Memories evoked by this obituary in the Batavia Daily News:

A member of the choir? There was no choir. He was a cantor and sang at every Mass I remember.

A pastime in small-town, small-sized congregations, we kids spent our pew presence speculating about everyone else. The only thing that mattered: who was Catholic and who was "just visiting". The weekly debate was settled ultimately, at the end of the hour, by who approached for Communion.

There was no doubt about his wife¹, Italian and all. She came down every time.

But then, it wasn't long before the norm was to carry the ciborium to the choir loft, virtually out of our prying eyesight. In this way, the communion hymn was barely interrupted because, well, Heaven forbid there be silence during the reception of the Eucharist!

Undeterred, I would crane my neck to see who in the loft received. And don't you think I didn't!

Assuming he was not "too far off" as an Anglican, they married at a time when conversion was more or less compulsory. But even converts had shortcomings in our eyes. Sure, we lauded their making the right choice. But we also recognized that they hadn't the grace of birth.

Cf. OACS Alumni Web Site

¹ My sole memory of Rose was when she substitute-taught my French class. We all knew she was a natural polyglot because of her personal history. She was appalled, appalled! at our pronunciation. Our regular teacher taught for the Regents (I got a 98!), so pronunciation ranked low. No wonder no one could understand me during my summer in Québec! Çe ne fait rien!