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[125] [ Six ] Aspirations The moment when I knew I wanted to attend B. M. C. Durfee High School and first dreamed of playing for its athletic teams remains a red-letter day of my childhood. It was Thanksgiving 1954, and I was two months shy of my tenth birthday. We were still living on Bowler Street, with our move to Way scheduled after the holidays. My father took my brothers and me to the traditional Durfee–New Bedford football game. The late fall day dawned sunny and crisp, and the stark November landscape was arrayed in its understated beauty. We set out to walk the mile and a half to Alumni Field. People were burning leaves, and the once common fragrance of fall accompanied us much of the way. Fans packed the stands. They grew boisterous when the teams took the field—Durfee outfitted in black helmets and jerseys with red numerals and three red stripes on the sleeves. New Bedford was trimmed in crimson and gold. Our “Hilltoppers” prevailed, and my brothers and I imitated Durfee halfbacks on our way home. We stopped for a short visit with Nonna, Nonnuzzo, and Aunt Edith. My mother and titia had a traditional Thanksgiving dinner ready for us when we arrived home. I closely followed Durfee’s athletic glories for the next four years. And then Sacred Heart clinched my decision. I was determined to attend Durfee with the sole purpose of wearing the red and black. Thankfully, my parents didn’t interfere, perhaps grateful that they would not have to piece together another Coyle High tuition for such an unpromising student. My father did let out, “You don’t have to be a bad student to be a good athlete.” Then he laid into the Durfee stars and students who spent hours in the poolroom under his barbershop, taking breaks at the Eagle Restaurant for a chow mein sandwich and a Coke for a quarter. “I see these guys come and go everyday,” he fumed. “They have nothin’ bettah to do than waste their time in a poolroom.” As long as I was playing sports for Durfee and St. Anthony’s CYO teams, I was sufficiently busy in my father’s eyes. I didn’t have to work after three years on the paper route. Following New Bedford, Taunton’s Coyle was Durfee’s chief athletic Another City upon a Hill [126] rival, in part because the Catholic school attracted more than a bus full of Fall River residents, my older brothers included. It may seem surprising that a large city so overwhelmingly Catholic as Fall River did not have a diocesan secondary school. (Bishop Stang High School in North Dartmouth, between Fall River and New Bedford, did not even open until 1959.) Perhaps the strong Catholic influence at Durfee diminished the need for a separate school. My 1963 Durfee Record Book documents the heavy Catholic presence on the faculty. During my senior year, approximately 40 percent of Durfee’s 110 teachers were Irish. If one adds the French, Portuguese, Polish, and Italian members of the faculty, the number of Catholic teachers at Durfee probably nudges the 80–85 percent of the faithful in the city. The three principals of Durfee during my four years were all Irish: one died in my freshman year; another was promoted to superintendent after my junior year. Two of the three Durfee vice principals were Irish. The dean of boys, the assistant director of guidance, and even the six-member office staff were all Irish. In subtle and not-so-fine-grained ways, I now realize, Catholicism infiltrated Durfee High. A priest always delivered invocations over the intercom, such as for Thanksgiving. The football team had a tradition of attending Mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral before our annual Thanksgiving game with New Bedford. One Durfee principal placed an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on his office wall. When he was made superintendent , he carried the icon a few blocks away to his new headquarters in the Highlands. I would confront it when I visited him in 1970 to discuss a teaching position. It was approximately two feet by three feet and hung directly behind his desk. Jesus’s eyes were always fixed on you when the superintendent spoke in the ex cathedra voice of public education in Fall River. His words seemed to issue directly from the exposed Sacred Heart. With his icon the “pope” of education in Fall River made a...

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