One Sunday morning 40-some years ago, my mother packed me up, hailed a cab and told the driver to be off to Notre Dame on Charles Street. Our destination was the school she attended, one address, for an incredible 16 years: first-grade, 1923, through her college graduation day, 1939.

When I asked about her time there, she said, without hesitation, those were the happiest days of her life. That Sunday, we were probably running a little late. She rushed me through the school's marvelous, if intimidating, Victorian corridors, past the biggest radiators I had ever seen. There was a grand staircase that made Scarlett's in Gone With the Wind look like a pile of pulp. As I said, we were late. When we reached the Notre Dame chapel, it was already filled, if not with worshippers, then flowers, candles and white lace. No room at all. Mama said she knew another spot. We climbed a staircase and wedged in aside an organ. Its wood case, like the rest of the chapel, was polished and shining. I recall the whole setting as a waxed gem, a glorious setting for a First-Communion Mass.

There was a good reason why we were there that day. My sister, Ellen, my mother's oldest daughter, was to have been among the children dressed in their white veils and dresses. But it was spring, and chicken pox had hit. She and a few others in her class were sidelined. (In fact, there was a second, later, ceremony for the recovered students.)

My mother, who had also made her First Communion at the chapel, did not want to miss this state occasion. There are those emotional experiences involving religion that take on a power all their own. As it turned out, we had a perfect view of the whole Mass. I can ever see Father Dunn up there in radiant vestments.

Not too long after the First Communion, a terrible fire swept through a Chicago Catholic school called Our Lady of the Angels. As a result, fire departments started ordering a safety shake-up in educational buildings. Notre Dame's grand, but open, staircase was axed up. That was enough torture, but then, in the bad year of 1968, someone got the idea of modernizing the Victorian (1896) chapel. What had been a glimmering little shrine in a religious community wound up looking like a nondescript hospital lobby.

My mother's reaction to all this was logical. She would never enter that room again. She said, "I cannot bear to look." And she didn't, as much as she loved the school, her teachers and friends. A loyal alumna yes, chapel no. When she died in 1993, many of her Notre Dame girlfriends were among her mourners.

I always say that in Baltimore you learn your best information while at a party, in the grocery store or at the theater. And so, one night not so long ago, my mother's friend, Clarisse Mechanic, was chatting with Helen Marikle Passano, between acts at the Mechanic Theatre. Mrs. Passano let it slip that she was going to write the check to restore the chapel. She, too, disliked its condition.

I had hesitated a little about writing about the chapel's transformation. Two of my Sun colleagues, Edward Gunts and Alec MacGillis, have both covered this story. So the other day I was walking down Charles Street, considering whether another sermon on the Notre Dame chapel would be appropriate. As I got to Biddle Street, I looked up and there was my answer. There, dodging some leftover ice chunks, was a School Sister of Notre Dame.