Welcome to SLS Class of 63 Virtual Reunion

Hello Fellow Classmates,

My name is Dan Youra. I graduated in the Class of 63 from St. Lawrence Seminary in Mt. Calvary, Wisconsin. Yes, I am a Hill Topper, an alum of the Poor Boys Seminary, a proud graduate of The Hill of Happiness, not to be confused with The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, the 1958 Ingrid Bergman film we did see one movie night, sitting on those creaky wooden chairs on the basketball court.

I began checking around with fellow classmates, whose email address I have or who show up in my Friends list on Facebook, to see if there were any plans for a 50th class reunion. Of the three addresses/Friends I have (Ahern, Kedinger & Niederehe), it became apparent that we'd have problems coordinating a reunion date, so I proposed a Virtual Reunion to see how many classmates we could find (who haven't died - Requiescant in Pace), who might like to share a few thoughts with other 1963 Poor Boys on how they ended up where they did, what they would have done differently 50 years ago, and their current insights into the meaning of meaning.

So what is a Virtual Class Reunion? I don't know, but I thought I would try to put something together that might work. I've been programming computers since 1968. I figured I'd create a blog, the SLS63.com blog, which is what this website is. It will be a long way from working with Don Becker on our 1963 Laurentian Yearbook, drawing graphics such as the scroll with our class motto – Quid Christus nunc faciat? Do you remember what that means? Blogging won't be as messy as that crusty ink bottle and that drippy quill pen. Those were the days! Listening to Greenfields by the Brothers Four on the radio, I inked our names onto our class picture.

I created 6 pages (see TABS across top of each page) each with one page from our Graduating Class yearbook. In this blog each classmate has one page to use to describe anything you want related to your life that you'd like to share with your classmates. To share information about yourself, send me an email with your Magnum Opus and I'll copy and paste it into your own page. Your page will be linked from the same page where your yearbook photo is. You can see my entry as an example. My link is on Page S-Y (under the yearbook page), which goes to my one page. There is no limit to how many words you can submit. Sure, email some photos, too, if you want. Three pictures equals how many words? Three thousand, right? Do you know how long it would have taken Franczak, Gilgenbach and Father Vianney to set type for 3,000 words?

To help the interactivity of these pages, you'll notice that there are boxes for COMMENTS beneath the PAGES and beneath the POSTS.

To increase the distribution range of this SLS63 blog, we need those of us who participate in our Virtual Reunion to dig up email addresses of other classmates and share them with the blog, plus encourage classmates to go to SLS63.com. George Niederehe shared 4 email addresses. Now I have a total of 8 – George's 4, my 3 and mine. George also suggests that some of us might have the email addresses of classmates who were with us in the three years before we graduated. Let's include them. It is not the fact of graduating that is the big deal. Being part of the class spirit is where it is at. How many times did the padre coaches tell us, "It's not the score at the end of the game, it's the moral victory that counts?" As we hover around 70 years on the planet, do you think that advice is still valid?

I'll keep adding features to this blog to make it more interactive, hopefully enjoyable and easy to use.

Notice that there is a way to SUBSCRIBE to this blog. Enter your email address in the box in the left column and you'll receive an ALERT, whenever a new POST is published. Each new entry for a classmate will be a POST. You don't want to miss any. This blog will be a sort of gathering place. What was your favorite gathering place on The Hill? The Chapel, the Canteen, the Food Locker or the Moron's Club? This blog will be the 21st century version of all four. It will sculpt together meditation on Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, Eskimo pies, mom's home-made, peanut butter cookies and plastic rosaries. You don't want to miss a memory!

That's about it. Lights out at 9:20 pm.

Dan
dan@youra.com

Do You Still Have Your Diploma

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Send me an email dan @ youra.com indicating that you'd like to be an author.

I'll have an email sent to you, Inviting you to respond.

You respond.

Bingo! You're an Author!

You are now able to POST information on the blog.

As an author you'll notice a link NEW POST in the upper right corner of your browser.

Click "NEW POST"

Enter a Title in the narrow Title Box.

Start typing your POST in the larger POST Box.

You'll see a PREVIEW BUTTON you can click anytime to see how your POST will look.

When you are ready to Go Live, hit the orange PUBLISH BUTTON

To edit your post you'll see small symbol of a wrench in the lower right corner of the POST. Click on the WRENCH ICON and start editing. Again you can PREVIEW your work. When ready, hit the orange PUBLISH BUTTON again.

When you ready to get fancy, use the icons across the top of the POST BOX. To learn what each icon does, hover your mouse arrow over each one. To add a photo, set you mouse's insertion point where you want the photos and click on the PHOTO IMAGE ICON. Follow the navigation to your hard drive to upload your photo.

To activate a link, choose the text you want to link, select the Link icon, type in URL. It's linked.

Notice the 5 links on right column = Labels, Schedule, etc. Use LABELS to add KEYWORDS to you POST. SCHEDULE sets the time the POST is made. You can use SCHEDULE/PUBLISHED ON to change the date/time to change the sequence in which the POSTS appear. Use LOCATION if it is relevant to the POST. SEARCH DESCRIPTION is a short description to make the POST discoverable by search engines. BLOGGER, where this blog is hosted, is owned by GOOGLE.

Remember to hit the DONE button, when you add info and update info.

Remember to hit PUBLISH when ever you upload and update POSTS.

Couldn't be easier.

Dan Youra

Paul Kedinger

Paul Kedinger (’63)  “Fifty Years --- That’s amazing.  I can still close my eyes today and visualize myself and classmates at SLS.  I still remember the Fond du Lac Reporter ran a news story that we were the 100^th freshman class in 1959.  The friends I made there are still my closest friends, though hundreds of miles may separate us now.  I would love to reconnect with my classmates.  I had seminary “flashbacks” when my youngest son, Daniel, entered the seminary for the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana.  He made it to first year theology before deciding the priesthood wasn’t for him, he is now married to the daughter of a Catholic deacon and the father of two girls and a boy.  My others sons, Victor and Gregory, have been the joy of my life and I thank the Good Lord for directing me to sit down next to my future wife, Wanda, on the first day of graduate journalism school at the University of Wisconsin.  We now live and work (still) as the managing editor of the Rayne Acadian-Tribune, in a city renowned as “The Frog Capital of the World” in Louisiana, her home state.  If any of my 50-year-older classmates want to reconnect, my email is paulkedinger@gmail.com.”

Published in The Laurentianum, Summer 2013, p. 22

Abbott Harris

I’ve some remembrances from my three years at the “Hill of Happiness” which warm my heart and will no doubt awaken like memories in yours as you read through this. 

Despite having flown in from Saudi Arabia in the Fall of 1961, the oncoming Wisconsin Winter was in no way my first exposure to the sub-zeros.  My father’s work on the construction of Montreal’s oil refinery in the Winter of ’54 was my baptism in arctic-like conditions.  From where our family lived, you could watch the ice breakers plow shipping lanes through the St. Lawrence River.  

A year or so ago I read in some SLS alumni organ that Brother Dismas had passed on to his reward.  From the obit, I learned of his having served in the Korean War as a medic before later joining the OFM Cap.s.  So it was inevitable that he should become the Seminary’s Infirmarian.  But what I never understood was his leading the toboggan charges down through the apple orchards below St. Mary’s Hall every winter; it was as if he were trying to recruit patients for his ward from the lower classmen crazy enough to find joy in crashing along the way…

And then there were the Sunday afternoons spent watching Vince Lombardi’s Packers whop virtually any NFL team that came along-- of course they did it in black & white-- don’t ever remember a color TV during my years on the Hill…  But I remember Bart Starr, Paul Hornung, Jim Taylor, Ray Nitschke, Jesse Whittenton, Max McGee, Herb Adderley, and Elijah Pitts to name a few.

Speaking of sports, who of us can forget the annual pilgrimage to Milwaukee for a Braves game in May?  I believe this was some kind of reward for those who toiled away preparing mailings in Fr. Crispin’s “Loyalty Club” in the Laurentianum basement.  I never spent much time doing that, but it seemed like the whole student body went to the game.  I remember Warren Spahn pitching a rare, not-so-good game one of those three years that I was lucky enough to attend.  I also remember certain seminary mates straying away from their designated seating areas-- as you could, once inside County Stadium-- seems they were more interested in encountering the magic of teenage GIRLS during the brief outing we all enjoyed.  I’ll name no names, but you all know who you were! 

My Sundays were kind of open format since I never had family visiting; the only person I came in contact with was the lady who took in laundry.  I spent the afternoon studying, often squirreling away in my favorite hideaway in the attic over the St. Thomas Hall stage.  There was a small window up there where you could look out over the whole surrounding countryside as far away in one direction as St. Cloud.  Mostly I tried to catch up on my U.S. History text so I could joust with Fr. Ronald, one of my favorite teachers on the faculty.  And though you wouldn’t consider me a Latin scholar, I enjoyed Father [ “O Di Immortalis!” ] Emil’s Third Year Latin class and the Catalinian Orations we had to slog through.  Hell, I even survived Virgil’s Anead in our Senior year, but have no specific recollection of who it was that passed (and/or pitied--) me.

Looking through our ’63 Yearbook-- correct me if I’m wrong, Dan, it was the first one of its kind-- I see numerous references to Rogers & Hart’s “I’d Rather Be Right,” the play we performed in our Senior year.  What puzzles me is that there is no Yearbook reference to the Seminary’s production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore, which we actually “took on the road” to a theater in Fond du Lac.  Maybe that production was later in the year and beyond the publisher’s deadline for the Yearbook.  Any guesses?

Truth be told, I would say that our band (there weren’t any strings to make it an orchestra) was marginally on key and up to tempo-- mostly through the tireless efforts of Eddie DeGroot and Father Myron.  I remember Fr. Myron arranging a trip for us band members to go to Appleton’s Lawrence College to attend the Conservatory’s choral performance of Handel’s Messiah, which was a real Advent treat before we broke for Christmas.

Ah, Christmas breaks, and Easter ones as well.  I traveled by train to St. Louis where I spent the vacation with my brother who was in medical school there at the time.  Lugging my suitcase between stations in Chicago made me feel a little like Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye.  Come to think of it, I don’t believe I ever got Fr. Crispin’s Nihil Obstat to possess-- let alone read-- that book, but read it I did, by the nightlight at the foot of my bed in St. Anthony’s Hall dorm after lights out.  

Just leaving the seminary for an afternoon was a welcome excursion into the outer world.  I remember the “adventure” of walking down the Hill to Mt. Calvary for a dental appointment, or for a cholera booster vaccination before returning to Saudi Arabia for Summer vacation.  And who can forget the trips to Fond du Lac some of us took, with the upperclassman driver having to place the obligatory Colonel Sander’s KFC order to be brought back to the multitude of seminarians placing their orders (remember a lot of seminarians had “food lockers”) in the basement of the Laurentianum.  I don’t think this in any way detracted from the virtuous labor of the Sisters of Christ the King at our Refectory-- I just don’t recall much about the food they prepared, except that it was breakfast, dinner, and supper, not lunch and dinner!  Anyone remember much, or anything, about our food?  All I remember were the army surplus stainless steel trays it was served on.

I recall the beginning construction of the new gymnasium in our Senior year (St. ????’s Hall).  Maybe someone who returned for their fifth year can chime in and tell us about how it handled Hilltopper basketball games or Sunday movie nights as compared to St Joseph’s Hall, which handled both events rather well and had four bowling lanes in its basement!

Speaking of sports, who can forget the annual Field Day events, capped with a faculty/student softball match in which Fr. Vernon invariably hit an out-of-the-park home run; our student team wasn’t that bad-- didn’t Jim Gilgenbach pitch for us?-- but I seem to remember a story about Fr. Vernon turning down a tryout offer from the Pittsburgh Pirates at one time.

But that’s about it for now.  I’d love to hear any of your recollections of what, for me, were three years of my life well spent.