THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 17, 1994 TAG: 9406150178
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 16 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JUDY PARKER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940617 LENGTH: Long
Today, with the luck of hindsight, the generation that was nurtured in its adolescence by the Great Depression only to enter adulthood at the height of World War II, can now look back at what may have seemed a sacrificed future in the mid-1940s and know now everything turned out OK.
{REST} But any young women or men graduating from high school in June 1944 had only the strongest hint and maybe the deepest fear that the future was anything but hopeful.
A reunion was held recently by the 41 graduates of St. Joseph's Academy, class of 1944. While their school hasn't survived, nearly every surviving member of the class made it back to Portsmouth for their golden anniversary.
``My grandson graduated from high school last year and went off on a holiday to Myrtle Beach,'' said Mary Ann Isaacson Lewis. ``We couldn't do anything like that. Our choices were limited to either going immediately to work or fighting in the war. But everybody was in the same boat, and we just took it one day at a time.''
Located on King Street, between Washington and Dinwiddie streets, St. Joseph's Academy, originally built in 1876, was converted to an elementary school in 1949 and renamed St. Paul's.
Ironically, when St. Paul's closed in 1970 to be consolidated with two other parochial schools in Portsmouth, the building and its 1.4 acres of land was sold to the city for $115,000. The city, in turn, transferred use of the school building to the U.S. Navy for use as a USO, thus linking one generation of soldier/civilians with a younger one.
The class has held two similar reunions and members have stayed in touch with each other with more informal occasions than anyone can recall.
``We've remained very close to each other,'' said class member Antoinette Lascara, who hosted a cocktail party for the celebrants Friday evening in her Hatton Point home. ``And they've come from all across the country for this reunion.''
Fifty years ago, however, any sort of future reunion was the least probable affair anticipated by the group.
``I was drafted in August and in the Philippines a couple months later,'' recalled Bernard Bankos, a retired Norfolk Naval Shipyard computer programmer.
Bankos' tour as an Army infantryman in the Pacific theater lasted two years, 12 days and four hours. ``If I could, I'd have it calculated down to the last second,'' he said.
Like all veterans returning from the war, Bankos was eligible for the GI Bill to further his education. He enrolled at the College of William and Mary extension in Norfolk, forerunner to Old Dominion University.
``I'd been discharged in August and was sitting in a college classroom in early September. There was really no time to adjust,'' Bankos said. ``I was only weeks away from seeing a buddy killed in the war, and I had a difficult time fitting back into civilian life.''
Bankos lasted one semester, then went to work at the Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth.
Fellow classmate Stephen Kampman enjoyed life as a civilian for 20 days after his graduation.
``I was in the Navy on June 29 and, by December, I was on board the destroyer escort USS Park,'' Kampman said.
Just barely 18 years old, Kampman saw duty in the South Pacific campaign, including participating in the capture of 500 Japanese soldiers on Melee Atoll.
``We provided cover and transport for Marines who captured the atoll. At the time we didn't know how heavily mined the lagoon around the atoll was. Once the capture of the Japanese was complete, we found more than 50 mines in the water, and they were all around us.''
Echoing Bankos, Kampman said he gave no thought to avoiding military service.
``At the time, I didn't know if I had a future, but I'd grown up with the war and it was just a way of life by the time I was ready to graduate,'' the retired trucker said.
While most of the male members of the class served in the military, the young women had the same fears and uncertainties enveloping the rest of the country.
``Everybody was very patriotic, but we were all scared because we knew we could still lose the war,'' said Theresa Wilson.
``It seemed every house had a gold star in a window. And every time a family received a telegram, it was always bad news.''
Western Union telegrams saying a soldier or sailor was dead or missing in action, gold stars labeling a household as one which had suffered a casualty of the war, ration stamps, and careers on indefinite, maybe permanent hold, were like a steady diet of anxiety and frustration for ``when will this all be over.''
``Graduation week was horrible,'' Wilson said. ``We heard the news about D-Day just three days before, and just a few weeks before that, Monsignor Magri died.'' Joseph Magri had been a longtime popular pastor of St. Paul's Catholic Church, where most of St. Joseph's students worshiped.
``I remember one day shortly before graduation hearing sirens blare almost the entire day,'' Wilson said. ``The sisters took us down to the waterfront to see a hospital ship that had docked. It seemed as though they would never stop unloading the wounded. I guess most were taken over to the Naval Hospital. It was just terrible.''
Wilson had held a part-time job with the telephone company during her junior and senior years, and after graduating went to work full-time.
``I had always wanted to go to college, but that wasn't the time to think about that. Everybody went to work, one way or another.''
The St. Joseph's Academy 50th reunion weekend celebration was held at a time reminiscent of the weather on the late spring day in 1944 when class members donned blue and white caps and gowns, were handed diplomas that were tickets into a world made wretched by dictators and emperors.
Fifty years later, they are retired writers, homemakers, clergy, office workers, grandparents, widows and widowers.
``We were pretty naive then and had to grow up fast,'' Wilson said. ``But I guess for most of us our lives have turned out pretty well.''
by CNB