Little  Flower  Boys'  Choir

                                " Singing  the  6 o'clock  Mass "

     Prior to enrolling in Patterson Park High School in 1957,  I had attended Saint Elizabeth's School in Highlandtown and later transferred to the Shrine of the Little Flower which was located on the Bel Air Road , near Herring Run Park,  in northeast Baltimore City.  (Saint Therese, a Carmelite nun in France in the late 1800's,  was known as the "Little Flower of Jesus" because of her love of nature and how she used nature's imagery to explain the Divine Presence in Creation).

     Church attendance in Baltimore during the 1950's was very high.  Everyone in my neighborhood,  it appeared,  went to church on Sundays.  Blue Laws were observed,  most stores were closed on Sundays as well as Thanksgiving,  Christmas and Easter;  no one did their laundry or cut their grass.  Sunday was a quiet,  family day and on Monday morning our fathers went to work and the streets were absent of automobiles.  For our mothers,  Monday was laundry day and the clotheslines in every backyard were full of clothing drying in the sun and wind.  I don't remember anyone owning a clothes dryer at this time.

       The several Sunday Masses held at Saint Francis of Assisi Church, on Harford Road, and the Shrine of the Little Flower had standing room only - even if you were just a few minutes late.  The Episcopal,  Lutheran,  Methodist and Baptist churches,  in the Herring Run Park area,  had two or three services on Sunday to accomodate their parishioners.  The four bakeries on Bel Air Road (Blue Belle, Vilma, Pelham and Saint Francis),  between Clifton Park and Herring Run Park,  had thriving businesses during the 1950's and 60's ... and they used real ingredients - as in butter,  vanilla,  fruit,  sugar,  and cream to make their delicious pastries,  donuts,  pies and cakes.  My favorite donut was the Pelham Bakery's "chocolate cruller."  Sunday breakfast at our house usually included pastries or donuts from the Pelham Bakery,  hot tea and the "funny papers."

     In Baltimore during the 1950's,  Patsy Cline was singing,  "Sweet Dreams of You."  Buddy Holly was singing about  "Peggy Sue"  and Bill Haley and His Comets were  "Rocking around the Clock."  The Little Flower Boys' Choir  (ages 11-14)  was singing the ancient Gregorian chant responses,  in Latin,  during the celebration of the Mass.

     I was in the Boys' Choir from 1955 to 1957.  I remember,  so well,  my mother calling me at 5 o'clock in the morning to get up,  get dressed and drink a hot cup of tea,  loaded with cream and sugar before going to church.  On many of those mornings you could hear the rattle of glass milk bottles coming from the Cloverland milk truck - as the milkman delivered milk  (cream on the top,  milk on the bottom)  to every family on the block.

     We lived on Dudley Avenue,  just off Cliftmont,  about a block from Herring Run Park - which for city kids,  in those days,  was a virtual  "jungle",  a garden,  a home for giant turtles,  probably terrapin,  snakes,  wild berries,  wild flowers,  all kinds of birds,  trees to climb and vines to swing on.  Sometimes we became Indian fighters like Randolph Scott or John Wayne.  More often we became Indian braves from the Maryland Shawnee, Susquehannock or Powhatan tribes.  We crafted tomahawks and spears from the flat rocks in the "Run" and spent hours on the warpath until we saw a snake!  That quickly brought us back to the reality that we were just children playing in the woods.  This was all part of the Herring Run Valley,  a rich and fertile land for farming.  There were farms and cattle farms on both sides of Gunther Road  (Gunther Hill) - off Bowley's Lane well into the late 1950's.  Near the top of Gunther Hill (which is now Moravia Blvd.), through the cattle fields, you could see the downtown Baltimore skyline ... what a wonderful memory! 

      Furley Hall Plantation,  built in 1775 by Daniel Bowley,  a Baltimore merchant and Revolutionary War hero,  was located on the northeast side of what is now Brehms Lane at Herring Run.  In 1814, British soldiers occupied the estate.  It was purchased in 1847 by William Corse, Sr., whose beautiful gardens were often visited by his friends,  Enoch Pratt and Johns Hopkins and also by the art collector,  William T. Walters and the famous American actor,  Junius B. Booth,  father of John Wilkes Booth.  The Georgian mansion, built by Bowley, was damaged by fire in 1906.  The foundation and remnants of the garden,  as well as the slave quarters,  were razed in the mid 1950's.  My best friend,  Bobby Rohrer, and I often played there when we were young boys, sometimes in the very foundation of the great mansion. I still wonder what treasures may have been buried under the dirt, in and around the brick foundation and crawl space or cellar.  In the spring the grounds were ablaze with azaleas, daffodils and narcissus.  And I still remember the pungent smell of the old English boxwood.  By the 1960's those historic grounds were covered by hundreds of brick row houses.  All of this history buried in the vicinity of what is now Greenhill and Shamrock Avenues.

     At around 5:30am I put on my coat, hat and gloves and began the long walk to church.  It was dark, cold and lonely on many of those autumn, winter and spring mornings.  As I recall,  walking up Dudley Avenue to the Bel Air Road,  I imagined twenty to thirty other young boys,  from all over the parish,  doing the same thing.  We walked everywhere;  we went everywhere.  Baltimore City,  with all of its parks,  museums,  monuments and historical sites,  libraries,  churches,  theaters,  department stores,  etc.,  was our  "playground."  During the 1950's,  Baltimore was a very safe and civilized city,  a city of culture.  It was renowned for its public and private schools,  hospitals,  colleges and universities.

     The Shrine of the Little Flower Church was like a great cathedral on a hill.  I was always glad to arrive at church,  enter through the east doors - and be greeted by the angels,  peace,  people kneeling silently in prayer,  and the majesty of the interior -- with a huge painted mural of the Little Flower over the high altar.  The 6 o'clock Mass was always a low Mass (less formal) so we did not wear our hooded monk robes and there were no processionals to the choir loft.  We only wore our robes and processed to the choir loft for high Masses or Requiem Funeral Masses.  The boys came in one or two at a time,  gathering in the first two or three pews facing the side of the high altar.

     At 6 o'clock the Angelus chimed in the bell towers and the Ancient Rite began.  As the priest  (Fathers Duke, Dugan or Kenney) sang in Latin,  we responded in the Gregorian Latin chant.  This most beautiful form of worship and the Saint Joseph's Daily Missal  (Latin on the left page,  English on the right)  was soon to be replaced by the Peoples Mass Book in English,  new hymns,  guitars eventually,  and a more informal celebration of the Mass.

     When the Mass ended,  most if those attending went to work.  The boys in the choir returned to their homes,  had breakfast,  put on their tan and brown school uniforms - and then walked back to school for the start of the school day.

     I remember Father Duke,  the choirmaster,  who taught me how to sing,  who exposed me to the rich traditions of Catholicism,  the Latin Mass -- and the beautiful music of responsive worship which I shall cherish forever.

     Christopher Wm. Newman,    March  30,  2012

     Ubi spiritus est cantus est ... Dominus vobiscum!

     (Where there is spirit - there is song ... May the Lord be with you!)