Brother Leonard, the Christian Brothers principal at St. Patrick’s High School, had a divine plan for me. “I know you better than you know yourself,” he liked to say. Not that the saying made a lot of sense to any of us. Then again, Brother Leonard was fond of declaring, in complete seriousness, things like “Hey, I misunderstood me.”
Some of you will find this next part hard to believe—but it happened.
In my senior year I applied to Harvard, Yale, Colby, and Bates. As of February, I hadn’t heard back from any of the schools. As background, you need to understand that my family didn’t know much or think much about college. But my mother finally set up an appointment for us to talk to Brother Leonard about the admissions situation.
I already had a theory about what was about to go down.
The good brother kept my mother and me waiting in the school cafeteria (which offered a daily choice of hot dogs or hamburgers for our school lunches. That was it: hamburger or hot dog, every day). Finally, he called us to his office. He listened as my mom and I told him our concerns. Then he told us the deal he’d made on our behalf.
“Oh, I never sent your transcript to any of those schools. I only sent it to Manhattan College.” Manhattan College was run by the same group of Christian Brothers who taught at St. Patrick’s. So, of course, Manhattan was a Catholic school. “Here’s the good news, Mrs. Patterson. James has been accepted at Manhattan with a full scholarship. You’ll never have to pay a cent. Congratulations.”
Then the principal shook hands with both of us. That sanctimonious son of a bitch. I wanted to smack him. I wanted to scream in his face.
But that was that. As always, I had the sense that Brother Leonard felt God was sitting on his shoulder doing the actual decision-making. To this day, I have a problem with authority figures. Brother Leonard is the reason why.
I immediately applied to Hamilton College and was accepted—but with no financial aid. My father told me I could head on down to the bank and take out a big personal loan for college. He had no problem if that was my decision, but it meant going down to the bank by myself.
So off I went to Manhattan College, which, by the way, happens to be in the Bronx.
Before I take leave of my hometown, I have to say that, to this day, I look at the world through the lens of a blue-collar kid who grew up in Newburgh. It’s a blessing. I think it’s why I’ve never been too full of myself, too impressed with bestseller lists. It’s probably why I’m kind of a working-class storyteller. I just keep chopping wood.