By Louise Seals, November 17, 2019 — It was 1938 when my mother dropped us off at the orphanage. The nuns found us and brought us inside. They took care of us. We would wake up at six and go to church every morning. We were taught how to make our beds and clean ourselves and were given clothes (from donations) to wear and three meals a day. It was a tough time with the Depression and the Second World War. We had to use old worn-out shoes because we couldn’t get new ones. We stuck cardboard in the shoes so our feet would be safe from nails and pins. There were air raids too. We would wake up in the middle of the night and all the lights had to go out and we had to go into the hallway and pray. There also wasn’t much food. We’d get old, hard donuts and cakes donated by bakeries that we had to heat up to eat. We still ate them because there was nothing else to eat. We were taught by the nuns at the orphanage, 1st through 8th grade. I struggled with reading and writing. Sister Rita, the head nun would take me out of classes and send me to go shop for her.
That reminds me, I have to tell you about my dog Spotty. We had a dog and I was afraid. A girl told the dog to bite me and I screamed and jumped on my bed. Until one day, I decided I wasn’t afraid and I pet Spotty and we became friends. He followed me everywhere, I loved that dog, but one day he was following me when I was out shopping for Sister Rita and a public service truck hit my dog. I got him home and they sent him to the vet, his leg was put in a cast, but then he would still try to follow me and he ruined his leg from going up the stairs and had to be put to sleep.
We all had chores to do, I would bring the priests their breakfast with Sister Zita and we’d clean up afterward. We did have fun at the orphanage sometimes. In the winter when it was dark, my friend and I would spill buckets of water on the ground and it would freeze so we could go ice-skating. Boys came to ice-skate with us as well but we got in trouble and had to cut it all up. There were parties at Christmas time, a few places would donate food and White Castle was one of them. They donated lots of burgers and fries, it was good food. During Easter, a candy store would donate us a giant chocolate bunny so we had lots of chocolate. During the summer we’d go to camp for two weeks and we would go to the swimming pool during the day. We’d always go on a trip to Belmar with the other orphanages. We’d go down on a bus. There was a barbeque with burgers and hot dogs and we got to swim in the ocean, but the bad part was at the end of the day we always had a really painful sunburn. We also went to Olympic Park and we all got a lunch box and tickets so we could go on all the rides there.
The Nuns were strict, they disciplined us. There was a time a nun put me in a cold bath because I was jumping on the bed with my sister. We learned a lot from them but I regretted not learning how to cook. I was naïve when I left the orphanage, I thought everyone always told the truth, I thought it was all peaches and cream everywhere. But I don’t regret the orphanage, it was the only life I knew and everything worked out for me.