Bob Masson

Bob Masson CJ '63

• His favorite teachers ranged from the oldest to the youngest on the faculty: Brother Thomas O'Rourke, his English teacher, and Brother Porres (Paul) Mulligan, algebra I. Brother Nicholas taught him math his senior year.

Cor Jesu was a great place. I loved it there. The only thing I missed was interscholastic athletics. But the intramurals were well run and a lot of fun. 100% participation. We played touch football, basketball, volleyball, and cabbage ball.

• He also remembers the boxing matches that Brother Nick or­ganized. The ring sat on one of the basketball courts behind the school with chairs all around for the spectators. Bob was getting beat up by a bigger boy the first two rounds to the point where Brother Porres, who was in his corner, asked him if he wanted to throw in the towel.

"No, I've only got one round left." Then I knocked the guy out. I can still see it in slow motion. He crossed with his left, I knocked it down, and smacked him against the rope. I hit him again, and the ref stopped the match.

• He recalls the pick up basketball games on the courts behind the school with the brothers playing the students - first team to 20. If the student team won, they played again. If they lost, another five took their place. The students rarely won and not just because they were younger.
  
  The brothers cheated. "You fouled me." "No, I didn't, brother. You win, brother." What can I say. We played until Brother Roland, the principal, came out on the balcony behind the brothers' house and blew his whistle at 5 o'clock. That meant it was time to leave.
  
  
• Bob also participated in baseball and basketball leagues at Milne Boys Home at Franklin and Fillmore Avenue.

• The first of his many colleges was LSU. As was common at a time with no high school guidance counsellors, Bob knew little about how colleges functioned. So he didn't object when his advisor loaded him up with zoology and chemistry lectures and labs in addition to required courses like ROTC, physical educa­tion, and history. It proved to be more than he could handle.
• The only fun he had was going to the Tiger football games on his Student ID card.
• After one semester in Baton Rouge, he came home and went to LSUNO for a semester. But that was a disaster, also. I hated UNO. They were so unfriendly and hard to work with.
• Bob went to Alabama for a year, but he ran out of money. So he came back to New Orleans and worked. He spent a summer on a street paving crew, a dawn-to-dusk job that paid well enough to get him through another semester of school.

Bob Masson on LSUNO Club Football Team

• He walked on to the football team. It was fun but I was really a tackling dummy. I rarely dressed out for games. Assistant coach Raymond Blanco (whose wife would become governor of Loui­siana) promised him a scholarship when the next player quit, then reneged.
  
• So it was back to LSUNO where he met his wife and got married the following year. Since he had amassed more than 90 college credits, he taught at St. Dominic School on a temporary teach­ing certificate while taking night classes on the Lakefront so he could play on the club football team for two seasons.
• The second year, he taught at Stuart Prep and coached jv basketball and baseball. Then he moved to St. Rita in Harahan where his wife Terry joined him on the faculty.