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Summer 2003
PORTLAND, Oregon—"Remember, Patricia, this is always your home."
Spring day, 1962. The old stone-walled garden of St. Mary's Academy for girls. I'd just told Sister Francella Mary that I was leaving St. Mary's to go to a coeducational high school across town. Before sending me off to the world outside these walls, she gave me her blessings and this promise: No matter what the world beyond held for me, I'd always belong at my "home" school at St. Mary's.
Forty years later, Sister Francella's words rang in my memory like a bell when, at a meeting of the Oregon Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Committee, I heard someone mention that there were 100-year-old books stored away that had been written by St. Mary's students for the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and World's Fair. I listened with growing excitement. They were hard-bound portfolios of third- through eighth-grade students' work, done a century after Meriwether Lewis and William Clark's Corps of Discovery explored the continent. In a friendly rivalry commemorating the centennial of the expedition, St. Mary's and other schools collected their students' best work in portfolios and submitted them to a statewide competition.
As the committee wondered what the books looked like and if we could possibly see them, I almost ran to the phone. Of course we could see them! After all, St. Mary's is my home, Sister Francella told me. So, on another spring day, I took my 18-year-old son and two of his friends to meet Sister Rosemarie Kasper at the archives of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, Oregon Province. Sister unlocked the door, moved treasured chronicles, relics, and antiques, and directed us to several boxes. In them stood the bound books of student work from 1903, displaying the quality of education offered at St. Mary's at the turn of the last century.
When the boys and I lifted them out of the box, using white gloves to protect the aged pages, we were in awe! The books' green library bindings, marbled endpapers, and pages of the finest watermarked paper were perfect. The student handwriting was elegant, the language poetic, and the pen-and-ink drawings and watercolor illustrations exquisite. We were holding history!
I've turned the pages of these books several times since then, and they fill me with pride. I'm proud of the girls in long white dresses who sat in the convent school garden and took such care to show their work. Proud of the school that has produced scholars and artists for more than a century. Proud of the girls in blue jeans who attend St. Mary's today, continuing the tradition of academic excellence. And the old books make me proud of myself.
These essays and drawings, set down in another era by the disciplined and inspired hands of young author-artists, are testament to what students can accomplish when they strive for personal excellence. This is, of course, what they were honoring in the men and one woman of the Corps of Discovery, many of whom were not much older than themselves.
POSTSCRIPT: Patricia Nida works for NWREL's Comprehensive Center and, as a member of the Oregon Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Committee, is helping schools across the country to create rich learning experiences based on the history of the expedition. She can be reached at (503) 275-9480 or nidap@nwrel.org.
Illustrations used by permission. "Hooded Warbler" by Edina Venator and "Tree Swallow" by Dorothy Bercovich (appearing with page numbers) in the chapter "Birds of Oregon" in 15 Nature Study, St. Mary's Portland, Grades 3-6. Lewis and Clark Exposition-1905. Portland, OR: Archives of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, Oregon Province.
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