Don't Grow Up Too Fast! Owen's Jacket and Xavier High School

Owen’s Jacket and Xavier High School

Owen, my older and only brother, has four years on me.  Right around the time he left the house, he purchased a new jacket – probably the black leather --  and said he no longer needed or wanted his old jacket.  The old one was a wool-lined brown leather aviator jacket.  Of course he looked great in it, and while he wore it to death, it was still quite wearable and very fashionable when he was done with it.

I asked Mom if it would be OK if I wore this hand-me-down; she said no, because I wasn’t old enough to wear a jacket like that (I was about 13).  I was disappointed, but knew that I could not argue the logic.

About a year earlier, I spent the summer between seventh and eighth grade commuting from Jamaica, Queens to Xavier High School, a Jesuit all-male college preparatory school on 16^th Street in Manhattan.  It was just something to keep me busy all summer, and I loved every bit of commuting both ways on my own and studying and learning during the summer months (yes, I loved it!).  I especially loved all the sports we played:  track and field, whiffleball in the courtyard, and most especially organized basketball.  This is when and where I actually started to understand the game.  Of course, I enjoyed running up and down the court.  The rest, like developing offensive skills and a taste for rebounding and defense, would come later.

As the summer session ended, I was offered the opportunity to skip a grade and enter Xavier as a freshman that fall.  I was really excited and couldn’t wait to tell Mom.  I loved the school, loved the thought of getting a great education there, and figured Mom would like the idea of skipping a year’s tuition.

Guess what?  Mom thought that I should finish out my career at St. Catherine’s by attending eighth grade.  Again, I was a bit flustered, but I trusted my Mom’s judgment.

That winter, Mr. Piemonte, my 8^th-grade homeroom teacher, gave me a brochure about Regis High School, a tuition-free, all-male, Jesuit college preparatory school located on East 84^th Street on Manhattan’s Upper East Side .The brochure said something about an entrance examination; I took the exam and did some interviews at the school a few weeks after, and was accepted as a freshman for the Class of 1979.  Regis is one of the well-known, highly-regarded Jesuit all-male college prep schools in New York City.  Two others are Xavier and Fordham Prep; there are a few more, but I digress.  Regis was/is the only one that offers a tuition-free education to every single student.  In my graduation year, all 104 graduates were accepted to college and about 40 percent were accepted to Ivy League schools.  I was accepted at Yale, the only school I applied to.

Was Mom right?  You betcha!  Things could not have worked out better.  Oh yeah, and as for the jacket – by the time I could wear it, I didn’t like it any more.  I had purchased another coat for $20 – a faux shearling from the Burlington Coat Factory – that my mom and I both loved to death!  And I can remember Mom occasionally wearing Owen’s old jacket around the house on winter evenings when we had to keep the thermostat at 68 degrees per President Ford.

Lesson learned:  Don’t grow up too fast.  What’s the rush?

[Author's note:  Next time I come into some money, I am going to write Regis a big check.]