Evolution of the University of St. Francis

Transcript of video (dated June, 2005):

Sr. Andrea Prindes

I’m Sr. Andrea Prindes. My story is about Sr. Vincentia, our Latin teacher.

There are very, there were very few people majoring in Latin. Most of the time there’d be 4 or 5 of us in class.

And one day, I guess I recited or translated exceptionally well and she said "Did you use the Pony?" And I said, "Pony? What’s a pony?" I had no idea what a pony was. And here, there were translations in books that I didn’t even know about in the Library. Well, after that I learned to go down to see, not that I used the pony really, but I would go; I found out what a pony was in Latin.

But Sr. Vincentia was a very excellent Latin teacher. But because there were so few of us, we got many turns in translating. Invariably we would be so exhausted and especially during the summer months. One of us would begin to cry because we were tired and perhaps didn’t finish our lesson. Then we would be called on the spot that we weren’t ready to translate.

And invariably, we would take turns crying. One day Sr. said, "What is the matter with you people?" And we were all Sisters; we were all nuns in class. And she said, "Am I that hard on you?" No Sister, you’re not that hard on us, we’re just not ready for that part. So that was our story about Sr. Vincentia.

We used to scrub the College during the summer. And we’d come in from teaching classes, you know we’d do our summer classes you know there. But before we’d go back to our own mission and prepare for our own schooling, we were asked to help scrub the College.

So Sr. Francine was in charge of us this one time and Sr. Lorraine Russell, myself and several of us were in a group.

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And Sr. Lorraine and I made out, "Let’s hurry up and scrub so we can get outside and enjoy each others company for awhile." Well, when we were finished. We said to Sr. Claudia and Francine, "Sister, we’re finished." They would go, "Oh, you’re finished. You can go and help somebody else." "Oh," I said "weren’t we the craziest people." So we called ourselves The Crazy Cleaning Crew, CCC.

And another story is, we were, I had to be plasticlite. Plasticlite was after everything was scrubbed. It was like varnish we put on the floor.

Well, two of us Sisters would put on our oldest habit because if we’d get it on our habit, we’d have to throw it away. So, Sr. Evangeline and I were both scrubbing, were plasticliting the Music room.

And that night, Sr. Charles Marie, Lord have mercy on her, decided to go to the Music room because she thought the windows were opened and it would rain.

So the next morning, we looked into the plasticlite and all her footprints are on the plasticlite. So what did we have to do? We had to take it all off, and it was like an alcohol that we had to do it with. We were on our hands and knees removing all this plasticlite. And then when it was all removed and mopped again, we had to plasticlite it over again.

But we said God bless Sr. Charles Marie because we surely didn’t enjoy having to remove the plasticlite.