Another One From Grammar School

It’s “another one is gone” time. Or, perhaps, you might say, it’s “the clock is ticking” time. Another one of my classmates from St. James Grammar School has passed on to glory. That makes three in a little over a year. All girls (yes, girls: that’s how I remember them; it’s been 53 years, but they are frozen as girls).

Lorna Bosses just showed up in the newspaper. She made her mark in the medical field and found her peace.

Mary Lou Dinan, the cutest girl, passed away some months back. When we were in the upper grades, someone had one of those little plastic things with an image at the other end; you peeked through to see what it was. Well, it was an image of a shapely nude woman. “That’s what Mary Lou will look like when she grows up,” he said.

Mary Ethel Bowe lost her battle to breast cancer a couple years ago. Beloved by one and all, the neighbors around her New Hampshire cottage named the area “Mary’s Cove” in her honor. She and I were boy- and girl-friends very early on. I think our parents made that decision pretty nearly at birth, but it didn’t stick only a few years.

(In our class were Mary Ethel, Mary Lou, Mary Ann and I think one other Mary-something. It was a good year for “Mary” but a bad year for keeping them separate. So they included their middle names. “I know if anyone calls me ‘Mary Ethel,’ they knew me from St. James,” Mary Bowe said much later in life.)