MyNCS: Two Cathedrals

In January 1973, during my fifth month as a 7th grader at my new school in Washington, D.C., its adjacent cathedral hosted a service for peace in Vietnam, followed by a candlelight procession of more than three miles to the White House by some 15,000 people. My school, National Cathedral School, ranks among the best girls’ school in the country because of its academics, but its true power comes from its place on the grounds of the Washington National Cathedral.

My memory there carries a soundtrack of ringing bells, located high up in a tower named Gloria in Excelsis. On Friday mornings, we attended services, where my favorite part was the organ dismissal—we were treated to Bach and Widor toccatas. To get to our classes at St. Albans School, on the other side of the Close, we had to walk through the stonemasons’ “graveyard” of Indiana limestone. The construction crew was building the Nave, and numbered stones (and an occasional gargoyle) were waiting to be lifted up to their new home.

In 8th grade, we took a required course on cathedrals, and the first semester we studied our own. This gave me opportunities to marvel at the dance of afternoon sunlight through the South Transept rose window. Soon, I could show you the Noah’s Ark needlepoint pillows in the Children’s Chapel or the hand-carved wooden armrest of the St. George lion devouring a snake (a caricature of Hitler) in the Great Choir. By graduation day, my classmates and I knew our way around the crypt, and its Bethlehem Chapel served as our cap-and-gown staging ground.

A few weeks after the service for peace in Vietnam, Leonard Bernstein conducted a performance of Haydn’s Mass in Time of War. Nearly 3,000 people packed the Cathedral to listen, while an estimated 15,000 stood outside in the rain. I might not remember these particular events exactly, but I do remember the energy of the Close at those times of national importance. Through the Cathedral, my soul was knitted into the soul of my country.

The same can be said for the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris. In September 1986, I rented a room in an apartment at 45 boulevard Saint-Michel. Five flights down and just out our door lay Paris: tourists, chestnut trees, gypsies, crepes, diesel buses; down the street was the historical bookstore Gibert Jeune, a fountain, and a cathedral.

When we were assigned our cathedral projects in 8th grade, someone quickly took Notre-Dame de Paris, so I settled for Notre-Dame de Reims. Nonetheless, I had learned the basics about Notre-Dame de Paris: flying buttresses, a grand organ retaining a few pipes from the Middle Ages, and three stunning rose windows. I got in the habit of dropping in on Notre-Dame to light a candle for my family and do my cross. Yet it was walking back home late at night that the knitting of my soul to France began: stopping in the quiet just to breathe and watch it. And in the soft light of the Paris streetlamps, walking up to the Portal of the Virgin, I’d tell Mary whatever was on my mind. I transferred my intimacy with my first cathedral to a Paris cathedral, and she helped me—and so many others, I am sure—to be strong and happy in France.

MyNCS is an occasional feature in which alumnae share memories of their time on the Close. The first installment, “The New Girl,” ran in the Spring 2018 issue of NCS Magazine and was written by Merida Gascoigne Drysdale ’50.

Alumnae are invited to contribute to MyNCS with a submission of 750 words or less. Poetry and prose are equally welcome, as are photographs. The work should focus fully on the writer’s time at NCS. Works may be sent to NCSMagazineNews@cathedral.org with the subject line of MyNCS. Please understand that not all submissions can be published and, for reasons of space and clarity, written works may be edited.