Our Finest Hour

It’s difficult for us to fully comprehend the sense of dread and terror that the British people felt as they faced Nazi Germany in the summer of 1940.  Hitler’s armies had just steam rolled Western Europe, including France, just 21 miles across the channel from England. Great Britain was next. The Nazi “Luftwaffe” was regarded as the world’s most formidable air force, and many believed it would be just a few days before it would overwhelm England’s much smaller Royal Air Force (RAF) and clear a path for the Nazi armies to land on shore.  England’s monarchy, its freedoms, its very way of life, hung in the balance. 

But England was led by the remarkable Winston Churchill, Prime Minister, whose eloquence rallied the British people to respond to the threat with courage and resolve. Speaking to the House of Commons on June 18, 1940, on the eve of the “Battle of Britain,” Churchill said, famously,

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.’”

We know the rest. The British people stood resolute. The RAF fought daringly and bravely, aided by advanced warning radar technology that allowed its leadership to coordinate their response to Luftwaffe attacks. The Nazi invasion never occurred. 

———

When we began our pre-year faculty meetings in August 2020, full of gloom and foreboding about the prospects of teaching in the middle of a global pandemic, I looked for some inspiration for our teachers, and found that in Churchill.  My last words to them, before opening, were “When generations of alumni remember back to 2020-21,  when they tell stories of what school was like during this pandemic year, or view photos with everyone in masks,  may they say about us, “This was our finest hour.”

Let me be quick to say that I do not regard the pandemic as equal to England’s existential threat of annihilation during World War II. But before we dismiss the comparison altogether, let us remember the state of things in the summer of 2020: Deaths from COVID-19 were sky-rocketing, with news reports that morgues were so overwhelmed that refrigeration supply trucks had to be used to warehouse the bodies.  We were told there were a lack of ventilators and hospital beds—cities like New York were building temporary hospitals in anticipation of the demand. Statisticians made grisly projections on how many tens of thousands of people would die in each state based on the state’s Covid response. Alabama, alas, was predicted to have one of our country’s worst mortality rates. 

And there was also the fear of uncertainty: How, after all, did Covid spread—was it airborne? Only through saliva? On surfaces? Each political party used the virus to bludgeon the other, while networks scrambled to position themselves for the best ratings, which often meant reporting on the direst stories of death and suffering. There was enormous distrust and cynicism about the reliability of what we were being told.

And what about the safety of our students and teachers? Did face masks really work, or were they simply part of the “hygiene theater,” as one pundit called it, that included temperature checking, disinfecting rooms, or keeping desks six feet a part from each other? 

Finally, there were the logistical challenges: How would we do this? Did we have the video cameras and the internet bandwidth to broadcast our classrooms to those who were home on Covid protocols? Did our students have laptops to zoom into live classes? Who would train teachers in this “new normal” of concurrent classrooms? How would we administer tests, or collect work, or return graded work to students? 

——

And yet, despite all of these fears and challenges, the Catholic schools of the Archdiocese of Mobile began the school year, on schedule, August 12, 2020. Only a very small fraction of our employees opted out, most for pre-existing medical conditions. 

And yes, it was a difficult year—no need to list the many reasons—we remember them vividly! Suffice it to say, our faculty, staff, and coaches  soldiered through everything in a way that was  truly praise-worthy. We gave our kids as close to as possible a “normal” year, even despite the pandemic. To put that in perspective, there are school systems in our country which haven’t been in session since March of 2020—no classroom instruction, no athletic teams or games, no music or art programs.  

I also give a lot of credit to Archbishop Rodi, who put himself out there about a month before other bishops, declaring in late June of 2020 that archdiocesan schools would open in August, on schedule. He gave us clear direction, and a chance to prepare. I credit our superintendent, Miss Gwen Byrd, for keeping the ship steady, and her associate superintendent, Karen Abreo, who kept track of all the Alabama Department of Public Health guidelines and helped us implement them in our schools. Ginger Koppersmith, our other associate superintendent,  offered sage advice to us on particular situations we had never faced before.  This was a team effort, from top to bottom. 

Catholic education in the Archdiocese of Mobile will celebrate its 200th anniversary in 2030, commemorating the opening of Spring Hill College in 1830. There have been generations of men and women—priests, religious and lay—who have committed themselves to the mission of our schools since, serving our students and families through good times and bad. They are all heroes, in my book.  I can only imagine the difficulties our schools encountered as they confronted slavery, two World Wars, the Great Depression, and the turmoil of the Civil Rights movement.

Include the pandemic of 2020-2021 as among the supreme challenges we’ve faced in the annals of this history. Our response to it may well have been “our finest hour.” 

Bravo to everyone who made it so!