Mealtime Memories
The St. Sebastian's School Dining Hall, which started out in Newton as a converted stable, is filled with memories. It has always been a place where friendly folk can break bread together and commune with kindred spirits away from the confines of the classroom, making it one of the most popular spots on campus.
According to Fr. Edmund Fitzgerald '49, the dining hall actually straddled the Boston-Newton line. "The food was cooked in one town and eaten in the other," he says.
During the World War II era, students described the dining hall's abundance in mouth-watering terms, stating in the yearbook that after grace had been said, 'white-coated students emerged from the kitchen, bearing what proved to be inexhaustible supplies of meat, potatoes and vegetables. When we reported to our ration-plagued parents the varied menus of our Noon meals, they wished at times that they could change places with us.'
The students of the 1950s and later decades usually took the abundance of the dining hall in stride. According to Steve Brady '60, they spent more time joking about whether Ray the chef, who was missing a digit, had lost it in the beef stew. Though the dining hall was a social place, recalls Brady, the priest faculty still maintained an orderly assembly. The seniors sat at the head of the table presiding over the pairs of freshmen, sophomores and juniors. "The senior was the 'table captain'. He controlled how the food was to be distributed. He was all powerful in the dining hall, but we never lost any student to starvation, so it seemed to work," Brady says.
Don McCulloch '63 remembers what the dining hall was like in his freshman year. "You'd have these guys who were heroes, who were big football stars and hockey stars and we'd be at their table scared to death as a freshman. And I remember passing around mashed potatoes and meatloaf and all kinds of stuff and wondering what in the world we were eating. It was a great way to get to know these guys that you just sort of idolized," he says.
Ruthe to the Rescue
Ruthe Bergin has been a part of the St. Sebastian's dining experience since 1969. "I came to cook for the priests for a month in the summer and I've been here ever since," she says. As dining hall manager, she and her three women workers made 600 sandwiches a day. According to Bergin, the boys got two sandwiches, a milk and a package of Hostess cupcakes. "We made baloney, ham, tuna and chicken salad. There was no choosing. Whatever we made that day, they got," she explains.
According to Bergin, this went on until the School got a new headmaster. "Fr. Collins decided I could cook a meal, so I did. Then we had hot meals and soup. Not like we have today, but the boys were happy," she says. Sandwiches gave way to favorite Bergin concoctions like Noodles a la St. Sebastian's.
In 1982, Bergin packed up the kitchen before an extended Christmas break. "The whole school was moved in three weeks," she says.
In addition to preparing meals for a daily onslaught of hungry boys, Bergin remembers cooking for at least three Men's Association Dinners a year. "I'll never forget the first dinner I did," she recalls. "The guests didn't sit down when they were supposed to, and the roast beef got a little well done. So the next time we had a dinner, I said to Msgr. Harney, 'If you don't sit down now, you're going to have well-done meat.' He thought I was a panic."
Bergin was queen of the dining hall for many years. At reunion and alumni events, she gets fond hugs. She usually remembers all the alumni names and she is now thrilled to see their sons coming through the lunch line every day. "I love the look on their faces when I tell them that I knew their dads when they went to St. Sebastian's, " she says with a laugh.
Eat at Matt's
Currently, Bergin is the only dining hall worker who is still employed by St. Sebastian's. The rest of the staff, Guillermo Feliz, Janet Matthews, Rafael DeJesus, and Matt Grime, come courtesy of the School's contract with Sage Dining.
The dining hall staff usually arrives to prepare for the passel of ravenous teens around 7:30 a.m. According to Grime, most of the preparation work is done before the staff leaves the day before, so it's just a matter of assembly. "This year we have been baking a lot of our own bread, rolls, and specialty breads like foccacia," Grime says. In addition, First Cook DeJesus has been busy creating new soups.
Grime, who received his culinary arts degree with honors from Johnson & Wales, now also oversees food and beverage arrangements for nearly 130 different functions a year, ranging from small meetings requiring cookies and coffee to last fall's 60 th Anniversary Dinner, which included a full, sit-down meal for 450 guests on the school grounds.
About the only glitch Grime can remember in an otherwise trouble-free tenure as chef, is the famous fireball chicken incident. "I was pulling chicken out of the oven and the fat from the pan hit the bottom of the gas oven, and a big fireball came out at me," he recalls. But not even chicken fireballs can stop the dining crew from producing hot, delicious lunches for the appreciative students, faculty, and staff of St. Sebastion's.
Thanks to Grime and his hard-working staff, the tradition of great meals at St. Sebastian's continues unabated, ensuring more fond food memories for generations of students to come.
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