When the Religious of the Sacred Heart founded their Sacred Heart School in Washington, D.C., in September 1923, transcontinental airmail service and sound-on-film technology were both in their early stages of development. That same year, Babe Ruth helped the Yankees win their first World Series, the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio was founded, and the U.S. attorney general declared that it was legal for women to wear trousers anywhere – although the only pants worn by the students at the Sacred Heart School were the dark blue bloomers that were a part of their athletic uniform.
The original campus of the school, which would later be renamed Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart, was housed at 1719 Massachusetts Avenue in Washington. There were six Religious of the Sacred Heart to teach the three students who attended the school in that first year. Mother Clara Meigs Sands, RSCJ was the school’s first headmistress, and Sacred Heart sisters continued to lead the school for more than eight decades. In 2008, Catherine Ronan Karrels, a member of Stone Ridge’s class of 1986, became the school’s first permanent lay Head of School.
During the 2022-2023 school year, the Stone Ridge community is celebrating a century of Sacred Heart education in The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington. In 1947, Stone Ridge moved to its present campus in Bethesda, Maryland.
Today, Stone Ridge has 772 students, which includes an all-girls grades 1-12 school and a coeducational Little Hearts program for children ages three months through kindergarten. The school now has 119 faculty members, all of whom are lay teachers.
“I think one of the great gifts of a Stone Ridge education is that we are deeply rooted in the goals and criteria of Sacred Heart education and that really gives us a foundation for everything that we do at Stone Ridge,” said Karrels. “So the lasting impact of the Religious of the Sacred Heart in articulating what it looks like to be a Sacred Heart school is very much alive and well here, and it really does shape the daily experience but also shapes the outcomes for our students.”
While there are no Religious of the Sacred Heart currently teaching at the school, Karrels said there are a number of local Religious of the Sacred Heart who visit and support programs at the school, and the five goals of Sacred Heart education provide a roadmap to ensure that the school remains true to its mission. These are: a personal and active faith in God, a deep respect for intellectual values, a social awareness that impels to action, the building of community as a Christian value, and personal growth in an atmosphere of wise freedom.
Stone Ridge is one of more than 150 Schools of the Sacred Heart in 41 countries around the world. In the early 20th century, it was alumnae of other Sacred Heart schools – especially among the diplomatic corps living in Washington – who initially petitioned the archbishop of Baltimore to allow Sacred Heart sisters to come to Washington to open a school. Today, students have the opportunity to participate in an exchange program that allows them to study abroad at another Sacred Heart school during their time at Stone Ridge.
After the Religious of the Sacred Heart searched for nearly 20 years for a new campus to house their growing school, Sacred Heart School moved to its current location on Rockville Pike in Bethesda in 1947. The centerpiece of the campus is “Hamilton House” – the original estate of George Hamilton, a prominent Catholic lawyer who purchased 20 acres of farmland along the unpaved Rockville Pike for $6,000 in 1900. The Hamilton family named their home “Stone Ridge,” which would become the new name of the school. After George Hamilton and his wife died, the Religious of the Sacred Heart purchased the property on Oct. 25, 1946.
The school’s campus has continued to grow in the years since, beginning with a new wing that was blessed by Archbishop Patrick O’Boyle in 1949. In 2003, the school opened its Aquatic Center, which would later become the home pool of Stone Ridge’s Olympic athletes Katie Ledecky (’15) and Phoebe Bacon (’20). And in 2021, the school opened its new Mater Center, which houses a theater; spaces for ceramics, orchestra, photography, and set design; a new cafeteria; and ample space for students to study or socialize.
“Our facilities have improved dramatically,” said Karrels. “This campus was a farm and slowly but surely over the decades we have built the three gymnasiums and a natatorium and improved all of the academic space to meet needs, and of course the Mater Center, which is our most recent addition, is really an incredible space for building community, celebrating the arts and gathering for assemblies or anything else that needs to take place in a theater.”
Over the past 100 years, more than 4,200 students have graduated from Stone Ridge. In addition to the Olympic swimmers mentioned above, some of the school’s most notable alumnae include Cokie Roberts (’60), journalist and author; Marion Woolley Mattingly (’47), advocate for incarcerated youth; Diana Gribbon Motz (’61), former judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit; Beverly Robinson Wheeler (’72), director of DC Hunger Solutions; Tonija Hope Navas (’92), director of the Ralph Bunche International Affairs Center at Howard University; Corinne Cannon (’96), the founder of the DC Diaper Bank; and Sarah Johnson Conway (’02), Chief Medical Officer of the Johns Hopkins Clinical Alliance.
Karrels said she hears consistently from alums “that the value of service is something they take from Stone Ridge and becomes part of their life forever.” Through the school’s Social Action program, Upper School students spend two Wednesdays per month entirely on service, with students volunteering at sites across the Washington area.
“A Sacred Heart education is focused on the concept of bringing Christ’s heart into the world, and we are very proud of the fact that young women leave here with that spirit deeply instilled in them – to do good and to bring Christ’s heart and love to the world around them,” said Karrels.
This spirit of service is a crucial part of the Centennial Celebration this year, and on Jan. 21 the school organized an All-Community Social Action Day, where alumnae participated in service projects wherever they live. In Washington, alumnae volunteered at the Capital Area Food Bank and We Are Family. Maryland sites included Interfaith Works in Rockville, and A Wider Circle and Greater DC Diaper Bank in Silver Spring. Stone Ridge alumnae also volunteered at sites in New York, San Francisco, and Chicago.
The Centennial Celebration kicked off with a Mass of the Holy Spirit held in the new Mater Center on Sept. 16, and continued with the school’s Nov. 5 Centennial Gala, which raised funds for financial aid at the school. In April, all alumnae of the school are invited back to the Stone Ridge campus for a reunion, which will conclude with the Centennial Mass of Thanksgiving on April 30.
“The centennial is an opportunity, first and foremost, to celebrate the great legacy and to lift up the Religious of the Sacred Heart, alums, faculty and staff that have been part of this rich tradition,” said Karrels. “We are so blessed by what has been accomplished here at Stone Ridge.”
(Kelly Sankowski, formerly a reporter for the Catholic Standard, now lives with her family in Ohio. She is a member of Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart’s class of 2012.)
