Aquinas Institute - Arete Yearbook (Rochester, NY)

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Farewell ! rgp“j5fjJHEY SAY that anticipation is better than realization. How Bjjvf jf true! For three years have we envied the graduating classes. For three years have we heard the farewells of the departing. Now that it is our turn to leave our Alma Mater and become a part of that madly rushing mob which pushes on toward the seldom-reached goal, Success, we pause and linger on the threshold of our student days. Have we been benefited by these four years of learning? The Future will tell. Education, you know, which is derived from the Latin educo, has for its purpose the bringing out of what is in us. Our education has not merely consisted in going to school. As we glance backward, we realize, of course, that we might have done better. But such is usually the case. We have had the best of advantages. Opportunity has not merely knocked, but actually pounded at our door. If we did not open that door to our mind and admit that most necessary requisite to success — Knowledge — we have no one to blame but ourselves. Many of us are about to enter a new era of our lives. It is a mistake to say, “Today education ends, tomorrow life begins.” The process is con- tinuous. Graduation is not a stepping out; it is either a stepping up — gradu ad graduni — a promotion to a higher class or a dropping to a lower. Let it. in our case, be a stepping up — an advancement — in the great school ol ' life. Before we say the word which closes the last chapter of our high school life, before we are thrown upon the sea of experience, we would fain express our gratitude to those who have nourished our minds and molded our char- acter, to a certain degree, by their precept and example — to our teachers. Mere words cannot express our gratitude. We can only say that their efforts have not been spent in vain. But we must now say the word that severs the ties of many old acquaintances and friendships. We must now say farewell to the delightful and wholesome association with our Alma Mater. Vale, one and all. and God be with you. — The Class of Nineteen Seventeen. 27

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Class Officers Vice-President, John A. McCarthy President, Eugene F. Leicht Secretary, Alexander Brown Treasurer, Aloysius J. Weltzcr

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The Senior Class Record ]NOTHER page in school history has been written. The Class of Nineteen Hundred and Seventeen are about to leave their beloved Alma Mater and wander forth into the cold, unfeeling world whose chilly tenacles confront them at every turn. Before entering upon a new era in our lives, perhaps, it were well to cast a parting glance at that which has caused us our joys and sor- rows; that which has raised our hopes and fears, for “The Moving Finger writes, and having writ Moves on. Nor all thy Piety nor thy Wit Can lure it back to cancel half a line Nor all Thy tears wash out a word of it.” How true this is! How clearly the poets understood the passing of time and how vividly did they hand down their conception to us. Those golden hours which we have spent within the halls of the Rochester Catholic High School have lied, as elusively as the glittering sunbeam. A moment of antici pation; a molecule of time spent in its enjoyment or its use, and it is gone never to return. Surely, the fact that we are now about to leave our beloved school, ought to impress upon our minds the necessity of use- fully appropriating Father Time’s most precious gift — Time itself. But I have digressed from my theme. The real object of these few paragraphs is to briefly recount the deeds and exploits of the already famous members of that famous class. Never in all her history has the school been so blessed. Yes. blessed, and if there exists in the mind of the reader a shadow of doubt, let him continue to read this account of their achievements and that doubt will be dispelled. To repeat, 1 say, never was the school so blessed as it has been blessed by the presence of our class. The Class of Nineteen Seventeen is as the sun which shines of itself, steady, and undimmed even though clouds obscure the sky. When dark night covers our portion of the earth as with a blanket, we are still con- scious of the existence of the sun among the heavenly bodies ; we know that it is still shining with its wonted splendor. So it is with our class. Only the blind can doubt the existence of the sun, and only those among us who have lost the senses of sight and hearing can doubt of our undimmed splen- dor as a class. It was a bright autumnal day in the fall of 1913 when we first made our bow to the august members of the faculty and the upper classmen of the Rochester Catholic High School. The class was. in all respects. Ameri- can-Cosmopolitan. Every parish in the city and many of those in nearby towns and villages had its representative among our ranks. How green we felt, how not unlike the verdant fields that the soft spring breezes bring forth! Even now. the thought of with what reverence and yearning we gazed upon the millenium of Seniority, brings forth a smile. But that leeling soon passed as we successively mastered the fundamental secrets of Latin, solved the labyrinthan intraeies of Algebra and clambered over the difficulties of First-Year English. The September of the following year, we returned, a smaller but a 28