THE GIRLS in the school library are studying ancient Greece. A sign on a wall says, "Reach for the World." The school is the Institute of Notre Dame, 901 N. Aisquith St. To reach for the world, the girls here don't have to reach across the centuries. Sometimes, they just have to sit at a desk and listen for echoes.
Two of America's most prominent women came of age in this little school, though some of the girls are just beginning to absorb such a remarkable fact. Nancy D'Alesandro, Class of 1958, grew up here. So did Barbara Mikulski, Class of 1953.
D'Alesandro, the daughter of one Baltimore mayor and sister of another, became Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat named the other day as House minority leader, the first woman in history to reach that position. Mikulski, the daughter of an East Baltimore grocer, grew up to become one of just a handful of women elected to the U.S. Senate.
"We're the next them," says Valerie Andrews, a Notre Dame freshman.
She says this as a handful of classmates gather near her Friday morning in the library. They have a fresh-scrubbed energy about them, but their sense of current events is still a little shaky.
"Do you know which famous women went here?" they are asked.
The girls' names are Sara Anderson, Gabrielle Harper, Nicole Stryjewski, Amber Smith, Christie Stubbins. The answer is somewhere just off the coast of their consciousness.
"Politics, right?" one of them says.
"Yeah, politics," another agrees.
"They're only freshmen," librarian Jim Antal says protectively.
"It's been in the news," the girls are told.
Against a sea of blank stares, a whisper can be heard: Antal's.
"Pelosi," the whisper says. This is the only time in history that the teacher is caught cheating in class.
But, if the freshman girls are a little shaky, the upper-class students are not.
Amanda Kern, a 17-year old senior, wrote extensively about the two famous political alums in Windows, the school newspaper. Kern is editor in chief (plus president of the Stage Guild, president of the Spanish Club, the Spanish Honor Society, and the Science Club. Do we have a politician in the making here?)
"They're pretty inspiring," says Kern, standing in the library the other morning, talking of Mikulski and Pelosi. "You think about them being here, and going through the same things we're doing, and you think, 'Oh, maybe I could do that, too.' "
This school, founded in 1847, is home to 435 girls. They come from the city and all the surrounding suburbs. Kern comes in from Harford County each day. One of the school's strengths has always been its reach to different directions and backgrounds.
In her time at Notre Dame, Mikulski reveled in the mix. The granddaughter of Polish immigrants who'd settled in Highlandtown, she talked one recent day about some classmates who were the daughters of judges, and others, "Ukrainian immigrants whose mothers were charwomen so they could go to Notre Dame. But when you're all in uniform, all at basketball or debating or trying to struggle through geometry or, like me, failing sewing ... "
Yes, failing sewing. Geometry, too.
But, called into the principal's office with her mother, Mikulski was delivered an ultimatum. She excelled in drama and debate; if she did not improve in geometry and sewing, she would have to give up her two great loves. The ultimatum worked - though it's worth noting that Mikulski is described in her yearbook as "the life of the party," and "leaves 'em laughing."
The principal at Notre Dame today is Ann Seely. She graduated from the school in 1958, and was classmate and friend of the future Nancy Pelosi, who arrived here each morning from her home in Little Italy.
"She was great fun," says Seely. "Quick-witted, but a very serious student. Very generous with help if you needed it. Sometimes she had sleepovers at her house. Of course, we all knew her father [Tommy D'Alesandro Jr.] was mayor. That was our brush with history.
"And we were very jealous when the family hosted a black-tie fund-raising dinner for John Kennedy. We wanted to go, too. But then Nancy came to school with black-and-white glossies of the dinner, and there was Kennedy."
In Kern's school newspaper profile, she notes that Nancy D'Alesandro's senior year grade average was 93.22.
A long time ago, she and Mikulski sat in this little library, where the sign says, "Reach for the World." Whoever imagined two girls from this same school would reach so far?