Father McAleer swept into our classroom with a theatrical flourish on the first morning of our sophomore year in high school and whirled to face us sitting at our desks. He peered gimlet-eyed over his rimless glasses perched near the end of his sharply pointed nose. Most of our section had been assigned to Father’s class because they had done exceptionally well in freshman year and were now to commence their accelerated courses beginning with introductory Greek. The rest of us, those whose freshman efforts were somewhat more modest, were relegated to the study course. This simply meant that when our intellectual betters were learning the rudiments of Greek grammar we lesser lights would repair to a different classroom and get an extra helping of Latin. This delineation was to be our first, but not last, introduction to the Jesuit method of intellectual as well as social class distinction.
He wore a heavy black cape across his shoulders, fastened at the neck over a cinctured black cassock. As he leaned on his cane he undid the clasp holding the cape, and with a sweep of his hand, hung the cape on the hook behind the classroom door. His clerical hat sat atop his head at a rakish angle. His eyes never left the class as he removed his biretta, the traditional headgear of the priests of that era, unadorned except for the three curved projections on the crown and hung it on the door hook.
“Some of you,” he began, “are assigned to this class because they did not have room in the other study classes. But everyone here will do the same work as everyone else. You will all do admirably I’m sure, you will do the work assigned and no one will be relegated to the study class.”
A short, slightly stooped man, round-shouldered and small-framed, his deeply furrowed face and coarse, grayish-black hair gave testimony to his age, which we estimated to be about mid-fifties. His accent was cultured British, but his mannerisms, to our untutored minds, seemed somehow mildly eccentric. English bred and educated, his demeanor was that of a droll, erudite university professor. Later in the term he told us he was born on the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea. This exotic birthplace possibly accounted for his hard-to-place accent and odd turn of speech. Father continued to gaze around the room over his spectacles.
“I, as you will undoubtedly learn, am also the school librarian. Therefore, I do expect the students in my class to take full advantage of that facility. No one has a rounded education without an extensive reading habit. Let me add as well, that when you are a visitor in my library you will be appropriately respectful of Cat.”
“Cat,” we later determined, was his oversized pet, its fur the color of new snow, regarding the world with an insolent, green-eyed glower.
Father concealed his kind and caring nature beneath a veneer of understated British wit with a slightly ironic edge. Fond of pet names, he would call upon us in class thus: “I say, do rise and face the class.” He brandished his blackboard pointer with an expansive gesture, like the conductor of a symphony orchestra. “Be a stout lad and decline for us aloud the Greek verb to stop, if you please.”
When our classes ended that first day, Father retrieved his cape and with a dramatic swirl, refastened it. He replaced his biretta, slightly askew atop his head, and looked at us over his spectacles. With cane and briefcase in hand, he opened the door, “On the morrow then,” he said, “Cheerio.”
