Reading · Critically Thinking About Select Societal Issues

I don’t like writing about myself, so this is an exception.

My whole high school experience was unique — so this is about one part relevant today, and has a connection to the Substack you’re reading.

I was the oldest of nine kids. (Some people say that’s all you need to know about me.) It may be hard to believe now, but in high school I was a handsome guy. Since I was so busy (e.g., see below), I had no girlfriends during high school. Here is a pix of me then, with my youngest three siblings…

My high school days started off very unusually: a brand new school started in my freshman year. There had been two Catholic schools in our Central NY community, and now there would be three: 1) Notre Dame [600±, all boys], 2) Utica Catholic Academy [300± girls], and 3) St. Francis DeSales [300± girls]. The ND teachers were mostly Xaverian Brothers (plus a few lay people), while the girls had nuns.

When Notre Dame started (1960), they had not constructed a new facility yet, so the first year we were in buildings abandoned by a local community college, which had recently moved into new digs. (Each of the girls’ schools occupied a different existing facility in the area.)

So my first day of high school turned out to be the first day of the new school for ALL the grade levels. No one knew what to expect. For instance, no one had a clue that this small (600±) boys’ school would become a national basketball powerhouse that would play in Madison Square Garden!

Anyways, one of the several suggestions from my parents that I took to heart was to “be well-rounded,” so I signed up for one of the few extracurricular activities available (due to our very limited campus): freshman basketball.

Here is the new school that we moved to when I was a sophomore…

As a sophomore, another of my well-rounded efforts was that I decided to volunteer to be a reporter for the brand new Notre Dame newspaper: the Notre-Riety. Jeff Gleba (a fellow sophomore) was selected to be the Editor, and the moderator was Brother Liam. About a month into the school year, Jeff was suddenly fired!

His assistant and good buddy (Kevin Murray, a freshman) was selected to be the new Editor. A short time later, Kevin was also dismissed. (No explanation was ever given for these two surprising changes.)

Stunningly, out of the blue, Brother Liam then asked me if I wanted to be the Editor. I said yes — and was the Editor through the end of my Junior year.

What did that entail? First, in 1961, Notre Dame was one of a very small number of US high schools that published a weekly newspaper.

The newspaper was black & white, on two-sided, legal-sized paper, and entirely done by students (except for the printing). We had no equipment other than a few basic manual typewriters… Remember, this was a long time before computers, so everything had to be done manually.

Thursday: I decided what material would appear in next week’s paper. Typically the paper had 10-12 articles of various lengths. I had to choose what got coverage — sports events, academic matters, social, etc.
Thursday: I had to determine how many words would be allotted for each article, and physically where it would appear on the paper.
Thursday: I physically laid out the paper onto two legal-sized template pages. FYI, I had to allow space for Titles for each article.
Friday: I assigned each article to a different student (who I had to physically track down), and told them how many words they needed to write. It had to be turned in no later than Tuesday. If they had a conflict and could not accept the assignment, I had to find someone else — or me.
Monday: A few of the articles started coming in. The first challenge was to review the submissions and edit them for clarity, word length, etc. This was something that I primarily did.
Monday: I smartly had a few articles every week that were columns — like a mini bio of every one of the teachers. I assigned them ahead of time, so we could make a good dent in laying out the paper on Monday.
Monday: As edited versions were done, we then had to start manually tying up each article (I typed, but I also had student volunteers who helped here). Based on the space allotted, I knew how many characters were allowed for each line (e.g., 55), plus how many lines (e.g., 20). The typewriter was set to type the article into a 55-character-wide column.
Monday: After the first typed draft was done, I knew whether words needed to be subtracted or added. After I made those changes, a second typed draft was done.
Tuesday: Assuming that we now had the vertical space accurate, we now needed to fix the horizontal appearance. The Newspaper would look like an amateur job without each article being Fully Justified — and there was no easy way to do that. Each article had to have this done manually. We went through the Left Justification and pencilled in how many spaces needed to be added to the line (spread out so as not to be noticeable) to make it fully justified. Then the third typed version was done.
Tuesday: After I accepted the final typed version, I physically cut it out with scissors and pasted it into the appropriate spot on the templates.
Tuesday: A student volunteered to draw a comic strip every week, so that was the easiest space we had to fill!
Wednesday: I also had a student who just did headlines. They made a proposal to me for each one. I edited them as I saw fit (and what the space allowed). After that, they had some sheets of larger fonts and manually cut them out and pasted them onto a strip of paper. When they were acceptable, I pasted each headline onto the templates.
Wednesday: The rest of the articles came in (hopefully). So the processes above (#7 through #10) was repeated for each one of them… If any articles did not arrive, I had to chase down the student (no small matter) and see what the problem was. If needed, I assigned the article to someone else who graciously volunteered.
Wednesday: Every day was busy in the room they gave to us to use, but on Wednesdays there were at least a half dozen students doing typing. My mom had to come pick me up (as we were often there until after six at night, long after school buses stopped running). There were times that she sat there typing while waiting. (I should have taken a photo!)
Thursday: I wrapped things up, finishing multiple details. Then the two-page template was taken to the printer. I then started over at #1: rinse and repeat, every week of the school year.
Friday: The printed paper was delivered to the three schools (1000+ copies). It was very gratifying that when I walked down the halls during class time, EVERY student was reading the paper…
Extras: If that wasn’t enough, I was also tasked with publishing a Program for our basketball home games. This was a legal-sized paper folded in half, making four smaller pages. They looked quite nice!
Specials: Every so often we published a special version of the newspaper — like a two-page edition (on colored paper) for Christmas… A few times a year I also wrote an editorial…
Regrets: Looking back, I’m proud of this amazing accomplishment. That said, I have always regretted not getting a girl from each of the other two schools to submit a weekly article about what was going on there. Yes, the logistics would be a challenge, but we probably could have done it.
Believe it or not, I saved a copy of many of these! Here is a sample that I scanned in for your entertainment. (My apologies, as I only have an 11” length scanner, so the bottom 3 inches of each page are missing…)

The paper had no masthead, so most students didn’t even know that I was the editor. This was fine by me, as I looked at it as a team effort. That said, the authors of each article had their name listed at the end of their piece. Also, this was entirely done by students (other than printing the final product). No adults were involved at all…

FYI, I had a life otherwise — e.g., I was on the track team (and ran the 440). I was also in the top five academically in my class for each year…

Anyways, this is just one of several stories about how I got into writing a Substack column. Enjoy!

A Tiny Glimpse of John

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