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I told Chris I was glad she was the one introducing me cause usually it seems like at events where I talk it’s always somebody taller than me and the first thing I have to do is lower the mic. So, I appreciate the fact that somebody the same size as me introduced me. It’s always an honor to be asked back from St. Mary’s to do…anything here. I told Chris sometime I’ll have to learn to say no to her, but you can’t say no to that woman. You can’t say no to this school. First of all I want to congratulate all the Academy Award winners that we have here tonight. It’s a pretty impressive group that we’re honoring again. I just echo many of the things Chris said about our alumnae. We’re very impressive out there. And the four that we have here tonight – you read their bios and it just wows me. It’s an honor for me to be here tonight as you are getting your various awards and very deserved recognition.
Trying to decide what to say tonight, “keynote speaker” – that doesn’t quite fit me. I was across the street. I give a lot of tours of our campus at Portland State. We get down to this end of the campus and everybody always thinks St. Mary’s is part of Portland State and I always have to say to the recruits and their parents and some of our staff people, “No, that’s where I went to high school. That’s a high school.”
“You’re kidding. What did you go to school down here for?”
So I thought, well maybe that might be a good thing I could talk about. ”Why I came to St. Mary’s. What are the great things that I like about it?” So instead of the top 10 list that Letterman always does, I’m going to give you my top five, the top five reasons that I came to St. Mary’s.
Number Five: It’s simple: This is where my parents sent me. And I was your typical teenager that truly felt, I mean I didn’t choose St. Mary’s. If I had my choice, at THAT time I wasn’t going to come to St. Mary’s. I had just finished eight years in a parochial grade school. Eight years with the Sisters of the Holy Names. And I was ready to get out and go to a public school where it was less structured and less disciplined and really have some fun. My parents as I think all parents did at that time, were making the decisions that was just going to ruin my life. I’m sure all of you parents have heard that from your sons and daughters. And my sister went to school here, and who really wants to go to school where your sister’s going? So it wasn’t really my first choice. And I have to say that as usual my parents were right. This was the absolute best decision that my parents made for me, because I think I said in my talk when I accepted my award here a few years ago, “Absolutely, (now my staff members this week were talking about it again) this is the reason I was able to make it through Portland State as a student, the academic background that I got here at St. Mary’s – I never would have made it. I wasn’t the most serious student, they had the ability to get me to learn here and then allow me to be successful at Portland State. And I wouldn’t have the life I have now had my parents not been smart enough to send me here. They knew this was the right place for me. And it wasn’t too bad having my sister here. She made a good mentor and I was a pretty cool freshman; I had friends that were juniors. Freshmen don’t usually get junior friends. That ended up working out okay, too. It really was the best decision my parents made for me. I’m truly indebted to them. I didn’t even know that they had to pay for it. I thought it was free, like everybody else at all the other schools. Nobody else had to pay, so they were so selfless they didn’t even tell me they actually had to pay for me to go to school here.
#4 Uniforms! I absolutely loved having uniforms. Now you don’t want to get me on my soap box about how good they are for school. But, what a great deal. The hardest decision you had to make when you got up in the morning was do I wear the white blouse with the round collar or do I wear the white blouse with oxford collar? Do I wear the half jacket or do I wear the sweater? And that was great! I mean that was at least an extra fifteen minutes of sleep. And when you’re in high school that 15 minutes…that’s big. And that was great. You had the half jacket (some of you have heard this story). It was great for me during World Series time. In those days all the games were during the day, so I’d take the transistor and clip it to my skirt (For all you young ones out there, a transistor is sort of this little…well, take your iPod and just make it like five times thicker, that was a transistor) And you just run the little head piece around the jacket, you get some double-sided tape, put it right in your palm, put the head piece right here and when you’re in class…it worked really well. You could catch all the games.
You had to learn on your skirts, you roll em’ up, but you had a certain length they had to be. When you’d kneel down for mass in the gym or in the chapel they had to touch the ground. So you just had to remember when you’re going to the chapel, unroll them because as soon as you kneel down the sisters were back there checking it out. But uniforms are great. It puts everybody kind of in the same class and everybody’s the same. So, I loved having uniforms.
#3 It was an all-girls school! And you heard Chris elude to it, how her daughter has grown so much in her four years here. There is no better place to see a young girl become a young woman than here at St. Mary’s in an all-girl environment. You really have the opportunity to grow. And the academic success? Everybody’s heard all about that, but it’s the other side…the social development, the opportunity to really become a full woman and partake in a number of opportunities. That’s the great thing about St. Mary’s. They teach you community service, you get out and you learn how to give back, something more and more young people need to learn, to serve others. You have the opportunity of a number of activities here. For me it was athletics. We had the monogram club. We had choir. We had the marian singers if you liked singing. We had great theatre productions. In fact, that was another bragging point for our freshman class, Mrs. Arris Goes to Paris. That was our play that year. And our freshman, Martha Gloden was the lead in the play that year. And we had bragging rights as freshmen.
In fact I think (and I know I have some classmates out there) we had a special class, actually it wasn’t just our class, it was an all-school assembly in the auditorium here. All of a sudden they call us in and said, “Come to the auditorium. We have a special announcement to make.” And everybody is saying “Gee Whiz, What is it?” And we get here, and they make this special announcement that straight from Paris, France a Christian Dior dress came to be used in the play for Mrs. Arris Goes to Paris. And everyone is standing up and screaming and clapping. That was great! I didn’t know what the heck that was. I was clapping because they got me out of class. That’s all I cared about. I was all for that. I’m more cultured now. I’m a 15-year season ticket holder for the Broadway plays, so I’m learning how to be cultured. But, just the opportunities that we have here – Those are the things that allow you to grow as a total person. When Central Catholic, and Jesuit, and St. Mary’s of the Valley all started to go co-ed, everyone was giving me a bad time saying “When is St. Mary’s going co-ed?”
“NEVER. We will close before we’ll let that happen. We will not allow that.”
#2. Number Two. You’ve heard this already tonight, the Sisters of the Holy Names. The Sisters of the Holy Names. They challenged you. I challenged them, but they challenged you academically to really get the best out of you. And as I mentioned, I loved coming to St. Mary’s, I didn’t like going to school. They made me learn to love to learn! And that’s what allowed me to be successful. The patience that they had as teachers – you can’t even put it into words. They weren’t just your teachers, they were your friends. And that was the greatest thing about having them as teachers here. Now, I also got the first male teachers that ever taught at St. Mary’s. He didn’t last too long. The Sisters of the Holy Names were great to have as teachers and great to have as your friends. They were very subtle when you’d get in trouble with them. They wouldn’t yell and scream at you, buy they would figure it out. In fact, my players last year, when they were doing a roast for me (I stopped coaching after 29 years last year) they had this little “thing” and they were talking about the LOOK, that I have. So I learned something else from the Sisters of the Holy Names because I saw that look many times. I saw that look actually in this auditorium once. I had an opportunity to participate in a little talent show. We put a little band together. Usually when you’d eat lunch in the cafeteria you couldn’t get out of there until lunch was over. But we had gotten special permission to come in here and practice our songs for the talent show. So we’re in here and I plugged in the guitar and the amp. And I was kind of tuning it up and usually the chords I would use would be the chords to Gloria. Doo, doo, doo. Doo, doo, doo. So I was up here and the drummer started drumming, and you know you close your eyes and you’re just really going and picturing that you’re playing in front of thousands of people, just rockin’ down and all of a sudden I realize I’m the only one singin’ and playin’. So I stop and I turn around and my drummer is pointing straight ahead. And sitting about four rows up was Sr. Marian James. Yeah, you guys remember her. And she had the LOOK. Then she says, “What are we doing?” “Practicing my spelling…G-L-O-R-I-A.” She said, “Well, I think you’ve got that down. Let’s move on.” So, we went on to “Love is Blue” and “If I had a Hammer”. Those were our real songs.
Then, Sr. Mary. I was in my World Series mode. We were in her class. We were in a circle. She was teaching history and it was a day when we were talking about current events. I always figured that was when she didn’t do her lesson plan. We’d just sit around and talk. We were sitting there and it was a commercial. So, you know, you always learn when you’re listening to the World Series to put your hand down during the commercials, so they wouldn’t always see you sitting there like this in class. So, I’d put my hand down. Sr. Mary says, “Well, Teri, since we’re talking about current events, what’s the score?” She didn’t yell at me, but it kind of got the point across. I didn’t listen to the rest of the game in her class. I picked it up in the next class.
Then #1: And this is very serious. I’m taking the words from Tina Turner. St. Mary’s is simply the best, better than all the rest. (Good thing I’m not singing it.) It truly is. You hear it from everybody. Chris eluded to the fact that you can tell St. Mary’s people when you’re out and about. But, academically it is the best. You have 99% of the students going on to higher education. There’s a reason for that. And there’s a reason you hear of generation after generation after generation of families that send their daughters to St. Mary’s: The Dieringer’s, here tonight, a good example of that, one of many families where that happens. There’s a reason for that.
I had a friend who was applying for a job here a couple years ago. And I was trying to convince her to apply for the job. She was new to the area, had moved out from California a couple years earlier. I was trying to explain St. Mary’s to her. And it’s a hard thing to explain unless you’ve been here, unless you’ve gone to school here, unless you’ve taught here. You see how many former students come back and teach here. But it’s hard to explain that special feeling that you get every time that you walk in through the doors here. Every time I’m here at least. And I think most people do, too. I was trying to explain that to her. And I said “It’s just something. When you’re there, you’ll see it, you’ll know what I mean. And I ran into her when we had the opening for the atrium back in the Fall. Beautiful job, by the way. You’ll see it later tonight. But, I saw her and she said, “You know what? I get it.”
“It? Get what?”
She says, “I get what you were talking about when you were talking about St. Mary’s. I get what you were talking about, that special feeling.” She said, “They’re going to have to get me a gold watch. I have no interest in leaving this school. I love it here.”
And I know I’m preaching to the choir here. I know that pretty much everyone understands that feeling. But that’s what it’s about. That’s what St. Mary’s is about. That’s why it will never change. I hope not. I truly believe it will never change. I’ve spent 35 years at Portland State. And that’s probably my home, but this is where my heart will always be.
All Hail to Thee, St. Mary’s!
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