Tough times, good life lessons at Brownsville's Old "Escuela Católica San Francisco de Asís"

Tough times, good life lessons

By Lino Garcia Jr./Special to The Brownsville Herald

In the early years of the 1900s, the old Escuela Católica San Francisco de Asís was the heartbeat of its working-class neighborhood: the nuns who ran it provided strength and instruction, and the people who lived in the neighborhood did all they could to help the good sisters in return. The school building itself, located at East Tyler and Eighth streets, acted as a common ground for the community and its children.

Facing south and close to the railroad tracks was a stage, where students practiced their annual plays. In one particular play, students portrayed Dutch children dressed up in costumes and wooden shoes. In another play, they were ghosts and sang "Jack be nimble, Jack be quick,…"

The women of the neighborhood, including my mother, would spend hours on their sewing machines, making costumes for the students, and the plays would then be presented for parents and the public at the old and only high school auditorium, located on Palm Boulevard.

Times were hard and the neighborhood was poor, but the students somehow were not deprived of normal school activities like lessons and religious instruction, all now fondly remembered. The other classroom that faced East Tyler was for second-graders; the teacher was Sister Alice of the Sisters of the Incarnate Word. Some days, an older sister named Sor Angela would appear to give us our daily lessons. They all lived at a convent on East Levee Street, and students often would go and fetch meals for the nuns, carrying them in a set of metal plates strung around a long handle. My mother sometimes would provide them with hot, delicious meals just out of the kitchen (favorites like fideo con carne, arroz con pollo and frijoles refritos), which the nuns always looked forward to.

During Charro Days, all students marched in the parades, and on one occasion the boys were dressed as Mexican revolutionary soldiers. They met after school on the street in front of the school to practice exact precision drills with wooden rifles.

One day a week was clean-up day, and students were provided with either a mop or a broom to sweep and mop each room. Some of the boys cleaned windows, sitting on a small platform made especially for them. There was no need for janitors; everyone contributed to maintaining the building.

Some kind of tuition was charged, although to my knowledge I never saw any parent actually pay anything, as the Sisters of the Incarnate Word provided their services for almost nothing.

In 1956 when I returned from serving in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War, I inquired about the old Escuela Católica San Francisco de Asís , only to be told the school had closed due to lack of teaching nuns at the convent. I recently saw a picture of one of its students, and although all came from poor, working-class parents, all students were neatly dressed and wearing shoes, which was not always the case with students in the public schools I later attended.

I like to call it the magic of the Escuela Católica San Francisco de Asís, where when a good deed was done, good things followed. Hundreds of young boy and girls from the neighborhood attended the school, and to my knowledge none who passed through its doors went wrong, and all became productive members of society. Former students include the late Dr. Ramón García, a captain and pilot of the U.S. Navy and a graduate of Harvard, on his way to Rear Admiral status before his early demise; Dr. Rodolfo Rocha, former dean at UTPA and a former Provost/Vice President of Metropolitan College; and yours truly, former Assistant Vice-President at UTPA and Tulane University Ph.D). There were many others.

It is said one person’s dream can transfer itself into hundreds of other dreams that can change our society and the lives of others. A good example is the old Escuela Católica San Francisco de Asís, located in the heart of a working-class neighborhood in old Brownsville, an idea made possible by one philanthropic family.

PULLOUT BOX: For information and a picture of the school see: The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Extraordinary Times of Francisco Yturria, by Frank Daniel Yturria, UTB/TSC Press, Brownsville 2006, pages 279 and 282.