It is always a treat to visit Rochester. This year I had a little excursion to Chili. I saw the burned out St. Pius X Church...a sad sight. One thing I noticed might come as a surprise to newcomers to SPX. There used to be a path that led from the school to Ranchmar. The kids who lived in Ranchmar used it to go home for lunch (while others had to eat at school) and everyone used it as the way to go to Ranchmar to play. Well, the path is gone! Beside the church there is now a parking lot and a field of grass that ends in a forest wall of trees. You would never know of the baseball fields that existed nor the short cut to Ranchmar. I guess we should all take pictures of everything because everything eventually will change.
As for the school itself, I checked to see that the cornerstone was laid in 1959. Now September 1959 was the year the class of '64 would have entered 4th grade. Going into this trip I was almost sure we had come to the new school (from St Feehan's) at the start of 3rd grade because I have no memory of 3rd Grade at St Feehan's. However, two reliable members of the class of '66 assured me they went to the first grade at St Feehan's. Easy going guy that I am I might have taken their word for it except that while visiting a reliable source in Chili, this source being one of the founding members of St Pius X, she showed me a newspaper clipping from August 2, 1957 showing the removal of the stained glass windows of St Feehan's and saying that the new school would be open to one class in the fall of that year and would be open to five classes the following year! If that were true, we would have started at the new school in September 1958! With this hard evidence I had to believe my memory had been correct......but it was two against one and the '66ers were much more sure of their memories of being at St Feehan's in 1958-59 that I was in my lack of memory of being there.
So the mystery persists. Did one class open the school in 1957? When did all the classes move in? Comments are welcome and I guess history will have to abide by the majority vote (unless of course someone offers even better proof than I thought I had on the matter! -- a class picture perhaps?!).
