Launch Lunch A Great Success!

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On Saturday 17th last we had the pleasure of entertaining 125 GPPA members in the school. Ranging in years from 1936 to 1996, it was a wonderful cross section of ladies to have all in the one place.

We were greeted by the beautiful music of a string quartet. Many thanks to the musicians and their teacher Caoimhe Ní Áinle. After much excited mingling, old friendships were re-kindled and new friendships were forged. Before the meal we gathered everyone into the Concert Hall where Catherine Anne welcomed everyone. Triona (the school principal and also a Green girl) gave us an update on the school’s progress. I then spoke about the new website, outlining some of its features.  The talks were short and sweet, and very well received. After that we could get down to the serious business of the lunch.

Sharon Fitzpatrick and her team from Fitzers Catering had worked closely with Ciara Power (ciara@theweddingshop.ie ) one of the GPPA committee, and between them they transformed the canteen into a beautiful restaurant setting with fine linens, table-settings and even comfortable seats. No sitting on stools this time around! They did a fabulous job on the meal, and it was lovely to see so many happy faces enjoying the food and the company.

The stars of the day were the ladies of 1960 who were celebrating their 50th reunion. They all looked amazing and were the envy of us younger ones, who hope to look as good when it’s our 50th come around.

Among the special guests at the top table were Sr. Frances Jerome (former Superior in The Green), Sr. Jane Carey (from the Junior School) and Sr. Liz Cotter (former principal). We were also delighted that some former staff members could join us – Irene Horan, Deirdre Ó’ Muirí and Mary Campbell. Ciara Freaney, a Green girl who is currently the Secretary of the Loreto Past Pupils’ Union, represented the Union on the day.

Once lunch was over, plenty of people took the opportunity to tour the school and a healthy contingent of all ages ended up in the grounds enjoying glasses of wine in the fine weather.

Christy (the school caretaker) kindly put up with us till 6 O’Clock and was a model of patience throughout the day!

All in all, it was a wonderful day and we were so proud of all the hard work people put into making the Lunch a success. There are too many people to thank individually but suffice to say a heartfelt thanks goes out to all.

We will definitely try to do it again next year, so watch this space.

If anybody has pictures from the lunch, please send them into us as we would love to put them up.

Interview with Rosaleen Linehan (class of ’54)

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Interview with Rosaleen Linehan (class of ’54) by Geraldine Lawless – reproduced from the 1995 Year book.

GER:

When did you go to St. Stephens Green?
ROS: I went when I was three. It must have been about 1940 and I left in 1954, about 14 years.

GER:

So you went to the Junior School?
ROS: Yes

GER:

What was your first impression of the School?
ROS: At three? I liked it!

GER:

Did you enjoy it?
ROS: I was a late baby so my Mother had more time and had been teaching me at home and I was a bit cocky, something that never went away, because I knew all my letters and I could spell before I went in.  I loved the Green.  What was your next question?  What did I think of it?  I absolutely adored it.  Because tell you the truth, I’m a romantic about memories.  I can’t remember one bad thing.  Except perhaps, my sisters had been at an Irish junior School and they were older than me and they had gone into the Irish School, Scoil Brigid run by the famous Miss Gavin Duffy.  In those days it was the Irish School and the English School.  So I was automatically sent to the Irish School as they had been there.  And, of course, I couldn’t cope at all because I had been in the Junior School and my Irish was very basic.  But I felt the Irish School had a terrible attitude to the English School.  Somehow they thought that it was bad for Ireland.  Well, I had to cross the white Corridor and go the English School at the end of that year.  I felt like a traitor.  That was upsetting.  There was only one other thing that upset me, the whole years, which is nothing to do with the School at all.  There was, what I would call now my adulthood, a girl who was a “clique former”, at one stage when I was about twelve.  We were in a class where the classrooms had big long rows and I realized at the end of the summer that she was dropping me.  We were going into a class where the desks were in twos and I remember being terrible upset but luckily I made other friends.  I was able to spot them from then on, people who would pick you up and then drop you which is something that happens quite early on, particularly in girls’ schools, I think. But it was a lesson to be learnt because it is something that happens through life as well.  They are called Empire Builders later in life.I was totally happy.  I think I was a bit spoilt by the Nuns because I was there so long.  I worked relatively hard in School and I adored music.  And as you know, there is loads of it in the Green.  I played the double bass for four years in the School orchestra and I played the Piano for the last two, in fifth and sixth year and that was a huge joy to me.  I was never very good at games but I used to be stuck into the goal in camogie because I was big and I used to stand there and live in terror.  But no, I was never very good on the games side.  I was better at the thing that I earn a living from now.  I was good at drawing and at music.  There weren’t any plays then.

GER:

There was no acting at all?
ROS: No, no acting, no drama.  Music was the big push then.  Mother Benedicta was the music Nun and she was quite comical in her way, but she was very dedicated and Mother John Bosco was too and would spend forever with you, always at your beck and call if you had a problem and she could play jazz as well!

GER:

What do you think was the best aspect of the School for you and do you have any favorite memories?
ROS: A general feeling that I was looked after.  That I was being, for the most part encouraged in anything that I wanted to do.  Except that in those days, only two from my class went to University.  It was very much the thing to do to go and do shorthand and typing and to find a nice man and get married.  Those days, I think, have changed.  But careers were never really on the agenda at all.  The great thing was to go into Guinness’s and that was a “very good job” where you could get a nice young man who you could get married to.  The only thing I could ever spot in the Nuns which was a total foible, I don’t know whether it’s still there, but there was a bit of snobbishness about them.  A little bit of “Ladies of Loreto” which does nobody any harm anyway if its things like good manners.  I can remember, though, derogatory remarks which, even at an early age – my Marxist tendencies, you know – “You’re behaving like a child out of the National School”. I knew this was a very bad thing to say.  That would be my only faintly bad memory of any of the Nuns.  The Lay teachers, like all human life; some good; some bad; some wonderful.  But you see, there were so many Nuns then and they naturally were more dedicated.  They had more time and they were great teachers.  I had a wonderful teacher who just fired me in so many ways.  And this was Mother Edmund, who taught me English and filled me with the love of the language.I’ve mentioned this before, I think, so you would need to check that it’s too boring.  The best memory for life was that Mother Raphael, who  was very hot tempered, the mistress of study, burst into the classroom when I was in about Third Year in the senior School; and in front of everyone, she lambasted me because I was a bit of a tomboy and I was always up to larks.  She said I was always sliding down the white corridor, I made more noise than a herd, I was always shouting and this and that and the other in front of the whole class.  Well I nearly died.  About fifteen minutes later she came back in and apologized to me in front of everybody.  She said she was just in bad humor and she went into class wanting to pick on somebody and she picked on Rosaleen and she was sorry.  And that was again a huge lesson in life.  It meant an awful lot to me.  And looking back on it she was probably in some sort of hormonal trouble at the time, is something that you don’t think about when you are fourteen.

GER:

Did you play in many of the yearly concerts?

ROS: Yes and I sang in the Choir.  I was a second alto, I could also sing soprano but they needed second altos more.  My voice never really settled.  I did music for my Inter and my Leaving.We weren’t taught ambition, but we were taught to enjoy poetry and enjoy ourselves.  But ambition, no.  For example in my age group, the women who have made, in inverted commas, “a mark for themselves” in society, that I do say in inverted commas, because I absolutely believe that making a mark for yourself, the most important mark you can make is rearing a happy household and a happy family and being the centre of that whether you are a man or a woman.  But people who have actually gone into the public eye from my age group, much more of them came out of the Dominican Schools and Mount Anville.

GER:

So that was a characteristic of the Loreto Schools?
ROS: To a certain extent. They saw their job as bringing out people who would be happy in their lives and who would be happy being a wife and mother.  But not just a sort of silly wife.  The sort of wife and mother who had enjoyments in her life in a social and cultural way as well.

GER:

Did the School encourage and help you in your career?
ROS: Well as an actress no, but I sort of knew that I wanted to be an actress.  But I had also wanted to be a hairdresser, and architect, a dress designer and to have a good time.  But what I actually did was Economics and politics in U.C.D.

GER:

Do you think the school has changed at all?
ROS: I can’t say, except that I know all the Schools have changed.  But I was, say in the first five or so in the class and it was easy for me.  I was blessed by a certain amount of intelligence and a certain amount of talent; I mean the music and that.  But I would imagine that the whole education system would be geared, I would hope, to the ones who are down a bit, who have other gifts which are not so obvious in the curriculum.  I think, I hope that has happened.  Although I have to say, the Green wasn’t the worst at that.  There were other Schools that were much more geared towards the academic, the top five, the A class.  The B class got overlooked.  But I do think those things change, and I think inspired teachers always look after people too.  But not all the teachers are inspired. I sent my only daughter to Loreto so that’s something I suppose.  You only go back to the shop if the goods have been good.I think the most difficult task facing young women today is how to combine work and motherhood.  Most girls now have two children, so the mothering years are not as many as they use to be.  Somehow this problem should be addressed in girl’s schools.  If it’s a matter of education for life in this life most women are going to be leading.  Ignore it at your peril!!!