While I am still able to recall in some detail highlights of my early life before true adulthood, I decided to write them down for future generations and others who may want to commiserate with my adventures and misadventures.  Continue reading
Tag Archives: school
Tales from my ‘State Capital Adventures’
I once worked in the Pennsylvania State Government, meeting and writing a speech for the governor, and broadcasting a news story about a new group of buses being introduced to the Keystone State. Continue reading
An Officer and a Gentleman Recalled
I was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant 50 years ago, and looking back, I see it as one of the greatest achievements of my life. Also, one of the luckiest ones, and I’m so glad to still be around to talk about it.
Yes, by an Act of Congress, I was made “An Officer & a Gentleman.” I don’t know where that title came from — Great Britain, I guess — but I tried to live up to its “ideal” while in the army, and later when discharged, which career paths I should follow in my life.  Continue reading
GI Bill to celebrate its 75th anniversary!
I would not have gone to college had it not been for the GI Bill, which is marking its 75th anniversary on June 22, 2019.
My father, who was born on a small Greek Island, never went beyond sixth grade. My mother, daughter of Hungarian refugees, was the first in her family to graduate from a high school in New Jersey.
And I had barely made it through Dobbin’s Tech, a trade school, having transferred from a Catholic high school after I got caught playing hooky and was ordered to go to summer school for religion. No one – including myself — saw college in my lifetime.
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Blast from the past: the nuclear bomb desk
I will never forget my old wooden desk in grade school and the drills we held in order to protect us from a nuclear blast.
The nuns from St. Ludwig’s Catholic School ordered us to get out of our seats and to curl up beneath the desks where we practiced the silence of Benedictine monks. Someone had pulled down the shades over the wide windows of the second-floor room, and we sat for long minutes that felt like hours.  Continue reading
The ‘printer’s life’ for Ben Franklin and me!
“Here lies Ben Franklin — a printer.”
That is the message gracefully displayed at the gravesite of my favorite Founding Father in the City of Philadelphia. He was an ambassador to both England and France, as well as a signer of the Declaration of Independence and contributor to the US Constitution. He was also an inventor, a philosopher, and the creator of the first library, the first zoo, and the first fire company in the New World.
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Father Koenig’s life lessons at St. Ludwig’s
Father Koenig put the gloves on me when I was ten years old and directed me toward the kid who was my same size but some two years older. That kid – Billy McLaughlin – kicked my butt. But I never cried or gave up as I swung wildly at him in an effort to land my own punches.  Continue reading
Overcoming fear in the wild blue yonder!
It struck me as I slowly made my way from the floor of the plane and stood in the center of the walkway. There were at least 30 other soldiers on the C-140, a military aircraft that was flying over the field where those of us in jump school would soon be taking our first jump.  Continue reading
Big Moose bar helps wayward boys to grow
My mother hit me upside the head when she caught me drinking beer in the Big Moose Bar up the street from where we lived.
I was 16 years old at the time and sipping a Ballantine beer with a friend from Dobbins Technical High School. Someone must have ratted me out, as my good friend Joe Walsh and I — both young white guys — drank in the African American bar in a section of Philadelphia called Brewerytown. Continue reading
‘Garrulous Greek’ recalls journalism gift
I display the pewter plaque prominently at my front door so that anyone leaving my house can see what has meant to me more than any awards I hang in my Feng Shui home. Continue reading
Confession of a Kresge juvenile delinquent
Today we have the Dollar Store but when I was growing up, we kids enjoyed the old Five and Dime Store. Continue reading
The Law taught to me by James Strazzella!
My criminal law professor just died, and I cried like a baby this past week. I couldn’t help but look at the photograph taken of him presenting me with a trial advocacy award upon graduation in 1988. The framed picture rests on the mantel of an old wood—burning stove in my dining room. It is one of my prized possessions.  Continue reading
How would like to see yourself next year?
If I had a magic wand, I’d wave it all over my body, magically ordering it to relax and begin to accept all the good and the bad life has to throw at me
I would want to treat it all with equanimity.  Continue reading
Growing up with Catholic Sisters (Nuns)!
While growing up in a Catholic School, I met all kinds of nuns. Some I liked more than others. I was kind of like the class clown, or a class-clown wannabe, and got called out by many of the good teachers wearing the black coverings with the bullet-proof white vests covering their chests. I went to Saint Ludwig’s, a church school in what was then a predominantly German neighborhood of North Philadelphia called “Brewerytown.”
I never did like Sister Saint Clare, but I did like Sister St. Leonard, even though she had made my brother repeat first grade and was forever marked in God’s permanent record as one of those “left-behind.”
Sister Saint Clare bullied me when she learned I had played hooky. She tried to get me to “squeal” on who I had stayed out of school with. But I never snitched on him, even after she forced me to the brink of the top of the second-floor school stairway and over the steps for a tumble I will never forget. See: Sister Saint Clare knocks me for a loop.
Still Loving my All-Time Favorite Nun
Sister Josephine Frances was my all-time favorite, even though she smacked me once when I thought it wasn’t right. She had left the classroom and told us not to talk. It was something that hardly anyone followed. At least I didn’t, even though I noticed that most kids read their books.
When she returned, she asked which one of us had talked. I was unafraid. Like I said, I really liked her. She made me proud of my Greek heritage when she taught us in her fourth-grade class about the ancient Greeks and how much our Western World owed to those great men and women from thousands of years ago. I saw myself as one of those who, incidentally, would never tell a lie.
I was one of only a handful — all boys, I seem to recall — who raised our hands in answer to the good sister’s questions. Well, without further ado, she marched up to each and every one of us sitting in one of those wooden chairs with those little wooden desks with an empty hole across the desk-top that once held an ink bottle, and smacked us.
A Smack that Still Reverberates Years Later
I mean, “smacked” us. It was loud. And, it hurt! But not as much as what happened next.
Pure unadulterated shame and embarrassment came over me. For the first time in my life, I felt my face turning red. You see, I had sinned, and the Angel of the Lord descended upon me and struck me with the wrath of God.
It was devastating. Yet, some 50-odd years later, I still hold that holy nun in the highest regard, and I’ve never been afraid of admitting my mistakes. I could have gone the other way. I could have become someone who would lie by simply saying nothing, which I believe many others might have done. And some still do . . .
Truth is the truth, no matter what age you’re confronted with it, I learned back then. I feel Sister Josephine Frances helped me to see that and pass a test of a lifetime.
Contoveros 