‘Change is inevitable’: Alumni look back at soon-to-close metro-east Catholic schools
Mary Becker Schaefer remembers the time she collided with another girl while running on the playground at Cathedral Grade School in downtown Belleville in the 1960s.
The other girl lost part of a tooth and Schaefer got a gash on her forehead.
“She went to the dentist and I went to the emergency room to get stitches,” she said with a laugh.
For Schaefer and thousands of other metro-east residents, memories of their time at Catholic grade schools in Belleville came flooding back when Notre Dame Academy announced Wednesday that it was closing at the end of the school year.
Cathedral Grade School, which traces its roots to the 1840s, merged with the previously merged St. Mary’s School and St. Augustine of Canterbury School in Belleville to form the new, three-campus Notre Dame Academy in 2015.
Notre Dame Academy said the school was closing due to declining enrollment. Officials also said that St. Ann School in Nashville would close as well.
Memories of Cathedral Grade School
Schaefer graduated from Cathedral Grade School in the Class of 1966.
She recalls crowded classrooms and a total enrollment of about 1,000 students, which is in sharp contrast to the 81 currently enrolled at Notre Dame Academy.
Schaefer said her mother and maternal grandmother spent some years attending Cathedral. She and her four siblings all attended the school and her three children went there as well. And to top it off, her father volunteered for the school’s Wednesday work crew for 23 years after he retired.
“We go way back with that parish and that school,” she said.
Her proudest accomplishment was running the school’s intramural basketball league in the late 1980s. This was designed to give all students a chance to play basketball if they couldn’t make the school’s primary team.
“It was a very good program because kids got to play that never would have played,” she said. “It was a fantastic program.”
As far as the school closing, Schaefer said, “Well, all things come to an end. All good things come to an end and also all bad things.
“There were so many good times,” said Schaefer who worked as a buyer/planner for Marsh Stencil and its successors, Marconi and then Videojet Technologies in Belleville. “I made a lot of friends. There’s still some people that I still see.”
Staggered lunch and recess times
Jay Tebbe, the former president and publisher of the Belleville News-Democrat, graduated from Cathedral Grade School in 1972.
Tebbe met his wife, Diane, at Cathedral and their children attended school there.
“Catholic education has always been important to us and our family,” Tebbe said.
He remembers the “legendary” Sister Pacifica teaching him in kindergarten. She served the school for 58 years.
Tebbe also remembers the student body of 1,000 kids.
“We had so many kids there we had to stagger the lunches and the recesses,” he said. “It was a great experience for me.”
As an adult, Tebbe served on the Cathedral school board. He noted he doesn’t have the current financial information for the school but believes the administrators did the best they could.
“I know that it would be very, very difficult to pay teachers fairly to open the doors and heat the school and do all the things that you have to do when you have declining enrollment,” he said. “The downtown Belleville area is different than it was decades ago, too.
“It’s sad. I’m sad that it’s closing but at the same time change is inevitable. One-hundred seventy-five years is nothing to sneeze at.”
“I have lifelong friendships with individuals I went to grade school with. People that I see and know today from that period,” he said.
School merger
St. Clair County Chief Judge Andrew Gleeson attended St. Augustine School, which was one of the schools that merged with Cathedral Grade School in 2015.
“It’s sad to think that we can’t sustain that there aren’t enough students to sustain one school out of the three,” Gleeson said.
“There’s a certain sadness that exists because that way of life that we had as children in the Catholic school system really to a great extent doesn’t exist anymore.
“Our lives literally revolved around our parishes and schools, those of us who went to Catholic school at that time. Our social lives, our sports, our activities and they were all based on the school and the parish.”
Gleeson praised the late Monsignor Urban Kuhl for founding the St. Augustine of Canterbury Parish. The site was farmland when Kuhl was assigned to start the parish and school.
“And out of the ashes of that cornfield came St. Augustine’s,” Gleeson said.
Gleeson said he remembers how friends would identify with the various parishes they attended. There were sports rivalries between Cathedral, St. Mary’s and St. Augustine.
“It may be rose colored glasses but it was a pretty darn nice way to be educated,” he said.
St. Ann’s closure
Tammie Johnson, a parent of a student at St. Ann School, said in an email that families are saddened by the closing of the school, especially since they have been told as recently as November that the school would stay open.
“It was obvious that our enrollment had declined significantly,” Johnson wrote. “However, we hired a new principal last year and felt like we were moving in a positive direction. He had great ideas, was awarded a couple grants and made positive changes to the school.
“My emotions have been across the spectrum. The overwhelming feeling I have is one of sadness and loss. Many tears have been cried in my household and I am sure every household that is affected by the closure. After 75 years the doors at St. Ann School will close in May and will never reopen. The families, staff and children will never again have what we have now at St. Ann School.”
