Seniors at a small-town Catholic high school, only forty-eight of us graduated from St. Mary's, Annapolis, in 1956. Eight have already died. Others lived too far away to come to the Annapolis Yacht Club for cocktails and dinner. But over thirty showed up, most with spouses. And the honored guest was Sister Trinitas. She'd been our sophomore homeroom teacher and taught math and science to the entire school.

Trinitas was fresh out of college when she taught us, only about four years older than we were. In contrast to some of the other nuns, she was full of life, energy; but she shared with them a zeal for teaching. We loved her then and now.

Trini's order has long since set aside the heavy black serge and starched linen of its old habit. Gray hair carefully styled, she wore a lavender cocktail dress as she stood greeting and hugging her aging students. And she's long since changed the focus of her teaching, too. After a dozen years in Annapolis, Trini shifted to college work. She is still chair of the psychology department at Notre Dame of Maryland.

Most of our class started in first grade at St. Mary's and continued right through the twelfth. Of all the nuns who taught us through those years, Trini is the only one still in the classroom. A few others are in the order's retirement homes, but most are dead. As you'd imagine, my classmates and I spent a lot of the evening reminiscing about all those bright, strong-willed women who shaped our educations and, in many ways, our lives.

Some years ago I told you about Sister Rosita, our high-school principal. Dark-browed, intense, with black, bright eyes, she molded us as much by dry wit as by discipline.

In the spring of our senior year, learning that three of her boys were hooking homeroom to play pool, she broke all nunly customs of the time and walked alone from the school, through downtown Annapolis, to stage a raid on Pete's Bar and Pool Parlor. How she must have startled the early morning drunks at the bar when she strode in, collared her charges, and led them back to school.

At our reunion, those boys, who became respected professionals and community leaders, sat laughing with affection as they recalled being so gloriously, outrageously caught in the act. But their voices were full of affection, too-for a teacher who cared and came looking for them. And who beat them at their own game.

I think I've also told you about Clarissa. Our sixth-grade nun, she had an infectious enthusiasm for history and geography. Clarissa regaled us with descriptions of Mayan and Aztec ruins, places that she'd never see. Through the years I've thought of her at Stonehenge and while standing among pyramids in the Yucatan. I wish she could have stood there with me.

Clarissa showed her keen skill at reading us twelve-year-olds one wintry day in 1949. After school she had gone downstairs and out to the curb to supervise the bus lines. Joe Boyle, Roger Frascino and I were upstairs in her classroom. We were cleaning boards and emptying trash in penance for minor infractions during the school day.

Joe, always cheerful, was in high spirits. As he started down a short flight of steps from a storage room, he jumped from the top step to one halfway down the flight. When he landed with a satisfying thump, the old plaster ceiling above him broke loose and dropped. Joe disappeared in a cloud of dust and plaster fragments large and small ...

When we could see him again, he was sitting on the steps, white with plaster dust, laughing 'til tears streaked his chalky face. On our part, Roger and I ran down the front stairs, out of the school, onto the sidewalk, shouting, "Sister! Sister!"

Clarissa, holding her shawl around her shoulders against the cold, turned to us from the bus line. "What's the matter?" she said evenly.

"The ceiling fell on Joe Boyle!" we both shouted. That canny nun appraised us in an instant. She saw boys who weren't grieved or scared, just wildly excited. She raised her eyebrows. Her words were terse, unemotional.

"Was he killed?" "No," I said weakly. She adjusted her shawl. "Was he hurt?" she asked. "No," said Roger. He felt deflated, too.

"Well," said Clarissa briskly, "you know where the broom and dust pan are." And that was that. She turned away from us, back to her duties.

What amazing women Clarissa and those other nuns were. I think of tiny Sister Gerard (third grade), who'd taught three generations at St. Mary's and was aiming for a fourth. And big, stocky Memoria (fifth grade), nicknamed after the Navy's prize battleship, the U.S.S. Missouri. When, on a cruise in the Chesapeake, the Mighty Mo ran aground and stuck in the mud, we could barely control our hilarity.

And ancient Sister Alowine, whose loose upper plate made her grimace sharply, regularly, to jerk it back in place. "Old Faceful," we called her, meaning no disrespect.

Theirs was a stark, deprived life by most standards. Up early for prayers and Mass. A full day of teaching, monitoring, parading us back and forth to church. A full evening of sitting at common-room desks, grading stacks of papers. Night prayers. Then bed. Then a next day exactly the same. That life took dedication. Heroism, I think.

We kids were the beneficiaries. Without realizing it, we learned from those women that, romance aside, love is basically an act of the will. Those women loved us willfully. And gave lives for us.

Jim Atwell lives in and views life from Fly Creek. Learn about his book at JimAtwell.com.