In 1977, Stanley Osolinski’s book “Michigan” was published which included many pictures of the natural beauty of Michigan. Mr. O also included a section which told the history of Michigan. In this section, there are a couple paragraphs about his time at St. Albert’s (although he does not call St. Albert’s by name, but rather the “school he used to teach at”).

Mr. O published his book “Michigan” through the Graphic Arts Center publishing company. We tried contacting this company for permission to reprint those few paragraphs but the company went bankrupt and was liquidated in 2009. Most of the time, when this happens the copyright goes back to the author but attempts to located Mr. O also proved unsuccessful.

With that being said we are therefore reprinting the excerpts pertaining to St. Alberts here under the fairness act and thus giving complete credit to Stanley Osolinski and the Graphic Arts Center publishing company.

EXCERPTS FROM MR O’S “MICHIGAN” BOOK

I’ll always remember the horned lark that nested one March on the playground of the school where I once taught. She must have surveyed and triangulated that area very carefully for she had homesteaded in a site so precisely located as to involve herself in nearly everyone of our scheduled athletic activities. Two seventh-grade boys had excitedly furnished me with the information on its whereabouts.

“Mr. O, Mr. O, there’s a bird nest out back”

I immediately posted a small wooden sign, “Maternity Ward – Please Do Not Disturb.” That afternoon I informed all the classes of its presence and value.

Arriving very early at school the next morning, I spied the expectant mother nattily perched on my crude artwork. Before I could ready my 500 mm lens, she flitted away, and I never again saw her on that stake. However, that single missed photograph could never have equaled the many other benefits the little bird provided our students. For 17 days, nearly 600 youngsters carefully avoided disturbing the well-camouflaged nest and counseled the unaware when they approached it too closely.

Third base ended up in some weird places that spring, and I know of one end zone on a certain football field that was never scored upon in post-school pick up games. But the horned lark didn’t miss her field goal; she successfully hatched both of the eggs she had laid. On lunch hour the younger grades would line up behind my 640 mm telephoto lens to peek in on the progress our adopted family was making. Eventually one young bird was to die a natural death, while the other apparently flew off one day to take its place in that part of the world around Detroit still suitable for horned larks.

That same schoolyard provided a convenient backdrop for many other natural experiences for my students. I am confident that many of those happenings will be long remembered by those now mature children that I will never see again. I can even wistfully imagine that a handful of them may at this very moment be perusing these contents and mentally traveling backwards in time to those days of discovery.

In spring there were killdeer every morning in that field; in fall, flocks of herring gulls up from the Detroit River to feed upon the bugs stirred up from the short grasses by football cleats. There was the one-eyed bullfrog that sunned himself along the footpath that paralleled the drain creek at the fields south end. Muskrats and turtles captured in that creek and brought into class produced their share of havoc in upsetting the school routine, but they also led to some spontaneously profitable learning experiences for the children about animals and their human counterparts.

One day at afternoon recess, when crystalline sun dogs were ringing a pale April sun, a sharp-eyed third grader spotted a tiny speck hovering above the parking lot – a red-tailed hawk. From that day forward we looked for him each afternoon, and we saw him on more than a few occasions. Pine warblers, cottontails, garter snakes, ovenbirds, and a score of other wild animals would take their turns in the spotlight over the course of some nine years. But to me, the wonder of it all is that everything happened only a few minutes away from one of the major interchanges of Interstate Highway 94, which passes the school less than one mile to the South.

Stanley Osolinski