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While Attending The Prep: Memoirs of School, City and Family
In While Attending The Prep, Thomas J Doonan recounts his junior and senior years of high school at Saint Joseph’s Preparatory school in Philadelphia. In a series of letters, he pens one a month, in the Centenary year of his graduation from The Prep in 1965. He writes to the Class of 2025, in their freshman year, 2022, reliving memories of 1963 and 1965.
He recounts his studies, Latin, exams, class pranks, and his participation on the track team and Speech and Debate Club. He dwells on the latter, as forensics stole his heart, mind and tongue.
Thomas sings praise for the benefits of a Jesuit education, touching on several of the values of The Society of Jesus. At The Prep he experienced an education of the body and the mind, bringing him closer to an appreciation of the value of every human being.
The memoir goes beyond the school walls of The Prep, extending into Center City Philadelphia, encompassing the social and political fabric of the mid-1960’s as he experienced the events. He recounts in detail the events impacting his young mind, and how they molded his awareness of the world, and his and his attitude toward mankind.
While Attending The Prep contains FutureVision. Thomas postulates from the perspective of 2065 what may happen in the years after the Class of 2025 class graduates. Dipping in and out of each letter are snippets of events seen with a FutureVision Pennsylvania and New Jersey become one state; Google is replaced with the MIND server on the moon; exams are administered without Proctors; test results are instantly accessible through an Enhanced Ear Implant (EEI). Doors are fashioned of light; paper currency is a financial relic; works of fiction can be viewed as a movie—the reader immersed in the action; Mexico, Canada and the United States negotiate to form a Single Continent nation.
Thomas cautions the future will not be as the present. “Prepare to cause change, not be swallowed by it.”
Travel with him on the Pennsylvania Railroad as he commutes to school each day from Lancaster, PA. Ride subways, busses and trolleys. Walk with him in Center City Philly when he’s with his girlfriend, department or record store shopping, or seeing folk concerts at night.
His writing walks a new line, combining memories of history, with glimpses of the future written from a future date, looking to the past. His prognostications are a warning to the reader of what may happen.
Whether you’ve been a high school student, scholastic debater, resident of Philadelphia, or touched by the 1960s, this memoir will be an enjoyable read. While Attending The Prep will awaken your teen memories.
He recounts his studies, Latin, exams, class pranks, and his participation on the track team and Speech and Debate Club. He dwells on the latter, as forensics stole his heart, mind and tongue.
Thomas sings praise for the benefits of a Jesuit education, touching on several of the values of The Society of Jesus. At The Prep he experienced an education of the body and the mind, bringing him closer to an appreciation of the value of every human being.
The memoir goes beyond the school walls of The Prep, extending into Center City Philadelphia, encompassing the social and political fabric of the mid-1960’s as he experienced the events. He recounts in detail the events impacting his young mind, and how they molded his awareness of the world, and his and his attitude toward mankind.
While Attending The Prep contains FutureVision. Thomas postulates from the perspective of 2065 what may happen in the years after the Class of 2025 class graduates. Dipping in and out of each letter are snippets of events seen with a FutureVision Pennsylvania and New Jersey become one state; Google is replaced with the MIND server on the moon; exams are administered without Proctors; test results are instantly accessible through an Enhanced Ear Implant (EEI). Doors are fashioned of light; paper currency is a financial relic; works of fiction can be viewed as a movie—the reader immersed in the action; Mexico, Canada and the United States negotiate to form a Single Continent nation.
Thomas cautions the future will not be as the present. “Prepare to cause change, not be swallowed by it.”
Travel with him on the Pennsylvania Railroad as he commutes to school each day from Lancaster, PA. Ride subways, busses and trolleys. Walk with him in Center City Philly when he’s with his girlfriend, department or record store shopping, or seeing folk concerts at night.
His writing walks a new line, combining memories of history, with glimpses of the future written from a future date, looking to the past. His prognostications are a warning to the reader of what may happen.
Whether you’ve been a high school student, scholastic debater, resident of Philadelphia, or touched by the 1960s, this memoir will be an enjoyable read. While Attending The Prep will awaken your teen memories.
192 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 20, 2022
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