CATHOLIC GIRL IN THE '50s

This collection of memoirs walks the reader through the experiences of a child growing up in Omaha, Nebraska in the 1950s. Her young life in Cathedral parish centers around church, school, and neighborhood whose ever-widening perimeters became her arena of learning, mischief, and play. School stories began with the bewilderment of a five-year-old, meeting for the first time a traditionally dressed Dominican sister, her first-grade teacher. Then through other stories with a child's vision, we see the education she received, activities in which she participated, and the people surrounding her in her twelve years at Saint Cecilia's Grade School and Cathedral High School. Her stories also visit places that no longer exist, like Peony Park, Aksarben, Blackburn Pharmacy and even, sadly enough, our Cathedral High School. Although these places no longer exist, visiting them again will show you how special they were, and how much fun they brought to young lives. The real stars of these memoirs are the people that made them memorable. Usually identified only with their initials, they bring forth stories that were fun to revisit. Each person was one component in the development of a young life so different from those growing up in the twenty-first century. The all-important family, the class of thirty-five first graders that grew to 111 high school graduates, the sisters and priests that gave their lives to their God, and to their students were all important pieces in the development of this Catholic Girl in the '50s. Mary Ellen Kauth Olsson (AKA Baba Herk) is a wife, mother of four, and grandmother of one and a retired alternative educator with a BA in English and history from Duchesne College and an MS degree from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She has written stories and poems throughout her seventy-seven years, but writing her memories for the Echo section of the "Cathedral Chimes" and the desire to share her family stories with her grandson developed this, her first book.