?  No, a few are still in storage for old time’s sake. 

There’s more grist for the mill on the larger topic here, but this is sufficient for now.