Readers Respond - September 3, 2022

Metairie

I am a parishioner at St. Catherine of Siena and read Peter Finney’s article in the Clarion Herald about Sister MarieClare Powell (bit.ly/3pD5dQI). Sister MarieClare was very instrumental in changing my life as an incoming freshman at Redemptorist High School in 1969.

I lived in the 7th Ward area of New Orleans (Annette and Urquhart) in a inner-city (bad) neighborhood. I was supposed to go to Nicholls High School, which is where my sister went. I wanted to pursue a different path, but obviously couldn’t afford a Catholic high school education.

As a family, we rarely crossed Canal Street and didn’t know where Redemptorist High School (RHS) was or any background about it. A friend of mine was scheduled to go there, and he gave me her name as the principal and office phone number. I called her, unbeknownst to my mother, and asked if I could come to Redemptorist. She asked me to meet her in 20 minutes, which I didn’t even know where or how long it would take me to get there by bus. My friend agreed to meet me at Waterbury’s drugstore on Canal. He met me there and pointed out the school, after taking three public buses.

I met with her, showed her my eighth-grade report card, and she allowed me to come to RHS and work all four years for my tuition. My registration fee of $35, which we couldn’t afford, was earned by digging up the grass between the bricks on the sidewalk with a small knife (no weed-eaters back then).

I started out as a janitor, cleaning the bathrooms, then progressed to running the snack counter and selling doughnuts every morning of my junior and senior years. RHS was a great school! I played football and met a lot of friends from neighborhoods that I would have never met otherwise.

Sister MarieClare allowed me to attend and graduate, but just as important, I met my wife at Redemptorist as a sophomore. We have been married for 47 years, have two great, successful children and three grandchildren who are now at Jesuit, Mount Carmel and St. Catherine of Siena.

I went on to work for my college education, as I did at Redemptorist. Both my parents never thought that college was in the cards, as they both have sixth-grade and 10th-grade educations. Upon graduation from Loyola University, I was commissioned in the U.S. Army as a 2LT. I am now retired LTC and have my own very successful insurance agency in Metairie. In retrospect, both my wife and I feel very blessed and always try to give back to those in need.

I feel like I owe Sister Marie Clare a small part of my success and would like to assist her in one of her ministries.