Georgetown Preparatory School celebrated its first Founder’s Day Eve on Jan. 5 with a Mass, hors d’oeuvres, and student-fronted bands. Georgetown Prep, located in North Bethesda, Maryland is a Jesuit, all-boys, college-preparatory boarding school that was founded in 1789 by Baltimore Archbishop John Carroll, who that year was named the first bishop in the United States. 

The event also served as a dedication for the newly erected Campus Center and Residence Hall for the boarding program, as well as the end of the school’s legacy campaign “For the Greater Glory.”

“For the Greater Glory” is a project that was first initiated by a donor several years ago to improve Georgetown Prep’s boarding facilities. According to the school, there are three main components to the campaign, including the Campus Center and Residence Hall, athletics facilities, and to grow the school’s endowment. 

Connie Shaffer Mitchell, the director of marketing and communications at Georgetown Prep, spoke with the Catholic Standard about the inaugural Founder’s Day Mass and celebration. Mitchell said the idea to celebrate Founder’s Day along with the other recent achievements of the school was the idea of Father James Van Dyke, the school’s president.

In his homily at the Mass, Father Van Dyke stressed that throughout the Gospels, Jesus challenges the expectations people had of God

 “[In the Gospels] we encounter those who see Jesus through the very narrow lens of their limited expectations of how God acts – of how God should act – and who are confronted with the reality of a God who does not conform to their narrow expectations – a God who loves all the wrong people and heals people who are unhealable and forgives people who shouldn’t be forgiven,” Father Van Dyke said. 

The priest said this should encourage people to “think carefully about how we look – how we look at God, how we look at others, how we look at ourselves, how we look at our world.” He then tied it into the teachings of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the Spanish priest and theologian who founded the Society of Jesus. St. Ignatius had a meditation on the Incarnation of Jesus. 

“He begins the meditation inviting us to gaze with the Holy Trinity out upon our world, with all its glories and all its wounds, and upon all the people with everything they are doing – both the wonderful and good, and sinful and self-destructive,” Father Van Dyke said. 

He continued to explain that even through sin and suffering in the world, people should try to view the world with “the eyes of God.”

“This, I think, is what Ignatius meant when he spoke of finding God in all things – not that everything is hunky-dory, sunshine and ponies, rosy and rainbows, but that even in the hardest things, even in the crosses, even in the crucifixion itself, there, there, is compassion,” Father Van Dyke said. 

About 360 people attended the event including alumni, students, parents, faculty, and staff, those who have given to the campaign and former trustees, along with the current board. 

Following the Mass, Father Van Dyke blessed the new building and attendees were able to walk through the building into an outdoor entertainment area set up with a stage where current and past students performed. 

Alumni Harris Breyfogle ’16 and Sean Gaiser ’98 also performed at the event, along with current student Michael Purring ’24. 

2% Milk, a four-piece student rock band including a bass player, guitarist, drummer, and an energetic frontman, entertained the crowd with covers of hits including “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers, “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver, and a few parents took to the dance floor for the “bum bum bum” portion of “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond.  

The band includes Patrick DuFour ’23, Luke Shaffer ’23, Nick Arndt ’23 and Jack Sullivan ’24. 

Although 2% Milk’s drummer Jack Sullivan is a day student at the school, he considers Georgetown Prep his “second home.” Sullivan is a member of the debate team, engineering club, international relations club, and competes for the school in cross country and track and field.

He said the large number of alumni present showed “it’s more than just a school, it’s a really tight-knit community.”

Sullivan, who is also an altar server and Eucharistic minister there, said Georgetown Prep’s Catholic identity was a large part of why he wanted to attend the school.

“I really like the opportunity to fulfill that aspect of my life, and also the constant reminder that there’s something more important,” Sullivan said. “Prep puts ‘Men for Others’ on everything. It’s a constant, it’s constantly there.”

“Men for Others” is a motto used by schools sponsored by the Society of Jesus.

“There’s a greater, more important aspect to it that is kind of overarching. Prep has great academics, great extracurricular opportunities, but above all of that is the faith aspect, the social service aspect,” Sullivan said.

In between performances, various members of the Georgetown Prep community took the stage to toast and share their gratitude toward the school and alumni association. 

Michael Bidwill, the owner, chairman, and president of the Arizona Cardinals of the National Football League, shared positive words about his alma mater and fond memories at Georgetown Prep. The Catholic Standard had the opportunity to speak to him afterward.

“[Georgetown Prep] will always be home for me. When I come back to Washington, D.C., I always try and get to Georgetown Prep. I’ve built the best friendships of my life here,” said Bidwill, who graduated from the school in 1983 and was a campaign chair for the school’s “For the Greater Glory” Legacy Campaign. 

Bidwill followed in the footsteps of his father, Bill Bidwill, a graduate of Georgetown Prep who also played football at the school and later owned the Arizona Cardinals, by playing running back for the Hoyas while a student. 

“I think the event [tonight has been] magical, it was really an amazing celebration of not only Founder’s Day for the Society of Jesus, but also what is the celebration of this building and completing the building, and I think it’s just amazing,” Bidwill said. “I’m excited to hear from the kids tonight, how the building is really changing what they’re able to do.”

A highlight of the new student housing building for Bidwill was the social area near the entrance, which features a full kitchen and living room space where students may watch television or even sit by the fireplace. Previously, Bidwill said, there was not a cozy space for families, significant others, or friends to visit. 

“Soft comfortable furniture, this is a place where they can invite their friends over. Before this building was built, you couldn’t have day students, you couldn’t have girlfriends, you couldn’t have them over. When your parents would come, there was no place for mom to come and set up,” Bidwill said. 

He shared his own experience with having family visits as a student.

“My mom would come, I loved her spaghetti, she couldn’t come and buy the ingredients here and come and make spaghetti, so now there’s a place where we can have the kids come and hang out and invite their friends over, invite their girlfriends over,” Bidwill said. “When you think about life as a high school student, there’s a lot of time studying, but there’s also a lot of time hanging out in the kitchen or a family room.”

Catholic education, and specifically Jesuit education, is important to Bidwill, as he continues to support his former school. 

“In Jesuit education they encourage you to challenge things, and challenge ideas and to express your opinion and to question things, and I think that’s one the beauties of the Jesuit education. You’re constantly exploring and trying to improve things and question things, [asking] ‘How can we make things better and better for people, better for society?’” Bidwill said. 

Georgetown Preparatory currently has 498 enrolled students, 119 students of which are boarding. In the new building, there are 16 faculty apartments, which includes dorm parents and families. Usually these “parents” are either teachers or coaches.

Dacque Tirado is a dorm parent, as well as the school’s Director of Intercultural Diversity and a teacher in the social studies department. Tirado has been at Georgetown Prep for 11 years. Although not an alumni of Georgetown Prep, Tirado is well versed in the boarding school life as he attended a boarding school growing up and has previously worked in different boarding schools. 

According to Tirado, however, Georgetown Prep stands out from the crowd.

“The most alumni. Here, boys come back more than any other school I’ve been at…and I think it says a great deal about the connection that the boys have to the place when they leave,” Tirado said. 

Tirado was one of the first to move into the new student housing, and currently lives on a freshman floor. Although living with a floor full of teenage boys could be overwhelming to some, Tirado takes it in stride. 

“I think it’s a life’s calling. I love being an educator, I really relish the work that we do…not only are you teaching during the day, but you’re really mentoring and helping them at a young age when they’re not really finished products yet to be young men,” Tirado said. 

Tirado helps students face academic or emotional hurdles they may be confronting, and he is equipped to address homesickness just as well as a student struggling in class. 

If there is anything Tirado hopes his students take away from their time at Georgetown Prep, it is that they will always have a support system at Georgetown Prep.

“It may be tough or difficult sometimes for them here as they are making their way here academically, through school, and navigating their social [lives] and teenage boyhood, but then they always have a home to come back to,” Tirado said. “I want them to know that.”