Ralf Brooks'
Villa St.-Jean Remembrances
1963-1965

We in 7^th grade, and I believe all Underslassmen did not participate in the ACTIVITIES shown in the PHOTOS below. I think these were for the Seniors, Juniors and Sophs.

The closest I got to anything of this ilk, was stamp collecting which I found time in our study periods. Mike Morasco was also an avid stamp collector and had set up a small business of selling stamps out of his Bossuet room - to which I became a steady subscriber.

Near Xmas time, the Villa school provided us with cards to send home to our parents.

VILLA LIFE, at least in Sapinière was quite orderly waking in the morning in our dormitory to the sounds of "wake-up" bells, wash-up and then head over to breakfast.
Seating for all meals was pre-assigned on a weekly basis such that one rotated through the entire Sapinière student population.

After breakfast we were back in Sapinière for maybe half hour before the bells rang again indicating it was time to head over to our respective Gallia Hall home room classrooms.

At the end of the school day we once again headed back to Sapinière, stopping off at an open window in the dining hall area where one of the Brothers or Surveillants had a tray of freshly cooked pastries.

The time prior to dinner was open either to play foosball, pool etc or more often than not for myself to play basketball at the somewhat dilapidated basketball hoop just adjacent to Sapinière.

We had many a great games there -- 2 on 2, 3 on 3, or numerous variants of Around The Key. Rarely did we head down to the covered, submerged full court basketball area down past the tennis courts.

The bells went again to indicate dinner time. As mentioned previously the Sapinière students sat in one room while the Bossuet students in another.

After dinner there was a brief open period before a "study / homework" period supervised typically by Eric Bergquist - the Surveillant - infamous for assigning pages to be copied for any perceived transgressions of the rules (talking etc). I've forgotten how long the study period lasted but following this, there was again a brief open period before going to bed in the dormitory on the second floor. There was also a library next to the study hall - not anything like tyhe library in Bossuet that I'd been shown in the previous summer during our school assessment visit, but it was acceptable.

This routine repeated itself Monday to Friday.

Unless we were going away on an organized trip out of town, Saturday was "the day" when we were allowed "off-campus" and could head into Fribourg to do whatever. First though we had to queue outside Brother Frank Klapp's office in Sapinière to get our weekly allowance. Brother Klapp always made us go through some cocked up justification as to why we needed any money at all. I'm sure he took great pleasure in the variety of sad stories that were spun. In reality our respective parents had previously deposited a set amount for the term and it was up to Brother Klapp to administer it on their behalf. Other than candy, and ketchup (to bring back to the dining hall for our personal use) and the odd game of bowling there was little to spend one's money. One exception I remember, at a certain the acquisition of a switch blade pocket knife was the to-do thing and we could purchase these in Fribourg's lower village. Not sure what they were intended for -- but they were forbidden and were cool to open and close! I think I tossed mine in the garbage bin at the end of the term, fearful that my parents would find it ! ( I did retain -- and have to this day a small half inch switch blade which is stored someplace in my house.)

Sunday morning was obviously for church. We would arrive about half an hour before services began. The church itself was on the second or top floor of the building which housed the dining room. There was a semi-spiral staircase on both sides of the building that met at a top floor entrance to the church proper. On one side was a small confessional room that Father Neumann sat in hearing confessions prior to the start of the service, and on the other was the entrance to the church. The church itself was impressive but I always found it smoky and I swear I was sure it had retained incense fumes from as far back as 1903 !! Father Neumann didn't help matters as he was a heavy on the incense type of guy. One day I simply passed out from the fumes ( I guess aided by the fact that I hadn't eaten since the previous evening) and apparently was hanging by my neck until I was dragged out into some fresh air. After that I lived in fear of that place and the brothers decided that I could sit in the very back to try to allive my phobia. After church service we left to change , finding and adding insult to injury, if the weather was nice, the Protestants amongst us having a great old time playing tennis on the courts located immediately adjacent to the church entrance. Except for some study periods, the rest of Sunday was ours to do what we liked.

Speaking of Brother Frank Klapp, he held the corner office in Sapinière, and in addition to doling out allowance money, was the designated disciplinarian. Understand that 1963 was long before the politically correct view of no corporal punishment for boys that transgressed the rules was in vogue. Brother Frank believed in the strap, and it seemed had considerably pride in his wind up and delivery velocity to one's posterior. I can remember one student, Fritz Martin - a frequent visitor to Brother Frank's office, thought he'd outsmarted the system by inserting newspapers and magazines between his pants and underpants. Fritz got caught the second time he inserted his protective measures, and after that the strap was administerd to the undershorts of everyone.

Brother Frank was assisted in Sapinière by Brother Tim Dwyer who had the title of Prefect. He was a tough guy ( although I guess he had to be to ride herd over the group of young boys) and was infamous for saying "No" to any suggestion or request made by the students -- Brother Tim thought that everything was perfect as is, and there was no need to rock the boat and make changes.

Funny the sort of things one remembers!

As I recall, the HOME ROOM class with Miss Nelson was always the first class of the day.

Seating was pre-assigned for the entire school year.

I sat under the clock next to Paul Allen.

Paul was a good guy -- very bright. He was somewhat unique inasmuch as he'd exclusively wear these "shoestring western style" ties with a metal clasp holding the shoestring in the middle. Paul and I most often ended up skiing together on our winter trips.

In our class we had two English guys whose familes lived in Fribourg -- Michael Bennett and Peter Geldart -- and thus we only saw them during the school day proper.

Most of our classes such as English, History and Math etc were with my fellow 7^th graders. However some classes, such as French - which depended on one's skill sets or proficiency, had a mixture of grades from 7^th to Seniors.

That's it for the 1964 Villa Saint Jean Le Chamois Yearbook!

Now on to 1965.....