St Francis Preparatory School - San Fran Yearbook (Brooklyn, NY)

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v-...V Q waffle ggnv--7 6 'G 3,5 6 gxlk 091 Kiwi STEPHEN BIURPHY Sports Editor proper honors to the Middle Ages, to the Renaissance, to the age of Classicism, to Romanticism, and to the leaping strides of our contempor- ary world? Homer, Vergil, da Vinci, Augustine, Aquinas, Galileo, Descar- tes, Mendel, Newton, Pasteur, Shakespeare - to select from these and a hundred more, and to. evaluate their significance to what we now are would indeed he a staggering project. It is clear then that St. Francis Prep is something of a composite of the culture and knowledge of other peoples and of other times. The studies of the 1959 San F ranis staff in working out this theme lead us to conclude with an ohservation on what is perhaps an outstanding character- istic of our Nationis genius. We have seen that America has taken up many things that the world has had to offer. But in her application Ito them, they almost always rise with a new devel- opment and luster that is proudly all her own. MARTIN NEVILLE WILLIAM MCHALE Art Editor 69 L Q-f-4 !v-w L3 KARL ZETTEL Art Editor 4--L Photography Editor Q93 2: San Fran editors grouped about their center of interest for the year 1959. All A HW 13 , WSJ llllll n

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A' Q i F r rr PETER ENGLAND fox X, ,TSW G ZH A Gu P' S Edgy? MARTIN HAMBURGER Editor-in-Chief Activities Editor THOMAS MORROW Graduate Editor DONALD MOQUADE Underclassmen Editor mx ,-.'f' ,'j ': , .,,,,- ' ,fa-1, '. - -A - L fi ,, Q, Divergent areas of the world and various periods of time have rendered their own particular contributions to mankindis culture. From art to reli- gion, from science to athletics, from languages to music, individual endow- ments have blended together to become a forceful influence on the lives of Americans in general, and St. Francis students in particular. At St. Francis this influence is felt, basically, under four headings: the spiritual, the social, the physical, the intellectual. Spiritually for example, Prep students are privileged to share in the traditions of Rome, home of the Popes and capital of the Catholic Church almost continually since the reign of St. Peter. Its catalog of saints, whose virtues are held up for our imitation, reads like a gazeteer: St. Anthony of Egypt, St. Boniface of England, St. Martin of Tours, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, St. Iohn Cantius of Poland, St. Serenus a Grecian, St. Laurence O'Toole, and of course, our founding father, St. Francis of Assisi. Indeed, Prepsters drawing from a heritage that is world- wide, have an obvious opportunity to develop a sound spiritual life flowing from an institution that has no peer in the universalness of its membership. In another direction, distant origins certainly color our social activities. What would a Saturday night movie be without a pizza pie to top it off? --our concerts without Beethoven? -our science shows without Von Braun?-our Illustres Viri without Cicero?-our skin divers without Costeau?--and finally, imagine life without a mambo or a cha-cha, or another pastime derived from folk dances of our English ancestors that now goes by the name of limly. There is no need to exaggerate the part of athletics in the life of St. Francis, the school that has won championships in virtually every sport in which it ever engaged. Yet 12 practically every Prep sport is foreign- born. Indeed, it's almost painful to acknowledge that our national game of baseball is really nothing more than a souped up version of cricket and rounders, two old English games. Football comes to us from the ancient Greeks' cavorting at lulrpaston. Track, of course, was a favorite competition among the warriors of Greece and Rome. In fact, probably the only game that is truly native to America is basketball, the brainchild of a Massachusetts psychologist, Dr. james Naismith. Finally, our intellectual inheritance comes under consideration. It would probably take volumes to include all that we owe here. We might briefly point out that our debt goes back even beyond the geometry and hieroglyphics of Egypt's dawning civilization. From here it extends toward the Greek and Roman Em- pires that moulded western civiliza- tion. And then, how does one give

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