add, subtract, and divide without pencil and paper. All his life he remembered her with gratitude. He also looked up to the football coach at adjacent Saint Ceciliaâs High School. His name was Vincent Lombardi.
Boyleâs father taught his four sons to box, and they settled disputes by putting on the gloves in a makeshift ring he created by tying rope around four trees in the yard. At school, Boyle thought it only natural to resolve arguments with his fists, and the more prowess he demonstrated, the more challenges he provoked. Endowed with quick reflexes and body coordination, trained by an experienced boxer, and naturally pugnacious, he invariably won, and parents of his antagonists called his parents to denounce him as a hoodlum, menace, and disgrace. âYouâre acting like a mean, nasty kid and youâre going to get us run out of town,â his father warned. âIf you get into one more fight, when you come home youâre going to have to fight me.â After the Saturday opera, his father gave him a basketball, took him to Saint Patrickâs parochial schoolyard, and taught him to shoot baskets, and Boyle developed into an outstanding basketball player.
In the eighth grade at Saint Patrickâs, a tall, bent, and frail sister, Maria Helena, ordered him to stay after class, and he wondered what he had done wrong. âI think there is something special about you,â she began. âI want to talk to you about a special chance.â
A wealthy Catholic laywoman dreamed of an academy that would mold brilliant boys into a cadre of Catholic intelligentsia with an education equal to the best in the world. To this end, she built a handsome four-story building on East 84th Street between Madison and Park Avenues in New York and there founded and endowed Regis High School. The Church staffed it with gifted Jesuits and scholastics and imposed an inflexible, classic curriculum: Latin, four years; Greek, two years; French or Spanish, two years; logic and ethics, four years; Shakespeare, two years; literature, two years; English composition, four years; ancient and modern history, four years; math (algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus), four years; and religion, every day. The excellence of the school was so renowned that graduates were virtually guaranteed admission to any university, and it cost nothing to attend.
The problem was that thousands upon thousands of boys applied each year and only 140 were accepted. The sister told Boyle that she believed he could be one of them if he was willing to be tutored by her each day after school for the entrance exams.
Boyle entered Regis High School in September 1943, and from the first day it was tough. A Jesuit announced to the freshmen that the rules and standards of the school were unbending, and that probably only half of them would do well enough to be graduated. Boyle commuted by bus and subway from New Jersey, and had to get up at 5 A.M. to be on time for morning communion. Priests cheered the Regis basketball team that he captained but gave him no quarter the next morning, though they knew he could not have gotten home before 1 A.M. After a night game, he was sure to be called upon first. âMr. Boyle, will you begin the reading?â Practices and games subtracted from his study time, and he struggled academically. But in 1947, he was one of 69 of the original 140 to be graduated.
Columbia University, being a proper Ivy League school, did not deign to offer athletic scholarships to buy professionals. A basketball coach put it to Boyle in a more sophisticated way: âYou will receive a loan sufficient to pay all the costs of your tuition, books, clothes, and living expenses. At the end of four years, the loan will be forgiven. You will owe nothing.â
Boyle was proud. He could attend a great university, study physics, play basketball, and make his family proud without burdening them. His father, who had quit his job at the
Boyleâs father taught his four sons to box, and they settled disputes by putting on the gloves in a makeshift ring he created by tying rope around four trees in the yard. At school, Boyle thought it only natural to resolve arguments with his fists, and the more prowess he demonstrated, the more challenges he provoked. Endowed with quick reflexes and body coordination, trained by an experienced boxer, and naturally pugnacious, he invariably won, and parents of his antagonists called his parents to denounce him as a hoodlum, menace, and disgrace. âYouâre acting like a mean, nasty kid and youâre going to get us run out of town,â his father warned. âIf you get into one more fight, when you come home youâre going to have to fight me.â After the Saturday opera, his father gave him a basketball, took him to Saint Patrickâs parochial schoolyard, and taught him to shoot baskets, and Boyle developed into an outstanding basketball player.
In the eighth grade at Saint Patrickâs, a tall, bent, and frail sister, Maria Helena, ordered him to stay after class, and he wondered what he had done wrong. âI think there is something special about you,â she began. âI want to talk to you about a special chance.â
A wealthy Catholic laywoman dreamed of an academy that would mold brilliant boys into a cadre of Catholic intelligentsia with an education equal to the best in the world. To this end, she built a handsome four-story building on East 84th Street between Madison and Park Avenues in New York and there founded and endowed Regis High School. The Church staffed it with gifted Jesuits and scholastics and imposed an inflexible, classic curriculum: Latin, four years; Greek, two years; French or Spanish, two years; logic and ethics, four years; Shakespeare, two years; literature, two years; English composition, four years; ancient and modern history, four years; math (algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus), four years; and religion, every day. The excellence of the school was so renowned that graduates were virtually guaranteed admission to any university, and it cost nothing to attend.
The problem was that thousands upon thousands of boys applied each year and only 140 were accepted. The sister told Boyle that she believed he could be one of them if he was willing to be tutored by her each day after school for the entrance exams.
Boyle entered Regis High School in September 1943, and from the first day it was tough. A Jesuit announced to the freshmen that the rules and standards of the school were unbending, and that probably only half of them would do well enough to be graduated. Boyle commuted by bus and subway from New Jersey, and had to get up at 5 A.M. to be on time for morning communion. Priests cheered the Regis basketball team that he captained but gave him no quarter the next morning, though they knew he could not have gotten home before 1 A.M. After a night game, he was sure to be called upon first. âMr. Boyle, will you begin the reading?â Practices and games subtracted from his study time, and he struggled academically. But in 1947, he was one of 69 of the original 140 to be graduated.
Columbia University, being a proper Ivy League school, did not deign to offer athletic scholarships to buy professionals. A basketball coach put it to Boyle in a more sophisticated way: âYou will receive a loan sufficient to pay all the costs of your tuition, books, clothes, and living expenses. At the end of four years, the loan will be forgiven. You will owe nothing.â
Boyle was proud. He could attend a great university, study physics, play basketball, and make his family proud without burdening them. His father, who had quit his job at the
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