St. Elizabeth's Academy

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, after my mother Wenonah got permission to go to school at Bloomfield, my Aunt Kaliteyo begged to go away to school too. She didn't want to go to Bloomfield though, but rather to St. Elizabeth's.  

                                          Kaliteyo Paul Willingham

Mildred McClure, Wenonah and Kaliteyo's cousin, had been attending school at St. Elizabeth's, and she had been telling Kaliteyo how much she enjoyed it there. 

(Footnote: Mildred McClure's grandfather was Tecumseh McClure - see previous posts.) 

I'm sure that it was hard on Grandmother to let Kaliteyo go away to school. She had always been sickly, and she must have been afraid that she would come down with something at the school. Kaliteyo was determined though, and Grandmother finally gave in.  

St. Elizabeth's Academy was in Purcell, Oklahoma, about as far north of Pauls Valley as Bloomfield was to the south. Like Bloomfield, it was a school for Indian girls, and while it wasn't as old as Bloomfield, it also had a colorful history. It was founded by the Order of St. Francis, which sent three nuns to the Chickasaw Nation in 1888 to establish a school. The church and school buildings were built by Benedictine priests who lived nearby.  

                                           Sister Katherine Drexel

The project would have certainly failed had it not been for the efforts of Benedictine priest Vincent Jolly, who taught at the Sacred Heart Academy in Pottawatomie County. He had heard about the work of Sister Katherine Drexel, a nun from a wealthy Philadelphia family who was using her fortune to fund schools in Indian communities. Father Jolly convinced Sister Katherine of the need for schools for the Indians in Oklahoma, and for the next sixty years St. Elizabeth's was supported by Sister Katherine's generosity. 

Sister Katherine was an outspoken advocate for oppressed Native Americans and African Americans. She financed more than 60 missions and schools throughout the south and southwest, as well as Xavier University of Louisiana, the only historically black Roman Catholic university in the United States. She also founded a religious order, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, composed mainly of Indian and Negro nuns. In 2000 she was canonized and became the second American born saint.  

St. Elizabeth's started as a coeducational school, but by the time Aunt Kaliteyo went there in 1926 it was for girls only. Kaliteyo loved the nuns, and she also must have been popular among the other girls. Kaliteyo's best friend at St. Elizabeth's was Tula Mae Graham, a Choctaw girl from Purcell. She said that she and Tula Mae entertained the other girls after lights out by imitating their teachers. 

Some of the nuns at St. Elizabeth's had been at the school since before statehood. One of the sisters told the girls about how she had stood on a hill near the convent and watched the big land run of 1889.  

Piano lessons were among the classes offered at St. Elizabeth's, and the girls were assigned time during each day for practice. I don't know if Kaliteyo got very good at playing the piano, but she certainly enjoyed herself. My mother said that the lady who played the piano for the high school glee club in Pauls Valley used to bounce up and down on the piano stool as she played. She  was a bit overweight, so the spectacle was funny to the girls. Kaliteyo liked to mimic her, and one day she was doing her imitation at St. Elizabeth's when one of the sisters came into the room. Kaliteyo said that the sister laughed with everyone else, but she made her stop.  

Kaliteyo's favorite story about St. Elizabeth's was about her friend Tula Mae trying to smuggle apples up to her room. There were some apple trees on the school grounds, and when the apples began to get ripe the girls were told not to pick them. Tula Mae and Kaliteyo wanted to take some of the apples up to their room, but they were always supervised when they were outside. Finally Tula Mae got an idea. The girls dressed very modestly in long dresses with bloomers under their skirts so Tula Mae stuffed some apples down into her bloomers during recess. Everything went well until she started back to class. As she joined the line of girls filing back to class, the draw string on one leg of her bloomers came loose and the apples began falling out. As she walked by, one of the nuns noticed the trail of apples behind her and got tickled. The nun was trying to be stern, but Kaliteyo said the girls could tell she was laughing by the way her belly shook.  

Kaliteyo got through the year at St. Elizabeth's without getting sick, which must have been a relief to Grandmother, and when the summer vacation was over she asked to go back for a second year. She always treasured her memories of St. Elizabeth's, and when her daughter Lahoma was about eight, she sent her to St. Elizabeth's day school. Lahoma enjoyed her time there too, and she had some of the same teachers as her mother.  

Footnote: See blog post of Oct. 5, 2011, The First Chickasaw Princess.

Lahoma enjoyed St Elizabeth=s like her mother had before her. My mother told me about visiting her once at an open house at the school. As Lahoma showed her around, excited to have a visitor, she told her about a nun whom she especially liked, and as they were walking across the school grounds, Lahoma suddenly exclaimed, AThere she is,@ and she rushed over to where the nun was standing, pulling my mother along behind her. As they came up to her, the nun turned around and Lahoma=s face fell. She turned to my mother and said, AThis is the wrong one.@ The nun just laughed.  

St. Elizabeth's struggled through the depression and through the war years, but in 1948, with dwindling funds and falling enrollment, its doors were closed for the last time.

                          St. Elizabeth's Academy, Purcell, Oklahoma