About Me

I was born on May 12, 1948 in St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital in Chicago,Illinois to Alfred and Callie Thomas. I was the last of four children, two of which Steven and Sandra died before I was born and my surviving sister Nancy who is still alive and kicking. My mother was very ill at the time of my birth and remained on this earth just about a year after I was born, she died May 30, 1949. It was at that time that my sister Nancy and me began our long journey down the path of "Who Wants These Kids". My understanding is that I stayed with an Aunt for my first few years of life and Nancy with another Aunt and Uncle. Well the Aunt that was caring for me really didn't want to and the ones caring for Nancy were both very ill and couldn't do it, in fact they died within months of each other. I am sure my dad wanted us to be with him but he didn't have the means or the skills to take care of two young kids. Two of our Aunts brought the case to court and we were put in the hands of Catholic charities and they were charitable enough to place us in Angel Guardian Orphanage in 1951. I was only 3 and I think Nancy was 5, a tender age to separate two siblings from themselves and their one remaining parent. I was placed in the baby house and Nancy I guess was old enough to go to a girls cottage. I remember some of the kindness given in the babyhouse but I also remember that as the starting point of cruelty to children. Only one vivid incident stands out in my mind of that period and that was when I had a book I dearly cherished taken away from me for something I guess was earth shattering to the nun. I think I cried all night over the loss of that book. The other experience in the babyhouse was this gigantic tub they had in the basement where all of us took a bath at one time, boys and girls separately of course. They also had a ringer washer down there and some scrub boards which the older girls used to wash our clothes I would guess. I remember going to kindergarten in the old three story schoolhouse and beginning my education at AGO. I don't remember the babyhouse kids going to church everyday but I am sure we had already started our indoctrination into the Catholic church. I left the babyhouse in about 1956 and headed over to the big boy's cottage. I remember walking across the Big Yard with Sister Henrice of Cottage 21, she was really a nice nun but I wasn't to have her for very long before a more disciplinarian type nun moved in by the name of Sister Stella. I would meet up with Sister Henrice again a few years up the road, but I digress. Going to the Boy's Cottage was a big turning point in the growth process at AGO. I really thought I was moving up and all I was doing was going up to the second floor. You were the new kid in the cottage and the curiosity factor for everyone. You were usually assigned a big kid to help you out and to figure out the rules of the cottage. I was assigned case number two so I became 21-2. All your clothes were marked with that number and I am sure if they could have thought of it you would have been marked with it also. I think you were assigned chores in the cottage from day one. Everything had to be spic and span. You even had a toilet assigned to you and a bathtub, it was usually by age. Anywhere we went we were marched there like Army troops, two single file lines and no bobbing allowed or talking in line. Any infraction of these rules got you a demerit and punishment sometime later up the road. These nuns never forgot. You never really got to be a kid and play around like you might in a normal home environment accept when you were outdoors in the big yard. Playing around indoors was considered "rough housing" and punishable by many ways. Some of the punishments included spankings in public, in front of other cottage kids, slaps to the face, a dust broom across the palm of the hand or maybe an ear pulling or two. You also got to do extra chores on Saturdays such as scrubbing the bathroom or polishing and waxing the living room or dormitory floors. If you were still in trouble as a whole cottage you got to polish the living room floor with a rag under your foot for several hours in the evening after homework time. I remember one time, when I was about 11, I had the dubious task of scrubbing the back stairwell on a Saturday afternoon. That stairwell still exists over by the restaurant which use to be Cottage 22. Well anyway I was really bored and decided it would be neat to do this chore in the nude, maybe I was a future nudist, anyway why I did that who knows but it was fun to get away with it. I never to did clean the stairs either, just brushed them a little. In the next section I will continue on about Cottage life and not only the bad stuff but actually there were some good times. Take care.

Well I thought I would continue about cottage life and as I was sitting here thinking on this 3rd day of June 2002 I was thinking back to June at AGO in the year 1956 or so. June was the time when the Blue Jackets would arrive and the cottage nightly baseball games were organized and the just the sounds of summer were starting to arrive. Blue Jacket arrival usually meant free gum, walks to the Touhy Ave Beach and ghostly stories during early morning catechism class on the porch of one of the boy's cottages. To tell the truth I rarely remember any of the future priests ever teaching catechism, they also had stories to tell. Fr. Ball was one of those Blue Jackets I knew back in those years prior to his being ordained. He was good for giving out Black Jack gum, I asked him about that the last time I saw him alive and unfortunately he didn't remember but I do. The semi's were usually the umpire's for the nightly softball games between the cottages. The games usually started around 6 or 6:30 and lasted until someone won or it got too dark to play. I think Cottage 21 of which I was a member did fairly well, but not due to my athelectic prowess I am sure. The games were fun and made the summer go by pretty fast. When half of the cottages went to Camp Villa Marie the others continued playing and I think we got in more playing time. If you weren't playing that night you could play on the playground near the dining hall where the BIG SLIDE was and swings and the three out board was. This was a metal thing that you hit a tennis ball against toward your opponent, it you hit the ball right on the angle iron going through the middle you could really make that ball fly. Summer on the big yard could really be fun, We used to play 3 outs where one person would bat the softball toward the girls fence and once three outs were made it was the next persons turn. I usually did pretty good at that. I will continue later on other summer activities to tickle your memories with such as Automobile Day and the annual picnic at Potowatamee Park. These were both memorable ocassions that I truly treasure as a childhood memory of AGO. Also more Cottage life will be mingled in with the stories to include chores, pranks and other things that I can remember.

Ok Automobile Day, remember that? It was a day set aside for our trip to Lincoln Park and the Zoo, I don't remember who sponsored it but it was truly a memorable day. People would volunteer to pick up us kids in front of AGO and take us to Lincoln Park and return us later. Now who today would think of some stranger picking up a kid without putting some thought into this. Anyway no one was ever harmed in this procedure that I know of. I think if you weren't fortunate enough to get a auto ride you then ended up on the AGO bus, but everyone went to Lincoln Park that day. Your cottage would find it's own picnic spot and set up shop for the day. Sandwiches and bug juice were made at AGO the day before so we were all ready for the eats. It was a great day going to the Zoo and just running around the park acting like kids. Little Oscar would show up in the Weiner Mobile and Two Ton Baker would also be there, he was the mouthpiece for old Riverview Park. I always had my favorite spots at Lincole Park to go play and looked forward every year to going there. It is still amazing to me how all the kids always got back to AGO with no one missing. We got back to our cottages tired and ready for bed but what a great day it was and them memories we had playing with all our friends with very little supervision from the nuns. Hope you hade good memories of this. I'll be back later with more memories.