Catholic School Days

Pauline went to kindergarten at Brown Street School then to St. Hyacinth School for grades one through eight. From the variety of things collected by a family historian, here you see Pauline's grade school graduation brochure from 1943:

Here’s a Siulinski trivia question: What musical instrument did Pauline take lessons in while attending St. Hyacinth School? 

                     Photo credit: Schools of Berlin, NH
Pepere's brother and sister, who were both in the clergy, influenced the decision to place their daughters in Catholic boarding schools in New Hampshire. Jeanne and Lorraine went to a serious Catholic boarding school – where they had to wear black dresses with stiff white collars. When Pauline would visit her sisters every two weeks, she would tell her mother, "Don't you ever send me here!". Apparently, she said it enough times that Memere and Pepere agreed to find another placement. The chosen location was Berlin, NH where she attended the co-ed Notre Dame High School and lived at a convent called St. Regis Academy (image shown above) - walking distance from the school.

While Jeanne and Lorraine graduated from their school in New Hampshire, Pauline’s boarding school education was more tenuous. Pauline decided in her sophomore year that an all-girl Catholic boarding school was just not to her liking so much that she refused to go back while on Thanksgiving break.  She wanted more opportunity to date boys and more freedom in general. Using her birth order to her advantage (being the yongest daughter), she was able to swing a change in the high standards of her diehard Catholic parents.  Helen, Memere's sister-in-law, had attended St. Joseph Girl's School in Portland which may have helped to get her enrolled immediately. Here is a period picture of the school taken from Pauline’s newspaper scrapbook:

Oddly enough, she ended up in an all-girls school where she had to wear a uniform but this time she did not have to live at a convent. It was at St. Joseph's where she met a classmate, Sue Breton, who became a close family friend and whom I remember as a child. Sadly, Sue would die in a car accident about fifteen years later. Pauline graduated from St. Joseph's in 1947. From high school, she attended a two year secretarial school in Boston where she rented a room at a boarding house for students located on the Charles River.