It was September 1958. I had just entered high school and been introduced to my English teacher, the Rev. Gerard R. Hageman, S.M.—a Catholic priest of the Marist order. He was incredibly strict. We had frequent quizzes in which one could only get two possible grades, 100 or 0 (Z-e-r-o). And the numerical grades were averaged out.
Father Hageman had created a one-page mimeographed summary on yellow paper of jis “Random Rules of Grammar and Style.” I will present you with two excerpts. The first are the rules which call for commas. This was abbreviated to D SAPS DT C CINQ MOC. The letters stood for: Direct address, salutation, appositives (I have since forgotten what those were), parentheticals, series, dates (city and state), titles after names, compound sentences, contrasting ideas, introductory adverbial clauses, non-restrictives, direct quotations, mild interjections, omitted words, and common sense.
Here are three random rules from the yellow sheet:
- Pronouns are weak. If used, they must have clear and definite antecedents.
- Introductory participles, infinitives, and gerund phrases must refer to the subject; and the subject must come immediately after.
- Nouns and pronouns used as modifiers of gerunds are in the possessive case.
Imagine the impact on a thirteen-year-old boy and the threat of a zero score for any single violation of the rules.
Father Hageman was relentless. But, you know what? I still follow his rules religiously. The young student who wanted to be a nuclear physicist wound up preferring writing and, maybe, becoming an English teacher.
Unfortunately, Father Hageman returned to the Marist college in Atlanta, where he died suddenly on January 1, 1961. I wish I had a picture to show you, but that was years before the Internet.
In a 2018 interview with the then Catholic bishop of Atlanta, Joel M. Konzen, S.M., the interviewee noted:
All of us who went to Josephinum had a wonderful education there, but particularly wonderful in English. Writing and languages were highly emphasized at the Josephinum in that day. We had a wonderful teacher, Msgr. (Leonard J.) Fick. I think that anyone who went there would tell you the same thing. …
It was … kind of what they say about Father (Gerard) Hageman at Marist, that if you ever had either of those, you knew you were good to go in terms of writing and so I liked to write.
Tarnmoor 