(This column has been updated with a postscript.)
When Catholic Schools Week rolls around in late January, I literally go back to Catholic school. This week, I’m reporting on two events related to our Catholic schools, a 20th anniversary reception for the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, and a First Communion at St. Mary’s School in Rockville, Maryland.
But I’m also reminded of my own Catholic school experience, how years ago, my fourth grade teacher at St. Joseph School in Kimmswick, Missouri, Sister Kathleen Donovan, a School Sister of Notre Dame, read passages from “Charlotte’s Web” to us (that’s still my favorite book) and encouraged our creativity in writing and art.
Then as a student at St. Pius X High School in Festus, Missouri, I was an editor on the school newspaper, which inspired me to go on to earn a journalism degree at the University of Missouri. Four years of Latin classes at St. Pius solidified my knowledge of sentence structure and the roots of words, and participating in the debate team taught me to think – and write – logically, to weave my ideas together and prove my point, and to have a good opening and close to my arguments, an approach I try to take with the articles that I write. And my Teens Encounter Christ retreat there solidified my Catholic faith as being an essential part of who I am.
Later after I moved to Maryland, began working for the Catholic Standard newspaper and got married, my wife Carol and I sent our son Joe and our daughter Anna to Mary of Nazareth School in Darnestown, Maryland, a joyful place for them to gain a foundation in their faith and academics, with a wonderful community of families. They both then attended Our Lady of Good Counsel High School in Olney, Maryland, where Joe won an award at graduation for his writing, and he went on to earn a journalism degree at the University of Maryland and now works as a science writer for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Anna continued her Catholic education at St. Peter’s University in Jersey City, earning a nursing degree there, and she now works as a neonatal intensive care unit nurse.
In my four decades working at the Catholic Standard, I’ve written hundreds of articles about Catholic schools in The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington. For this Catholic Schools Week, I’d like to highlight three of them that exemplify what Catholic schools are all about, and the impact they have.
Perhaps the most moving graduation speech I ever heard was given by Jenifer Moreno, the salutatorian in the class of 2011, the first graduating class at Don Bosco Cristo Rey High School in Takoma Park, Maryland. In her speech, she addressed the dreams that immigrants share for a better life, which Catholic schools have helped make possible for generations of immigrant families from all over the world, and continue to do today.
Don Bosco Cristo Rey, a coeducational high school sponsored by The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington and the Salesians of Don Bosco, offers a rigorous academic curriculum for minority students from families with limited economic means, and it is part of the national Cristo Rey Network of 39 schools. The school is known for its Corporate Work Study Program where students gain experience working at leading Washington-area businesses, organizations and institutions and help pay for nearly one-half of their education costs. Since the school’s first graduating class in 2011, 100 percent of Don Bosco Cristo Rey’s graduates have gained college acceptances.
At her graduation, Moreno spoke emotionally about the opportunities she had gained at the school.
“I am the first person from both sides of my family to graduate from high school and go on to college,” she said. “Back home in El Salvador, education is a precious gift, because so few have the opportunity to achieve it.”
Moreno, who planned to attend West Virginia University that fall, added, “I am proud to be the first graduate in my family, because I have made the path easier for my siblings.”
Then she offered special thanks to her mom and dad, saying, “They have sacrificed so much for me. I don’t know how to repay them, except to go on to college and pursue a career in medicine.”
Another favorite Catholic school story unfolded in 2014 at Mary of Nazareth School in Darnestown, when about 500 Mary of Nazareth students, faculty and staff participated in the Ice Bucket Challenge on the school’s soccer field to honor Tom Schaefer, who had ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease). Schaefer and his wife Ursula had three children – Carson, Andrew and Kate – then attending Mary of Nazareth.
The event kicked off with a cooler of ice being dumped on Michael Friel, the school’s principal. That kicked off a cascade of rows of students, grade by grade, being doused by cups of ice and cold water.
Tom Schaefer, sitting in his wheelchair in the shade under a canopy set on top of the hillside, smiled and laughed as he watched the crowd of laughing children below shrieking and shivering. “I love it!” he said.
Then I saw something remarkable. In my article, I reported what happened next:
“One by one, all the Mary of Nazareth students and teachers walked up to Tom Schaefer to offer him encouragement. Some small children smiled and gave him two thumbs up, while other students shook or touched his hand, or offered little waves. The students greeted him with, ‘Hi, keep up the good fight,’ and ‘Stay strong,’ and ‘We love you,’ and ‘We’re praying for you.’ One girl smiled and said, ‘God bless you. Keep fighting!’ Shaefer, who had trouble speaking because of the disease, responded, ‘I will!’”
After the Ice Bucket Challenge at Mary of Nazareth School, Tom Schaefer expressed gratitude for the event and for the lessons the students would learn that day, noting, “It’s nice to be part of something bigger” than yourself. And speaking of the love and support his family received from the school community, he said, “It makes all the difference in the world.”
Tom Schaefer died of ALS in 2016, just before Carson graduated from the eighth grade at Mary of Nazareth School. Carson and Andrew went on to attend Gonzaga College High School in Washington, and Kate attended Stone Ridge of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda, Maryland.
At her husband’s funeral Mass in 2016, Ursula Schaefer said, “I have no doubt God led us to Mary of Nazareth for that reason, for that outpouring of compassion and love.”
I witnessed a similar outpouring of love from a Catholic school community in 2012, when two busloads of students, faculty and parents from Our Lady of Lourdes School in Bethesda traveled to the Cathedral of Mary our Queen in Baltimore for the Funeral Mass for Kathryn Truax, a beloved teacher at Lourdes who died at the age of 30 after a long battle with cancer.
Truax taught fifth grade and literature to middle school students at Our Lady of Lourdes School. When she was first diagnosed with breast cancer and was undergoing radiation and chemotherapy treatments, she didn’t miss a day of school, and David Long, the assistant principal at Lourdes, said she presided over “the happiest classroom” there.
Later, Truax was diagnosed with leukemia, and to show solidarity with their teacher, 71 boys attending Lourdes and another dozen recent graduates had their heads shaved. During a Skype communication in the school library with their teacher, the smiling and newly bald boys surprised Truax, who exclaimed, “Oh my goodness, you guys are rock stars!”
Later to honor Truax, dozens of girls from Our Lady of Lourdes had their hair cut and donated to Locks of Love for seriously ill children suffering hair loss. That fall, Truax had undergone a bone marrow transplant.
In an interview with the Catholic Standard while she was battling cancer, Truax spoke about how her students’ love and faith had given her hope, and the teacher said she learned something from them every day in the classroom. “The biggest thing is the kids,” she said. “They don’t just learn about the faith. They’re expected to live it.”
Offering a tribute to his colleague and friend before her Funeral Mass, David Long said, “Kate was there for you.”
And her students were there for their teacher, supporting and praying for her during her sickness and after her death.
These stories illustrate why I like to go back to Catholic school and write stories about our Catholic schools, students, teachers and principals. And sometimes I smile when I think about how my work clothes – often a white dress shirt, red tie and Navy blue slacks – are just like the school uniform that I wore as a student at St. Joseph’s School in Kimmswick, Missouri. Maybe in some ways, I’ve never left Catholic school, and that’s all right with me. – ZimmermannM@adw.org
(Postscript: After this column was posted, David Long, now the principal of Our Lady of Lourdes School, sent an email with this update about the school’s response to teacher Kate Truax’s life and death: “The 5k for our school is named for Kate, and six of her former students became Catholic school teachers, right here at Lourdes. We remain in close contact with her family.”)
