By Rit Carter
Following a 55-year absence, the 100-year-old replica statue of Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom who once stood in the halls of Bristol High School on Memorial Boulevard, returned to her ancestral home Friday morning with a police motorcycle escort.
The statue, originally a gift from the school’s first graduating class of 1922, stands 5 ft. tall and is made of plaster. It stood in Bristol High School until 1967, when it was moved to the newly built Bristol Central.
Minerva’s return coincides with the centennial anniversary of the building and its reopening planned for September with its new tenant, The Bristol Arts and Innovation Magnet School (BAIMS).
Led by a police motorcycle escort with a Bristol Public Works truck shepherding the statue, Friday’s procession began at the Bristol Historical Society. The figure was on display for a year following some repairs. Its journey home ended shortly before 10 a.m. at BAIMS, along a newly paved driveway with inlaid stones.
With roughly 60 onlookers closely eyeing the move, Public Works employees offloaded Minerva and carefully moved her inside the building in the west entrance corridor. When finally unwrapped and rightly positioned, the assembled crowd applauded and cheered because Minerva was finally home. However, one observer was silently crestfallen.
“It’s bittersweet for me,” Kelly Monahan-DiNoia reflected hours later. “She was with me for 24 years, so even though she belonged here and it’s the right thing to do, my heart was broken.”
Bristol Central Latin teacher Monahan-DiNoia has spent more time with Minerva than anyone. First as a student at Bristol Central from 1980-1984 and since 1998 as a Latin Teacher at Central. Minerva has overlooked her classroom every day for two decades and a half. “She has been with me every single day,” she remarked.
Minerva arrived at Bristol Central in the fall of 1967 with an official unveiling ceremony at the main entrance. Her welcoming party included retired teachers Ruth Crockett, Alice Pulsifer, and Dr. Ralph Nestico, a teacher at the time, along with the student council president, Arnold Anderson.
Despite the welcoming, she was shunted around the building. There were stints in the gymnasium, the library, a storage room, and even plexiglass for her protection.
The Latin Room
According to the teacher of 35 years, sometime in 1998, Principal Chris Clouet was working late and noticed, while he was looking out the window, Minerva being moved out of the school. Two workers in the building took her from the closet and had her horizontal. One had her head, the other her feet. “You know, sometimes you look at somebody, and you can tell they’re up to no good; you just know it they’re doing something wrong; he knew they were stealing her,” she recalled laughing.
The workmen assumed she was garbage, so they were “liberating” her from her cloistered imprisonment in the storage closet.
After thwarting the plot, Clouet realized Minerva needed a safe haven and asked Monahan-DiNoia, “Would you mind having her in your classroom?” The ecstatic Latin teacher exclaimed, “Absolutely not!” And with that, the goddess of wisdom had a new home where she would again be appreciated.
During that time, Minerva became part of the fabric within Monahan-DiNoia’s classroom. The students decorated her for the holidays, took photos with her, and, much like their scholarly predecessors, touched Minerva for luck before a test if they had not studied.
Minerva remained until 2021 because with students returning to school following COVID 19, they needed room to be socially distant, so she had to be displaced.
In need of maintenance as she was showing her age and in need of a new home, Monahan-DiNoia had a conversation with the then-mayor Ellen Zoppo-Sassu.
“Ellen said, ‘The building where she started her life 100 years ago is reopening in September of 2022, exactly 100 years after she first graced those halls. She really should be back there.’ I smiled and said, ‘Oh yes, of course, you’re right,’ but inside, my heart was breaking. Logically, putting my heart and my feelings aside, it’s the right place for her to be.”
All is not lost, however.
Unbeknownst to Monahan-DiNoia, her former students spearheaded an effort to replace the sculpture by having an online fundraiser to purchase her a new statue.
“I arrived early to work one morning, and nobody else was around, and I opened my door and there she was, looking very much like the one I lost. She’s the same size. In fact, she just looks even better than the one I lost. However, I remember thinking to myself, ‘Am I being tricked?'”
Indeed, she wasn’t. Quite the contrary.
As Monahan-DiNoia moved closer and closer to the stranger in her classroom, she made note of something. “There were these gift tags of inspiration. My former students wanted future students to be inspired the way Minerva had inspired them. Minerva 2.0 was an outrageously generous gift of love from my former students. So, now I have my own life-size Minerva in my classroom again, and the original Minerva is where she belongs.”
Students stage play to welcome Minerva
By Rit Carter
Minerva, the guardian of Bristol High, was also the subject of a school play in 1958. In the auditorium on class night, The Class of 58 presented, What Does a Statue Know, with Joan Fawcett playing the part of Minerva.
The cast included Diane Furniss, Jerianne Ritchie, Richie, Joyce Sonstroem, Cynthia Dunn, Penelope Savage, Louise Gengenbach, Dona Gurske, Jacqueline Woodward, Allan Potter, and Joanne Lapense.
Also, Thomas Anderson, Timothy Dumont, Wayne Harris, Dolores Bacon, Elizabeth Codetter, Annabelle Deveau, Nancy Nolin, and Peter Neville
Barbara Bartles, who received first honors and was a member of the National Honor Society, was not only the assistant director but the co-writer of the production with Dayle Benson.
Wallace Handy, the sponsor of the Dramatics Club, directed the play. Mr. Handy would later teach at Bristol Eastern before passing away in November 1961. He was 31.
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