GRADE 2, 1967

This picture was given to us by my lovely niece, Susan McAllister.  The year is 1967 and it is a Grade 2 Class, St Patrick's Primary School.  The teacher was Miss J Sears.  It's too bad Miss Sears isn't in the photo with the class. Don't they all look so sweet?

Grade 2, 1967

ROW 1, L-R
Susan Power, Jacinta Mackey, Josephine Dalton, Karen Baird, Marie O'Brien, Joan?, Terri Dicks, Janet Pink, Judy McCarthy, Louise Kavanaugh, Cathy Mackey, Margo Walsh
ROW 2, L-R
Lynn Martin, ?, Paulette ?, Joan Tracey, Susan Emberley, Rachel Reid, Sandra Doyle, Kathy Stone, Darlene Horwood, Jeanette Power, Tina O'Brien, Beverley O'Keefe
ROW 3, L-R
Janet Power, ?, Maureen O'Brien, Anita Hall, Marylou Redmond, Annette Power, Gertrude Bruce, Trudy Collins, Sylvia Broderick, Susan McAllister, Colleen ?, ?

If you are on this picture and you can add a name or two, I would be happy to hear from you.

****Thanks to Jeanette Power Woodman and Rhonda Coleman, we have two more  names to add.  Jeanette Power is the little cutie sitting third right in the middle row.  Rhonda informed us that Sylvia Broderick is fourth right in the back row.  Sadly, Sylvia passed away on 17 July 2018.  Thank you Jeanette and Rhonda for your input.

I have now added more names. Susan has sent us most of the names and she said "please feel free to correct her" if her memory has deceived  her on any.

Thanks Susan.  This is a beautiful picture and I am delighted to post it here.

If anyone else has a picture or a memory that you would like to share, please send it along to us at mcallistersmith@gmail.com and I will gladly post it for your schoolmates to enjoy. 

SHIRLEY HIPDITCH ELLZEY

It gives me a lot of pleasure to post this article by Barbara Sweet of the Telegram.  It tells a great story of a loving and devoted family, of a St Patrick's Girl who at the age of thirteen went to Belvedere Orphanage then, at 17 moved to the U S A.  I think this story will inspire and touch you.

"U.S. family returns mother’s ashes to St. John’s

‘She lived outside the norm and was a rule breaker’

Shirley Hipditch Ellzey never made it back to St. John’s and the province she left behind to escape a hard early life, but this month her American family made the journey for her.

Daughter Jeannine Cordero and husband David Kolin

The day she died, Hipditch Ellzey expressed a wish to be returned to St. John’s, said her daughter Jeannine Cordero of Chicago, Ill.

They scattered her ashes at sea close to St. John’s harbour.

The journey had her children and two of her grandchildren not only tracing Ellzey’s girlhood footsteps and family history but meeting people face to face with whom they’d bonded with by distance, in part due to a Telegram story on Ellzey’s passing in January 2017.

George Ellzey

“We tried to get her back here at one point in time but there were a lot of ghosts here,” said Cordero, the eldest of her three children.

“In the end, she was very curious about what happened to a lot of people but she had experienced a lot of hard times here.”

Despite her hard times, she remained in love with her former home and got to see it by computer through a Google Streetview Cordero showed her.

Some of the people the family connected with turned up at a gathering Sunday at YellowBelly Brewery in St. John’s.

“We’re kind of late meeting many relatives. We have found people who remembered mom…. through them we got a feel for what it was like back then.,” Cordero said.

Patsy McCormack of Witless Bay, related to Hipditch Ellzey through marriage, hosted the family at a Jigg’s dinner in Witless Bay last week. They got a walking tour of the old west end of St. John’s — where Hipditch Ellzey spent her early childhood around Victoria Park — from Marina Aita.

Sunday night, Aita and Doreen Heffernan recalled Hipditch Ellzey as a quiet girl, with beautiful, auburn hair. The kids of all ages from the neighbourhood would walk to school, branching off to their schools.

Friends, Reuben Warren, Doreen Heffernan and Marina Aita

After Hipditch Ellzey went in Belvedere orphanage, they lost touch with her until they read about her life and passing and connected with Cordero. They came from a generation without email, Facebook or ways to instantly connect with friends who moved away. 

Aita noted many old friends have since passed, or are in long-term care homes.

Hipditch Ellzey had left St. John’s for the U.S. in 1953 after a stint in the former Belvedere girls orphanage — her father had died in 1940 when she was five and her mother in 1949 when Ellzey was 13. By then Ellzey was already in Belvedere as her mother had tuberculosis. Two siblings by her mother’s second marriage were adopted by relatives.

In the U.S., she first became a caregiver for a family in Takoma Park, Maryland, and went on to an accomplished life.

“It’s great after so many years to see the lovely family and what a nice life she had. She really had an amazing life all that she accomplished — it was wonderful,” Heffernan said.

Reuben Warren was a child when he met a young teenage Ellzey through older friends.

“She was a very, very impressive person. It stuck with me until I read (The Telegram) article.

“I didn’t know what happened to her down through the years.”

Her son George Ellzey of Denver, Colo., and daughter Joy Pilon of Williamsport, Pa., along with Cordero and her husband David Kolin, looked into family history, visited the site of the former orphanage and got to put Hipditch Ellzey’s memories she shared with them in perspective.

Daughter, Joy Pilon

“We were chasing a lot of her stories down,” said Kolin.

“Things are familiar based on the stuff Shirley would talk about. They were coming to life.”

“It’s nice — maybe there are some regrets of never doing it when we were younger and she was still here,” Pilon said. “It’s a beautiful place. I am glad we are getting to see it.”

“This was a little bit of closure,” said George Ellzey.

“It’s certainly a fascinating place.”

Granddaughter Katherine Kolin, a student at Boston University, said the trip explains a lot of the mystery of her grandmother.

Grandchildren Katherine & Yale Kolin

The trip is mostly for mom and her siblings. I am here as moral support,” she said.  “And because I am interested in the history of the place and family history.
… I don’t think anyone was expecting the kind of response we got thanks to (the Telegram),” she said.

“I think that’s really amazing. To see my mom be determined to (return her mother’s ashes here and reach out) is really outstanding. The hospitality and generosity of the people here is unmatched compared to any other place I have been in my life. I think it is marvelous.”

Katherine Kolin said she’s learned more about her grandmother because she shared little of her early struggles directly with them, though she did tell of it to her children.

“The character of my grandmother has become rounded out in my mind. That’s important. I loved her. She was my grandmother but so much makes sense now that didn’t before,” she said.

“She lived outside the norm and was a rule breaker. She was a really fiery person. And she made a lot of really, really hard decisions in my life.”

Katherine also found St. John’s the magical place her mother described despite her early rough start.

“I would certainly love to come back,” said her brother, Yale.

Some of the people who turned up were women Cordero found through a Facebook page for former Belvedere orphanage residents.

Even though some did not know Hipditch Ellzey personally, they wanted to help the family understand what the orphanage was like.

Hipditch Ellzey, who once worked as a housekeeper for famed Philadelphia Flyers owner Ed Snider, was 81 when she died of breast cancer.

After she left Newfoundland and Labrador at 17 for the U.S., she eventually married a Colombian-born doctor and spent some time in Mexico and her husband’s native country before divorcing and returning to the U.S. with her then young daughter, Cordero.

Hipditch Ellzey later married a serviceman and had two more children — George Ellzey and Joy Pilon. Hipditch Ellzey trained as a dental assistant and worked for a time with two prominent Maryland orthodontists who treated Washington, D.C., politicians.

She loved working for the Snider family in Pennsylvania and travelled frequently with them.

barbara.sweet@thetelegram.com

WHAT WAS AMISS?

I am happy to say that this post (click here) had a grand response on our school facebook page.  As promised, I will now reveal the little inaccuracies in the otherwise beautiful sketch by the late Bill Guihan.

The sketch of St Patrick’s Church itself is actually faultless.  It was completely accurate when it was drawn in the 1980s.  The problems arose when the artist inserted the horse and buggy and the old fashioned people walking down the church yard.  Those touches indicated a much earlier time.  Someone pointed out that the horse and buggy were driving on the wrong side of the street.  That was a good observation but, as someone else said, we drove on the left until 1947 so that wasn’t the problem.  Other suggestions were that St Patrick’s statue wasn’t enclosed. St Patrick’s statue wasn’t there at that time so that isn’t it either.  Anyway, I have enjoyed all your remarks on this and I am really grateful to you for making the effort and having a go.  I hope you have enjoyed it too.  But what makes the church and the horse and buggy, etc, so incompatible?  Let’s have a look.

Bill Guihan's beautiful drawing of St Patrick's Church

Well first of all, that side door pictured at the very left of the church was not there until the 1960s.  (Not too many horses trotting up Patrick St then.) That was installed during the restorations carried out by Msgr Murphy to make it easier for the elderly because it had fewer steps than the main door.  A couple of you picked up on the side door and someone else came very close to it.  Those steps at the main door are an epic climb for anyone!  

The railings at the right side of the picture are a later addition so couldn’t have been seen by the folks who travelled by horse drawn carriages.

I think that the statue referred to by one of you is the one on the bank at the side of the church.  If it is, that is the statue of Our Lady and that too is a much later addition; perhaps 1980s.  St Patrick is in his glass box at the side of the church now but he wasn’t there when Bill Guihan gave us this excellent sketch of our beloved St Patrick’s Church.

Bill Guihan was a very talented artist and I really love this picture of St Patrick’s.  However, a little part of me wishes that he had drawn what he saw and left it at that.

Again, thanks everyone for taking part in this little adventure. You St Patrick’s people are absolutely wonderful! 

ST PATRICK'S CHURCH

How many of you have seen this picture before?  I think it is a great picture and I love it. It is from a book which was given to me more than twenty years ago by one of my nieces.  Perhaps you have see this book or even own a copy of it. The book, by Bill Guihan, (1917-1992) is called “Sketches of the Old City”.  It is a fascinating documentation of some of the most historic architecture around St John’s.  An interesting and entertaining book, it will make you look with fresh eyes at our lovely old city of St John’s.

 

St Patrick's Church, by Bill Guihan

As I have said, I love this picture but I see a little inaccuracy in it.  I won’t tell you what it is but if you spot it, please leave me a comment and share what you think is amiss.  In a couple of days I will let you know what it is. 

SAFETY PATROL MONITORS

I am indebted to Dora Reid for this post.

In the 1980s, Dora was one of the Safety Patrol Monitors who regularly guided pupils over the Cross Walk on their way to and from school. Dora and fellow Monitor, Nicole Molloy, were selected to represent St Patrick's at a Cross Walk Safety Conference in Ottawa. At that time, Dora was in Grade 6 and her teacher was Mrs Warren. We are delighted to share Dora's newspaper clipping here.  

Dora Reid and Nicole Molloy

I have cropped the picture in the hope you will be better able to read the newspaper report.  

What the newspaper said!

I thought you would like to get a closer look at Dora and Nicole too.

The chosen delegates

No doubt, Some of you will know Dora and Nicole and will remember this occasion.  I expect you will probably remember being secretly envious too.

Thanks very much, Dora.  If you have anything else you would like to share, we would be more than pleased to hear about it.