FOREVER NOLL: Celebrating the past 100 years
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: FALL 2019 NOLL TODAY
As Bishop Noll Institute prepares to celebrate its 100th birthday in 2021, two alumni and classmates prepared this year to celebrate turning 100. Francis “Cy” O’Malley and Ruth Barrett Mulhern, members of the Catholic Central High School Class of 1938, reminisced about the past century and their years at a place that would go on to become Bishop Noll Institute and help shape the lives of more than 21,000 students.
Messages like “Lots of Luck,” “Best wishes to a swell girl,” and “Never forget our swell times in Latin” adorn the end pages of Ruth Barrett’s 1938 yearbook. Ready to celebrate her 100th birthday in December, Ruth has not forgotten her time at Catholic Central.
Ruth grew up in the Indiana Harbor section of East Chicago and attended St. Mary’s and then St. Patrick’s before being “privileged” enough to be the first one in her family to attend Catholic Central, she said. Her graduating class of 73 students learned in classrooms in a large building on Hoffman Street from the nuns and priests, and though she “didn’t really care for school that much,” shorthand was probably her favorite class.
Father Alfred Junk and Father James Conway, who were the school leaders, were quite popular, she said.
Most mornings, her parents gave her $0.25, which included $0.15 for a full plated lunch and $0.10 for roundtrip bus fare. Tuition was about $60 a year, she recalled.
During high school, Ruth was a member of the Drama Department and acted in many plays. She enjoyed dances and remembers attending prom in the school gym before having dinner at the Drake Hotel in Chicago.
Girls and boys attended class together but weren’t allowed to socialize with each other much. “They want you to marry a nice Catholic boy, but they separate you,” Ruth joked.
Ruth met her late husband, Robert, after high school when he and one of her Catholic Central classmates pulled up next to her as she was walking home from a movie at the Paramount Theater. They invited her to go out to Calumet City with them, and the pair soon began dating.
Ruth, who still wears her wedding band, said Robert went into the Army and on March 18, 1944, they were married in Maryland where he was stationed. Laurann Engleton, her best friend from Catholic Central, served as her maid of her honor. Laurann’s son, Michael Engleton ’64, remains one of Ruth’s best friends, she said.
After putting her shorthand and stenography lessons to work at Catholic Charities in Hammond and as a secretary to the assistant work auditor at American Steel, Ruth focused on her family. She raised a son who has passed away and daughter Kathy Mulhern Szala ’67, with whom she is extremely close.
She said the best part of her life has been having a wonderful daughter and that she has seen the world change a lot in her lifetime.
“A lot of things have changed for the good,” she said. But I think we are getting too smart for our britches, but the Lord must want us to do all of this,” she said.
As for her longevity, Ruth says no one else in her family lived to 99.
“God’s keeping me here for some reason,” she said. “I wish he would tell me what it is.”
Francis “Cy” O’ Malley ’38
Cy O’Malley celebrated his 100th birthday in May, surrounded by dozens of family members and friends. Pictures of his party, along with Notre Dame signs and memorabilia, adorned his room as he chatted about Bishop Noll, or Catholic Central as he called it, also turning 100.
“I got good memories of the school,” he said. “I enjoyed going to school as much as I hate to admit it. When I was going, I wasn’t in love with it.”
Cy didn’t have a best friend in high school, instead remembering “We were all friends. We didn’t buddy up like you do nowadays.”
He remembers taking Religion, Latin and geometry classes.
“They were all good,” he said of the nuns and priests who taught them in school. Cy, who prays the rosary and receives communion five days a week, said his Catholic faith is still important to him.
“My mother wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Cy was born on his family farm in Dixon, Ill., though his parents moved their eight children to Indiana Harbor when he was 6 years old. The family established itself at St. Pat’s and then Catholic Central, with Cy being the first in his family to spend all four high school years there. His two oldest siblings had finished high school in Dixon but Cy and his siblings Harold, Peg, Jack, Cecilia and Bob all graduated from Noll. Throughout the years, many of Cy’s 25 nieces and nephews also called Noll their home.
While still in high school, Cy started working in one of Inland Steel’s clock houses, sorting time cards before and after shift changes. This began a nearly 50-year career at Inland.
“During my sophomore year, my mother, sister and I were eating our evening meal, and I heard they were hiring clockhouse boys at Inland Steel, so my mother wrote to the pay master and got me a job. So I was a clockhouse boy for three years while going to school.”
Cy did not attend college after Catholic Central, saying, “that was enough for me.” He continued his job at Inland Steel until 1941 when Pearl Harbor was attacked. By the end of December, he had enlisted in the Army Air Corps. At Deopham Green air base in England, he repaired and armed B17 bombers. In 1945, he returned home for a 30-day furlough.
“I had to go back to Ft. Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis. I give the sargeant my papers and he said ‘wait here a couple minutes’. He came out and says, ‘You’re going to be discharged’. That was the best news I ever heard.”
Cy returned to Inland Steel and worked as a payroll clerk, then eventually as a senior accountant. When he retired in 1982, he was excited do “whatever I want to do, whenever I feel like doing it.”
That included attending many Notre Dame football games. Cy’s No. 1 hobby in life has been following the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, his niece said. The year Cy was born, Notre Dame was 9-0 under Knute Rockne. Cy became a season ticket holder in 1956. Throughout the decades, he walked the Notre Dame campus on game days with his siblings, nieces and nephews.
Although Cy has never been in a classroom in the “new” Bishop Noll building, he continued to attend football games at his alma mater until about 10 years ago and has been to basketball games in the fieldhouse. He also enjoyed attending his 50-year class reunion in 1988 in Munster.
“Some of the old guys and just about everybody came back,” he said.
This past May, he celebrated his 100th birthday with family members. “That’s my big memory now,” Cy said, adding that he isn’t sure how he lived to be 100.
Cy’s niece chimed in that it definitely wasn’t from eating all his veggies. “Right,” he said. “Not very many vegetables.”
CATHOLIC CENTRAL IN 1934-1938
- By the time Ruth and Cy began their senior years at Catholic Central, the high school had already been educating students for 16 years, the Marquette yearbook was in its fourth year of publication, and their class celebrated being the first to have completed their entire four years under the supervision of Father James Conway.
- There was a variety of clubs for students to join, most of which no longer exist in 2019. The Camera Club made its debut, equipping the school with a darkroom and photography services. Central’s oldest organizations at the time - The Catholic Students’ Mission Crusade and The Sacred Heart Guild - had successful years. The Mission Crusade group was dedicated to the service of the missions through prayers and almsgiving. The Sacred Heart Guild consisted of boys who desired information on work for which they had the greatest aptitude. Our Lady of Good Counsel Guild was organized to instruct and help girls decide on their future lives including discussions on vocations and a guest speaker discussion nursing options.
- Choir and Band, which were just clubs at the time, have remained throughout Noll’s history and have both morphed into classes. The Choral Club, an innovation of 1937, became more popular in 1938, singing at Masses and making appearances with the Dramatic Club. The Central Band gained new spirit thanks to “clever” new uniforms complete with capes and hats. Several new “Centralites” joined its ranks.
- There were only three sports teams in 1938: football, boys basketball and girls basketball, much different than the Noll Athletics Department in existence today with 21 varsity sports.
- Cy and Ruth’s senior year was filled with dances and parties including a Mardi Gras dance, Spring Festival, Western Round-Up, Senior Dance and, of course, prom.
- The Dramatic Club was one of the largest clubs at the time, presented five productions that year.