Wednesday, January 25, 2012

At Brooklyn Prep, Paterno Learned Latin and Bravado - NYTimes.com

Brooklyn Preparatory School, whose graduates included Joe Paterno, closed in 1972 and its grounds became part of Medgar Evers College.
This building at 1150 Carroll Street in Crown Heights
- was Brooklyn Prep which closed in 1972




Mens sana in corpore sano was the maxim of the school. Neither was easy to achieve. Like everyone interviewed in this article I remember Brooklyn Prep as the most demanding school I attended. College at Holy Cross, grad school at BU, law school at Rutgers. None was as challenging as high school. None as rewarding. The study of the classics encouraged a Homeric self-image. If we were good enough to study Cicero and read the Odyssey in the original Greek we were good enough for anything. Just don't be late to class. - GWC
At Brooklyn Prep, Paterno Learned Latin and Bravado - NYTimes.com:
"At the Jesuit high school Joe Paterno attended in Brooklyn, students wore jackets and ties and were taught by priests or by lay teachers in academic robes. The curriculum was also rigorously Old World: students took several years of Latin and many added three years of Greek, with three hours of homework per night the rule.
If they were late or forgot a notebook, students might find themselves detained after school for what Jesuits called “jug,” spending an hour in the courtyard walking in circles.


Fr. Engel was Prefect of Discipline
The prefect of discipline was the Rev. Frederick W. Engel, a tall priest with the fists of a trained boxer who could instantly silence an auditorium filled with 300 shouting boys.
“It wasn’t hell you were afraid of, it was Father Engel,” said Gerry Uehlinger, class of ’67, now a trial lawyer in Maryland."

 The school is well remembered in Charlie's Prep the book sponsored by NYU President John Sexton.   Charlie Winans introduced us to James Joyce.


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