‘Grade school reunion … absolutely priceless’

When Bill Bly was in grade school, decades ago, he couldn’t remember how to spell “friend.”

“I was having trouble with the ‘i’ and the ‘e’,” he recalled.

So his favorite teacher at the former St. Leo’s Elementary School in Ashley, Sister Carol, took him aside and pointed out the last three letters in the word spell out E-N-D, and that it’s a beautiful thing for friends to stick together “to the end.”

“What a wonderful teacher she was,” he said.

The recollection was one of many he and his classmates shared as the class of 1974 of St. Leo’s Elementary School held a 50th-anniversary reunion Oct. 12 at the River Grille in Plains Township. There was also an ice-breaker at Pizza Perfect in Shavertown the evening before, and a breakfast at Ollie’s in Edwardsville the morning after.

And through all these activities, the classmates realized they are friends “to the end.”

“I had such a phenomenal time,” Sharon Lewandoski Truschel said. “It’s been 50 years since I saw my classmates, people we grew up with. It’s kind of like we didn’t miss a beat.”

“It was like nothing had happened in between,” agreed Anne Moore Kasper.

“Everybody was so excited to see each other,” Cheryl Shovlin Thomas said. “We were just laughing and talking.”

Nowadays Thomas lives in Clarks Summit, Truschel lives in Mountain Top, and Kasper jokes that she “moved a mile away (from Ashley), to Wilkes-Barre.”

When they were in grade school, most of the class lived within a block or two of their school, with Mary Janusiewicz Molitoris, one of the reunion organizers, living right next door to the parish church.

They walked home for lunch most days, Kasper recalled, except for “Pizza Fridays,” when mothers came to the church hall to heat up and serve slices of Nardone’s.

“It wasn’t just that we went to school together,” Molitoris said, reflecting on the classmate’s bonding experiences. “We all grew up in the town. We all grew up together.”

“I had some beautiful friendships,” Truschel said, “and their parents were hard-working, very grounded people who helped to shape me. They were like an extension of my family.”

For the first few years of grade school, the class of 1974 was in the same school building as “the big kids” who seemed so grown up and mature — students who were attending St. Leo’s High School.

Then in the early 1970s St. Leo’s was one of several Catholic high schools that merged to form Bishop Hoban High School. Suddenly “the big kids” were attending high school on South Pennsylvania Boulevard in Wilkes-Barre — and eventually many members of St. Leo’s Elementary School class of 1974 followed then there, attending Bishop Hoban together as part of the high school’s class of 1978.

Cheryl Shovlin Thomas, who had moved to Scranton after eighth grade, didn’t share high school with the St. Leo’s gang, so she had remembered them as shy 13 and 14-year-olds.

“I remember how it always used to be girls on one side of a room and boys on the other. We didn’t really talk to the boys,” she said with a laugh. “One thing that was really neat (at the reunion) was now we had an adult conversation, and everybody was hugging each other and so glad to see each other.”

“Having a grade school reunion was absolutely priceless,” said Joe McDaniels, who spearheaded the reunion with Mary Janusiewicz Molitoris. “A high school reunion can be nice, but with grade school, these are the people you really grew up with.”

Class members said they were delighted that the Rev. Louis Grippe attended their reunion. He had been a young assistant pastor at St. Leo’s during their formative years and Anne Moore Kasper still remembers a talk he gave when they were in eighth grade.

“When we were 14 he told us we needed to become who God wanted us to be. What I heard him say was, it’s not “what have you accomplished?,’ but ‘who have you become?’ With God we have the strength to bear all things.”

“I just love him,” Sharon Lewandoski Truschel said of the priest. “Instead of giving a homily he kind of tells a story with a deep meaning a the end. He spoke on Janis Joplin at our May Crowning, how important it was to be grounded and to do something important with your life. He said accomplishments are important, but they’re not the be-all and end-all. It’s your relationships (that really matter.)”

“It’s true,” she said. “As we get older and retire, we do depend on our relationships.”

Over 50 years the classmates have endured the loss of family members and other hardships — they also have lost class members Kelly Nealon Connelly, Donald (Mike) Steele and Bethann Zalewski-Hockenberry.

“It was good to feel like a kid again,” Bill Bly said, reflecting on how the reunion reminded him of an earlier, more carefree time.

When he first heard about the reunion, he said, he resisted attending. Then he changed his mind

“Pete (Sakowski) guilted me into it,” he said, and he’s glad. “I’d say the reunion was the best thing I’ve done all year.”

Looking back, Truschel said, she’s grateful for the families that sent their children to the close-knit parochial school, despite having to pay tuition.

“What a gift our parents gave us,” she said.

Classmates traveled from as far away as Texas, Virginia and New York to attend the recent reunion and, Molitoris said, organizers will probably plan additional, less formal get-toethers soon.