For A Day, They Returned To St. Michael’s

Celia Agnellino remembers the nuns whacking her fingers. If she complained later to her mother, her mom finished the job — since the nuns were always right.

Her third-grade friend Giuliana Gioiosa was a new immigrant. She spoke only Italian, and therefore fell asleep in class; she stretched her knuckles too to receive a ruler’s slap of punishment

Those were some of the memories St. Michael’s Grammar School alumni shared as they gathered for a special reunion mass and meal Sunday morning at the Church of St. Michael’s in Wooster Square.

The iconic church was founded 122 years ago, the first Italian-American Catholic church in Connecticut. St. Michael’s nursery to 8th grade school, behind the church at Greene and Chestnut, was established in 1940, the year Celia Agnellino was born. It closed its doors in 1993.

Finger whacking or not, Agnellino said, she loved the experience and sent her four kids to her alma mater. ​“I believe in a Catholic education,” she said as she and her husband Giuseppe brought in flowers to be placed on the dais for the mass.

Although many alumni have died or moved away according, at least 40 gathered with another 100 worshipers at St. Michael’s for a mass that featured a formal escort of the priests provided by the Knights of Columbus

The mass was presided over by Father Ralph Colicchio and Deacon Richard Santello. In addition to the Knights’ presence, special features included singing portions like the Gloria and the use of incense.

St. Michael, the patron saint of the church, has his festival fall this year on Sept. 29.

The end-September saint’s day is the occasion for an annual reunion of the larger St. Michael’s family, said event co-chair Theresa Argento.

Knight Ron Abbott said that honoring a police officer has historically been the center of the occasion; St. Michael, with his waving sword is known as the defender of the faith.

Agnellino grew up on Brown Street, not far from Pepe’s. Then the family moved to Franklin. Still a New Havener, she lives now in Morris Cove.

Agnellino recalled meeting her husband Giuseppe on Wooster Street during the celebration for, yes, the feast of St. Michael. Make that 1962.

Giuseppe is an immigrant from Cusano, Italy, near Naples. She was 22, he two years older. He’d gotten a job as a custom tailor with Chipps on Eld Street. Agnellino’s cousin, who worked with the husband-to-be, introduced them. It was not quite a blind date; it did work out. She went to nursing school. They married two years later.

Giuliana Gioiosa remembered arriving in New Haven in 1964 and speaking no English. At St. Michael’s Grammar there were only two other kids in her class who like her spoke no English. In those days there was no ESL. You were thrown right in.

The nuns who taught at St. Michael’s were from the Apostles of the Sacred Heart order. They were strict disciplinarians, both women recalled. One of them, Sister Elizabeth, had mercy on her, said Gioiosa.

With 35 to 40 kids in each of eight grades, there was not a lot of time for individualized attention.

Sister Elizabeth ​“felt for us,” said Gioiosa. She sat down with her and with the two other non-English speakers. Their names were Silvana and Matilda, Gioiosa recalled.

The irony was that when she began to understand, she realized she was ahead of the class, by far. ​“What we did in third grade [at St. Michael’s], we had in second in Italy,” she recalled.

To this day, Gioisa, who has become a banker, takes special effort to communicate with non-English speakers she meets in business, who today are more often Latino than Italian. ​“It’s a personal commitment,” she said.

During the mass, Deacon Richard Santello delivered a homily not about memory or local history, but about joblessness. He spoke of Matthew, Chapter 20, in which a vine owner pays someone who works a single hour the same as he pays someone who works a dozen in the hot sun.

Unfair, maybe. But not if you understand the vine owner to be a symbol for God, whose ways are not always comprehensible by men. Santello cited the country’s 46 million unemployed. He had the congregation pray for ​“noble jobs” for everyone because idleness and thoughts that come with it often make personal salvation a tough goal to reach.

Outside, the talk was again of the school.

Would Agnellino want her grandkids to attend St. Michael’s Grammar School?

“In a heartbeat, if it was open,” she replied.

But it’s not. The old building, still with the cross above the doorway, is now home to Elm City College Prep charter school. It rents from the church, which still owns the building.

At the service’s end Sunday participants, many having graduated from childhood skipping to using canes, descended gingerly down St. Michael’s steps. They found their cars and drove over to Anthony’s Ocean View for annual St. Michael’s celebratory dinner.