After yesterday's post regarding June 6, 1944, my youngest sister wrote: I remember going to church that morning. I do not think I really understood the big reason.
She was not alone. I remember the morning this way:
Dear Carol,
It was an early summer day, much like all the others. I went to St. Patrick's Boys' School and sat in my classroom; probably thinking about how many more days we had to go before school was over and the summer vacation would begin. Like you, I have no recollection of understanding the importance of the day, nor of the significance of what had started across the ocean on the shores of France. Then we were lined up and marched over to St. Patrick's church. All the students were there from the separate boys' and girls' schools. The boys shepherded by the Xavierian Brothers and the girls by the Sisters of whatever. We were in the lower church and it was crowded. There were some adults there as well. Probably from the neighborhood. Undoubtedly some had husbands, brothers, loved ones in the European Theater of operations and were praying for their safety. Our pastor Father John Meehan came out of the sacristy into the sanctuary and stood before the altar. Many of us in the back rows were too far away to have a good look at him but we heard his words. Then he knelt before the altar and began praying and all joined in responding to his prayers. When he finished he got up and turned to the rows of students and announced a school holiday. Some did not hear him clearly and "what did he say?" was heard throughout the crowd. Father Meehan responded that some of you didn't listen too well and he raised his voice and repeated his declaration of a school holiday. Did you hear that, he asked and there was a loud chorus of yeses. We left the church and went home and for the next few days followed the news in the paper about what was happening in France. I believe now it was several years before I came to fully appreciate what June 6, 1944, meant to all of us in America, and to the world and to history. In the movie The Longest Day, released in the early sixties, one of the characters (played by Rod Steiger) in charge of a large ship says we are on the cusp of a day that the world will still talk about long after we are dead and gone. How prescient he was.
Bud
