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CHAPTER 3 Pauline Pauline began first grade in the fall of 1901 at Academy of the Visitation on Cabanne Avenue, adjacent to her residential St. Louis neighborhood. The school had relocated in 1892 from downtown, and the Sisters of the Visitation built an imposing chateau-like structure as their new school and convent. With its turrets and buttresses, students thought it resembled a fairyland castle or a hiding place for ghosts. Indeed, Pauline’s Catholic education and concern about church dogma would rise up to haunt her later in life. The rigorous academic program included a philosophy based on “Gospel virtues of optimism, gentleness, joy, humility, and inner freedom.”1 The school for young ladies accepted both day students and boarders in grades one through twelve. Pauline may have boarded for the first few months of the school year, since Paul and Mary did not move to St. Louis until November. More likely, however, Pauline came to St. Louis early and lived with Uncle Gus and Aunt Louise until her parents arrived. Living in St. Louis at that time offered Pauline unexpected educational opportunities. The Pfeiffers resided less than a mile from Forest Park, where groundbreaking ceremonies on December 20, 1901, announced the coming St. Louis World’s Fair. Planned in honor of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase centennial, the grand scale of exhibitions delayed an official opening until April 30, 1904. The more than two years of preparation provided great entertainment for residents. Watching the Grand Basin and ornate buildings emerge from undeveloped land on the west side of Forest Park amazed onlookers perhaps as much as later contact with people and products from all over the world. The same architect who had built the Sisters of the Visitation’s “chateau” a few years earlier constructed the fair’s Palace of Liberal Arts.2 The convent/academy seemed monumental at the time, but it 18 paled by comparison to the grandiose exposition palaces that seemed to appear as if by magic. For Pauline and her classmates, the seven-month fair became an extended classroom. Nuns took students to exhibits for enrichment and brought speakers and entertainers to the school after appearances at the fair. One such entertainer, an Irish tenor named John McCormack, became one of the supreme vocal artists of the twentieth century, with a successful forty-year professional career. His rendition of “I Hear You Calling Me” reverberated in the halls of the academy for years to come.3 When the fair closed at the stroke of midnight on December 1, 1904, it was a merry yet sad occasion, remembered by some residents as “one of the wildest nights ever witnessed in St. Louis.” As midnight approached, the fair president raised his arms toward palace-like buildings with all their thousands of glittering lights and pronounced, “Farewell, a long farewell, to all thy splendor,” as he threw the switch casting the fairgrounds into total darkness.4 Life in the Pfeiffer neighborhood returned to normal after the fair closed, which for nine-year-old Pauline meant games with brother Karl and neighbors in vast backyards and along tree-lined streets or playing paper dolls alone in her room. Two additional playmates had joined Pauline and Karl at home—Virginia Ruth, born March 27, 1902, and Paul Mark, born October 19, 1907. Paul Mark was called Max to distinguish him from his father and to honor the memory of his cousin, Uncle Gus’s child, who had died in infancy. Along with tending children and keeping house, Mary devoted time to Catholic charities, including the Sisters of Mercy Industrial Home and School for Girls, down the street from the Pfeiffer home. On several visits to take clothing in 1911, Mary noticed a nine-year-old named Julia who went door to door with one of the nuns each day to beg for alms. Feeling sorry for the young girl, Mary contacted her unmarried sister, Cora Downing, to arrange for the child to become her ward. Mary thought putting the two together would promise a new life for Julia and prevent Cora from being alone. Years later Julia’s daughter, Sheila Tybor, recalled, “My mother remembered sitting on the judge’s lap and him saying, ‘Would you like to go with this nice lady and live in Montana?” Julia quickly said yes, and Cora went on ahead to homestead 145 acres in Nowhere, Montana. Julia started west alone with her doll, traveling by train, stagecoach, and buckboard to reach her...

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