History comes alive

Priceless recorded interviews reveal what Ursuline Academy of Dallas and The Hockaday School were like in the early days

Story by LISA KRESL

Photos courtesy of URSULINE ACADEMY OF DALLAS and THE HOCKADAY SCHOOL

Sister Emmanuel: Like nun other

ister Mary Emmanuel Shea was born Oct. 4, 1893, in Effingham, Illinois. At the age of 15, she heard a sermon that changed her life. The priest said, “God never created a soul that didn’t have definitive work — get married, live the single life or have a religious vocation.” She prayed, “Oh my God, point out the way in which I

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Here is a list of items that boarding students at Ursuline were expected to bring with them in 1893: should walk. Help me do your holy will and help me save my soul.” Seven years later, she received an answer to that prayer, asking her to come to Dallas and teach.

• Two pairs of sheets, four pillow cases, one white counterpane.

• One mosquito net.

• Two pairs of blankets, six towels, six large table napkins.

• Six handkerchiefs, six plain linen collars, six changes of linen, two dark underskirts, three nightgowns, two bathing gowns.

• Six pairs of hose, two black aprons for the young ladies, four blue-checked aprons for the little girls, two flannel skirts, two dark sun bonnets.

• Two pairs of heavy shoes, one pair overshoes, one gossamer.

• One black cloth jacket.

• One bag for soiled linen, one bag for shoes.

• A fine comb and a coarse comb.

• A hairbrush and toothbrush.

• A furnished workbox for sewing class.

• A table service of spoon, fork and knife.

• A glass or silver goblet.

• A white dress for ceremonies.

Sister Emmanuel traveled to Dallas thinking she would teach third and fourth grade as she had in Illinois. “Within six weeks, I knew that this was where I had been brought. I came, I saw, and I was conquered.”

Sister Emmanuel shared this memory on March 12, 1975, as part of the Lakewood Library Oral History Project. Ursuline Academy, the Catholic college preparatory school for high school girls now located on Walnut Hill Lane, was founded in 1874 with seven students. In 1884 the school moved out of the downtown area to a new brick building located at Bryan, Haskell and Live Oak streets. That building served the academy until 1949, when the school relocated to its current site. The grammar school section was discontinued in 1976, and high school education became the emphasis.

But Sister Emmanuel remembered the early days, when she said that logic and philosophy were a priority even in 1915.

The three-story building on Bryan, which she said was modeled after a French castle, was “very imposing.” It included an auditorium and chapel. Each child had a curtained-off bed in the dormitories, and sisters slept in the corners in their own curtained-off beds.

Day students had a separate curriculum and faculty from the boarders. Sister Emmanuel remembered the older nuns talking about the issue. “They were afraid the day students would contaminate the boarders,” she said. “We felt that the boarders were much closer to the sisters than the day students because we were with them morning, noon and night. [We] didn't want them feeling that they were missing so many of the things that the day scholars would be coming in and talking about.”

Parents sent their children to the convent in the early days for two reasons, according to Sister Emmanuel. One was to make them into cultured women because of the school’s art, music and fine arts departments. Another was because parents felt their daughters needed reforming. “I resented that,” she said. “All the mistakes the parents had made were going to be ironed out by the school.”

Catholicism was taught with the parents’ written permission. “In the heart of every child is that desire to know and love God,” Sister Emmanuel said. “Some [parents] would bring them to me and say, ‘I want her character formed.’ I said, ‘Well, she can't have a character formed without believing in God and living as God's child.’”

Sister Emmanuel remembered challenging times during World War I, when sugar was rationed and shoe coupons were in demand. With fathers fighting and mothers working, the school had 121 boarders. Students arrived with suitcases containing little clothing and no linens. Cots were strung in the dorms when all of the beds were taken. The sisters went to the bishop and explained that they couldn’t accommodate all of the applicants. “He said, ‘You must take every one of them because God is sending them to you for something. They are getting some help from what you're giving them.’”

Everybody made the best of a bad situation. They created their own entertainment by staging elaborate plays. The girls enjoyed doing the Charleston. “We were upset about some of the girls that knew how to do it,” she remembered. “They had to wear cotton stockings. The girls would bring silk ones in their pockets and then when they got on the streetcar right there before everybody, they changed the cotton to the silk and rode home.”

The sisters didn’t earn a salary, but their needs were met. The nuns raised their own pigs, even though some neighbors objected to the smell. Sister Martha was in charge of the chickens.

Sister Emmanuel described the early uniforms as woolen sailors suits. Students were required to wear caps with tassels that read “Ursuline Academy.” “Every time they went out for walks, they had to wear these hats,” she recalled. “They didn't like that.”

When she was interviewed in 1975, Sister Emmanuel was concerned about false values, materialism and the media. “Pleasure is the be-all and end-all of everything,” she said.

Sister Emmanuel died in 1993. Ann Thomas and Bertha Fritz conducted this interview for the Lakewood Library Oral History Project.