It ain’t easy being a riverwarder is it? I’m talking to you Fishtown and Bridesburg, my two beloved bookends as you cap my Port Richmond from the south and the north.

When I-95 is a parking lot, it’s our streets that get clogged and overrun. We’re the riverwards with no access to the river. We live in row houses so close together that your next-door neighbor knew you were coming in nine months before your momma’s doctor did. You buy your lunch meat from the corner store that hopefully still has a pickle (and sauerkraut) barrel and you play the daily number not with the PA Lottery but with the guy in the back room of the bar. Your grandmom blew your inheritance at Sunday BINGO and you eat Breyer’s ice cream.  You go down the shore to Wildwood and chances are when somebody asks you, “Where ya from?” you don’t tell them your street address, you tell them where you went to school.

St. George’s. All Saints. Holy Name. St. Adalbert’s, St. Laurentius, St. Anne’s, St. John Cantius, Nativity BVM. St. Michael’s.

Our Catholic parishes are the foundation of our neighborhoods. The church steeples are our skyline. And what a beautiful skyline we have. Be honest, when you’re driving I-95 between Girard Avenue and Bridge Street, don’t you look for your church top? I know when I see my “big three” beacons, the double steeple spears of St. Al’s, the rotunda dome of Nativity and the clock tower of Our Lady Help of Christians, I know I’m almost home. I’m almost home.

So when the Archdiocese of Philadelphia gave our riverwards the equivalent of flipping us the bird back in January 2012 and announced it was shuttering one Catholic school in each of our neighborhoods, I knew we would not let our sporting rivalries, kielbasa wars and don’t you dare date my sister Hatfield versus McCoy battles get in between this battle.

St. Laurentius was slated for closure in Fishtown with a plan to send Fishtown Catholic families to St. Peter’s at 5th and Girard. This came just a few years after Holy Name of Jesus School (with the best Sunday guitar Mass in the world as well as the magnificently beautiful Our Lady of Knock Shrine, one of the City’s hidden gems watching over the corner of Gaul & Berks Street) had to close down its school and send its kids to St. Laurentius.

But St. Laurentius fought back and appealed the recommendation from the Blue Ribbon Commission. My buddy AJ Thomson, who has two daughters enrolled in the school, was one of the leaders of the fight.  I don’t think the guy slept for the two weeks up to the appeal hearing. When given the news that St. Laurentius was saved, dozens and dozens flocked to Thomson’s Fishtown rowhouse and he popped champagne and spoke from his staircase, surrounded by his family to a living room full of Fishtowners. When I congratulated him and chided him once again that he should run for office, he said, “Pat, I felt like George Bailey from ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ and we saved our town from Mr. Potter.”

Back in Port Richmond, my alma mater St. George was on the chopping block with marching orders to shut our doors in June 2012 and send our students to Our Lady of Port Richmond Regional School (formerly St. Adalbert’s) which merged with Nativity BVM and Our Lady Help of Christians three years ago. Full disclosure: Danny Markowski, Principal of St. George School is my best friend. He took me to my prom, I was “Best Woman” in his wedding and he knows when I’m full of it before I even open my mouth. An alumnus of the school, Markowski started as a fourth grade teacher before creating and overseeing the pre-kindergarten program before taking over as principal. When St. George (the saint who slayed the dragon) got their death sentence, I dubbed their fight “Danny vs. Goliath” as Markowski and his 208 students grabbed their slingshots and went to slay the Blue Ribbon Commission Dragon.

Days before their verdict (St. George won by the way) I had a heart to heart with Danny asking him if he was forced to close, maybe we should open the bar/ restaurant we always wanted to run in the neighborhood. He told me that he did not have a Plan B. A loving husband and fantastic father of three boys and another Baby Markowski due this summer, he didn’t have a backup plan. St. George School was his way of life and he was going for broke; losing was not an option.

Which brings me to Bridesburg. You don’t know much about Bridesburg, do you? Yep, that’s how they want it. It’s one of the only neighborhoods on the eastside of I-95 and stakes ownership of one of the biggest and most amazing Memorial Day Parades in the United States. Bridesburg Recreation Center is the best in the City hands down because of two words: Miss Jackie; the now retired but “she ain’t leaving until she stops breathing” rec leader. That’s right, Miss Jackie. EVERYBODY calls her Miss Jackie. Everybody’s dad and granddad worked for Rohm and Haas Chemical Company before they shuttered the plant at the Richmond Street bend. Motorists coming over from Jersey on the Betsy Ross Bridge know they are in Bridesburg Cougar Country when they hit the PA side and see the well kept and constantly packed ball fields under the bridge. Joe Slabinski buries you with a tombstone from Sander Memorial right there at the cemetery on Richmond Street. Lachowicz’s feeds you and the Ferko and Aqua String Bands strut you. You get a slice and a Pepsi at Renzi’s, pet Parker the flower shop dog at Ideal Florists and learn how to shoot from the 3-point line with Gerry Houck over at the Bridesburg Boys & Girls Club. Frankie DiSalvo still has Patsy Cline on the jukebox at the Post Office Café because no matter how many beers you had, you still know the words to “Crazy”.

Yep, Bridesburg has one of the highest owner occupied communities in the city and the strictest zoning codes. You won’t find a dollar store, a Taco Bell or a go-go bar on its island. It’s home to the Frankford Arsenal, the ammunition compound that “beat Hitler” back in WWII because while the Philly guys were drafted, their wives and mothers worked making bullets and ammo-where do you think Rosie the Riveter came from?

It’s also home to All Saints and St. John Cantius parishes. All Saints closed several years ago, its school building now a vacant shell with a broken window here and there. St. John Cantius was renamed the Pope John Paul II Regional School as both school merged-yet in January 2012, PJPII was told they too were closing. Low enrollment, higher operating costs. On paper, families wanting a Catholic education for their kids were told to send them out of Bridesburg, bus them up to St. Tim’s on Levick Street. Bus your kids out of Bridesburg. Tell your kids they are not going to walk a few blocks to school, but now they are going to get on a bus and head off out of their community.

The Blue Ribbon Commission recommended that Bridesburg now be without a Catholic School and Pope John Paul II did not appeal the decision; they saw the writing on the wall.

Bridesburg, the epitome of a hard-working, blue collar, ass kicking, we still sweep our pavements neighborhood was now without a Catholic School. And yet back in 1885 when the first wave of Polish immigrants settled in the Bridesburg-Frankford area, they fought for a parish of their own, so their children and grandchildren could attend a Catholic school where they lived and worked. In 1892 St. John Cantius Church was formed to serve the Polish families in Bridesburg and as the families with names ending in “wicz”, “kacz” and “ski” grew rapidly, so did their parish. Double black-shingled church steeples soon rose heavenward in Bridesburg, joining the pipe and tank skylines from the neighboring mammoth chemical plants.

Go into any Philadelphia neighborhood that had their Catholic School closed and tell me if you see and feel the difference. There is no sense of community, is there?

I have no doubt the charter school sharks will swim in seconds after PJPII Regional School locks its doors in June 2012 and lease the building and by September open up another cash cow charter that neighborhood kids can’t get into even though their great grandfathers built and paid for the damn building over a century ago when a hat was passed around and every man wrote down how much money he would donate to the cause of religious freedom and his Polish heritage-he would also help build his church. Now his own kin are put on a “waiting list” and have to wait for a “lottery” to see if they can attend a school near their home.

Bridesburg, you deserved better. Your kids deserved better. You built those churches. You built that neighborhood. You baptized your babies, buried your parents, married your spouse and probably baked thousands of cupcakes for the school bake sale over the years and now you have to put your kid on a bus and send them miles away for school out of the ‘Burg. And the high and mighty steeple of St. John Cantius looks down on the neighborhood, its schoolhouse belly now empty, but once bursting at the guts with Polish kids with last names impossible to pronounce or even spell…unless you were from the Philly river wards.

Patty-Pat Kozlowski lives, writes and played catcher for the Bridesburg Cougars.