Patty, Judy and Kay graduated from Star of the Sea Academy in San Francisco in 1965. At the 40th reunion of this Class of 65, they decided to write about the lower gym, a place where generations of Stars sang and danced and sang and danced.......

as written by Patty Colman Lawler....a little lower gym history.

In October of 2005 a beloved classmate from the Class of 1965 graciously held a reunion at her home in honor of our 40th  year anniversary of graduation from Star of the Sea Academy, an all girl catholic high school in the City. As I arrived, the singing was about to begin and we gathered on the lawn, voices high and in harmony still. In those moments of song it struck many of us: the power of voice, and this gift of music that had always been ours.

The Lower Gym was home to generations of Stars where we gathered every morning, noontime, and after school if we felt like it. There was a jukebox with all the latest songs of the Sixties, a coke machine with a bottle for a dime, and the freedom to dance and sing each day of our young lives. There was the noise of the lockers slamming in the background, some of us dancing, others playing “pedro”, while others, singing all the words and humming up the stairs, failing often to notice the No Talking in the Halls monitor who greeted us at the top.

We had always been a singing and dancing bunch, some of us just moving across the fence from the elementary school to The Lower Gym, most of us traveling from various parts of the City and many of those on the 10 Monterey.

Judy Albi had come to The Lower Gym as a senior and was a bundle of talent and brains and humor. We rode home together on the 38 Geary and spent a lot of time laughing, reading about  Holden Caufield and Hamlet,  and singing always.

 

 Judy auditioned for the Saint Ignatius high school musical with a “Loverly” that would have made Eliza shout with joy. Now, here we were, in a little cubby-hole off of Peg’s kitchen, forty years later, speaking of the place, this lower gym, and the freedom it provided to us in our young world of music and laughter.  It is a world that Judy and I never left, for Judy had been singing, dancing, and performing  for the last forty years in community theatre, and I had been composing since college.  

We grabbed Kay Alimisis, standing in the yard defending republicanism, and reminded her of all the history being made while we had danced, sung, dreamed and rebelled.  

We were the girls of The Lower Gym whose friends, boyfriends and future husbands would live under the threat of marching off to Vietnam; the girls who learned at sixteen that our President could be murdered; the girls influenced by the Catholic Church of Vatican II and its sacred decree of primacy of conscience; and we were girls who wanted to make a difference.  

Then and there, forty years after the fact, in Peggy’s backyard, Judy, Kay and I decided to write “The Lower Gym.” This musical in two Acts has been generously arranged by Larry Rice and choreographed by Cheryl McNamara.

We have dedicated "The Lower Gym" to the Class of ’65 and to all those who came before and after...

and to all girls everywhere who would be free.