So during a reunion Friday, those who were freshmen in 1944 were easily able to recall the algebra, English, religion, history and even Latin they'd learned in the classroom of the school's first teacher.

Jack Callahan, now 74, said there are still Latin phrases he can't get out of his head.

"I would mutter them in my sleep. My wife thought I was a CIA agent," joked Callahan, making his classmates laugh just as he did 60 years ago.

And during the reunion the former classmates also honored Greene, now 90.

"You stand out more in my mind because you were young, you were a little tornado. You picked us up and put us in our place," Callahan said.

Greene, who taught the charter class of 26 students in one room, said she was pleased to be welcomed back so warmly.

"You have to realize it's very exciting for me to come back -- that I'm ambulatory," Greene said to a roar of laughter. She also addressed the graduating class of 2004 at its Baccalaureate Mass on Thursday. "In this stage of the game, of my game, it's very unusual to have any kind of recognition given to you and I'm glad I stood the test of time."

Former student Mary McQuaid Curran, 73, said she credits Greene for the environment she created at the parochial school.

"We had a yearbook, a school newspaper, and school spirit and I think she's the reason we had such a good year," Curran said about the teacher who taught for only one year before she was sent back to Chicago by her order.

Other classes held their reunions, but members of the graduating class of 1948 were never able to organize their own.

"I always thought what a shame this group of 1948 never had a reunion," said John Flynn, who helped organize the event. "Because it was around the end of the second World War and the draft, it was one of those things that never got taken care of."

They got to work trying to track down the students scattered throughout the country and found out that 12 class members had died, two couldn't be found and the rest said they'd attend.

The remaining classmates excitedly hugged each other and began exchanging memories from the days they were the only students in the school. And the friends who had not seen each other in decades began to catch up on a lifetime of marriages, children, divorces and deaths.

Old faces had just become older but not much else seemed to have changed, Curran said.

"It's wonderful. They look good, and I recognize them all. They look the same and sound the same. It's amazing," said Curran, who now lives in Connecticut. "I feel everything has come full circle with our first reunion and our first teacher." l=8s=8 Naush Boghossian, (818) 546-3306 naush.boghossian@dailynews.com