A Tale Of Two Mentors

 

   ...Continued from yesterday:    
       In truth the Marian Award was a pretty rare undertaking. Even back then, when both Scouting and Catholic school education were in their heyday, not many people knew what the Marian Award  was, not even among my classmates at St. Christopher's and my fellow Girl Scouts.
        And yet today I discovered another Marian Award Scout, my friend Mel, who wrote this reply to yesterday's post on Facebook:

     This brings back memories, Patti. I also earned the Marian Award in scouting. Of the girl scouts in our small parish who started it, I was the only one who completed it. We had to meet weekly with our parish priest who guided us through it. Once I became the only one remaining, instead of me coming to church on Saturdays, Fr. Carroll came to our house to go over my journal. Then stayed to eat a home-cooked supper with our family in exchange for coming over.
      My strongest memories are having to come inside at 3pm every Saturday to clean up and get ready for Father to come, when all my siblings and friends were still outside playing. I really wanted the Marian Award, but it was so hard to cut into Saturday play time. And I don't think Mom would have let me quit that far into the process anyhow. Nor Fr. Carroll, who enjoyed the food, and I secretly think stretched the process out longer than needed just to keep getting suppers. Did yours take over 2 years to complete, meeting weekly?
      I have a photo somewhere from the newspaper of when I finally received the award. It was worth it.
​         In retrospect, I can't remember exactly how my friend Michelle and I heard of the Marian Award; however also in retrospect Michelle and I were the perfect candidates and best friends to boot, so maybe on some cosmic level this endeavor somehow found us.

      I believe, though, that we might have learned about the Marian Award from another girl in our neighborhood, Phyllis, a high school girl, Senior Girl Scout and Marian Award recipient two years our senior whom both Michelle and I looked up to. I do remember that Phyllis became our unofficial mentor.
       Our official mentor however -  all Marian Award candidates being required to pursue the award under the guidance of a priest who regularly checked our progress, - was one of our parish priests, Father Dziadoz (pronounced Jaudice).     
        While my friend Mel's memories of her Marion Award meetings with her priest mentor recalled to me Michelle's and my meetings with our mentor, surely Father Dziadoz's duty as the spiritual guide and scrap-book inspector for two middle-school Girl Scouts was not nearly so pleasant an experience for him as mentoring  was for Mel's priest, who was rewarded weekly for his counsel with delicious home-made suppers.
       I don't know or don't remember how of all the priests in our large Philadelphia parish poor Father Dziadoz got saddled with being Michelle's and my Marion Award mentor. In truth I was slightly afraid of the man - in truth I was slightly afraid of everybody back then. In truth I'm still slightly afraid of everybody - though I wasn't the only one who was slighty - or much - afraid of Father Dziadoz. Tall, thin, and austere-looking, with steel-grey hair and a foreign accent, Fr. Dziadoz was scholarly, serious, and, as all the students at St. Chrisotpher's knew, strict, and from what I'd heard, brooked no goofing off of any stripe among the altar boys.
     Yet his stern reputation did not keep my friend and me from walking the two short blocks from my house, or one block from Michelle's, to the rectory regularly to meet with Father, alone and unsupervised. Our mothers had no concern with this arrangement; to the contrary, they were pleased that their young teen-aged daughters were spending so much time with the parish priest.
     How times have changed.

      And  how fortunate we two naive, trusting little Catholic girls were that our priest was not of the sort who who saw children as prey.

     In fact looking back, I doubt Father Dziadoz had any wish to see anymore of these two particular Catholic school girls than was required of him.
​         Remember the school girls played by Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams in "Dick?"

      That was Michelle and me back then.
     I recall that in addition to our regularly scheduled meetings with our mentor, Michelle and I thought nothing of dropping by the rectory unannounced of an afternoon or evening if we two 13-year-olds had some thorny theological or doctrinal question that we needed Father to unravel for us, or if we just felt like walking to the rectory and dropping in for a visit, our prerogative, we assumed, as Marian Award candidates;  at least until that time one evening when we dropped in unannounced and Father received us looking tired, a bit disheveled an quite grouchy. At that moment it occurred to me for the first time that maybe we shouldn't drop by the rectory unannounced anymore.
     Still, in retrospect Father Dziadoz was a cerebral, conscientious - though wildly overqualified,  and, fortunately for us both, always proper - mentor to my friend and I, never once signing off on our work without checking every page, even once to my sorrow when, prior to submitting my book  to the Award Committee, he corrected with a scratch-out my report on St. Patrick,  whom I'd listed as being born in the fifteenth century.

      But besides checking our books Father Dziadoz also asked us questions to test our understanding of the things we'd written.  I remember one time when he looked over one of our pages and asked us, "You write about worshiping God.  What does that word mean, to worship?"
     At first neither of us had a clue what Father was asking us. "Love?" "Honor?" "Obey?" we tried.
     "No," snapped Father Dziadoz to each of our tries.  "The Devil does not love, honor, or obey God.  but the Devil does worship God. Now what does that mean?"
      Wondering for a moment if Father might not be pulling our leg - but no, Father Dziadoz did not fool around, ever - I thought about it, and then came up with a word: "To acknowledge?"
      "Yes!" Father cried, "that's what worship means! To acknowledge!"  Then to me he said, "Very good."
       After that I felt less scared of Father Dziadoz, feeling that we now possessed some degree of intellectual collegiality, both of us knowing what "to worship" meant.
       Father Dziadoz mentored Michelle and me for the seven months that it took us to complete our Marian Award requirements, and I remember that he came to our Award ceremony and that afterwards he gave each of us a dollar bill, which for years I kept tucked in the box that held my medal.

     But I don't recall my relationship with Father Dziadoz continuing past the day that I  received my Marian Award. I believe from then on the only time I saw him was when he said Sunday Mass. Maybe I said "hello" to him after Mass. Maybe not.
     However my friend Mel's relationship with her Marion Award mentor was of quite a different nature. She continued on Facebook:
     Knowing that the Marian Award only took you 7 months reinforces the idea I had that Fr Carroll stretched it out on purpose to keep getting meals at our home. Our parish was a poor Appalachian parish. His “rectory” was a one room add on to the church. His bed was also his couch. His “kitchen” was a hot plate kind of thing and a dorm fridge. My Marion Award got him 2 years of good Saturday night suppers. If he could put up with a large family of yelling kids and think of extra things I “needed” to do to earn the Award. (PS: we kept feeding him after I finished the Award)
    I love Mel's sweet story about her family feeding Father Carroll and he stretching out her Marion Award requirements for two years in order to continue having Saturday supper.  And I'm glad Father Carroll had Mel for a protégée, even if it subsequently took her two years to complete her Award.
     If Father Carroll had had Michelle and I he, too, doubtless would have pushed us through in seven months. 😉