By Priscilla Greear

Staff Writer

ATHENS--It was 1968 and the dream of Catholic education for Athens seemed to be fading like the sunset as parents and parishioners of St. Joseph's School desperately searched for a new religious order to staff the school following the withdrawal of the Missionary Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart.

The president of the parish board of education tape-recorded a meeting where parishioners pleaded in vain with the Sacred Heart superiors to remain at St. Joseph's. Yet school supporters were determined to keep the school alive and a PTA committee contacted and sent the tape to various religious orders, begging them to staff the school. Susan Gearhart, school secretary for 33 years, recalled the frantic search.

"We had contacted every religious order we could think about, trying to get somebody to come and staff our school. We were just trying to find somebody to come in before they left," she said. "We were taking the Catholic directory. Everybody was calling all over the place--friends they knew--we were just calling randomly anybody and everybody."

The transition time brought dark days.

"That was a sad time. It's hard to think that something you love and invested in and worked through is going to fail," she said.

But they made it. When a school representative contacted the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, one of its Georgia nuns showed interest. After reviewing the tape, they agreed to come to Georgia in 1969.

Athens’ first private school celebrated those and many other colorful moments along its 50-year timeline marking its golden anniversary in September 1999. Activities included a play on the school's history written by 12-year librarian, Brenda Cobb, a school spirit day and a family picnic. Archbishop John F. Donoghue rededicated the school.

That spirit of determination stems back to the St. Joseph's seed planted in the early 1900s by Father Harry Clark, the first resident priest of St. Joseph's Church. Father Clark dreamed of a Catholic school in Athens and, when building a new church and rectory, built the rectory large enough to house a school.

Cobb, who wrote the historic play, wrote in an article, "In 1913 ... a new, large church building and rectory were completed. Father's voice rang through each Mass with a frequent challenge to his parish, 'we must build it big enough to house a school one day.'"

Carefully nurturing the small seed, Father Walter Donovan, over three decades later, led the project to open the school. Staffed by the Missionary Sisters, it was opened in 1949 with 35 Catholic and non-Catholic students in grades one through six and a new chapter in Athens history was begun.

JoAn Lewis Salloum, an alumna of the second graduating class of nine students whose parents helped Father Donovan open the school, recalled the gratitude her family felt for St. Joseph's.

"Minorities always have a way of not being included in a crowd. I felt like I was going to be with a lot of children that understood because I was in the minority at my local school. In fact, I didn't really know but two or three that were Catholic in the school and then finding ourselves to be right next to the church (was nice)," she said. "It was nice because it was a real safe school and everybody knew everybody else. All the parents were concerned about all the children and they were all involved in the school."

It also provided an education to her two late brothers who had muscular dystrophy and were in wheel chairs, as public schools lacked accommodations for their disabilities.

"That was one of the things that my parents wanted --(for) my brothers to go to school. That was an opportunity for my two brothers and me to be together in school."

She recalled things like staying in the same rectory classroom with the same teacher for four years and watching parents who'd come in daily to the cafeteria, located in the basement, to serve lunch. Remembering how the school received a fair share of little rascals from the public schools, she added, "there were some discipline problems but the nuns were fairly strict."

Further rooting itself in Athens soil, St. Joseph's expanded in the 1950s to include seven grades. In the early 60s the historic Cobb Mansion, home of the founder of the University of Georgia law school, was purchased as a temporary convent.

Following the stormy 60s and the staffing transition, the St. Joseph family tree continued to grow under the new leadership of the Immaculate Heart of Mary sisters. While Vietnam protests rocked the nearby UGA campus, the sisters steadily worked to continue providing quality education to 200 students despite having a shortage of space and facing various building problems such as a leaking roof and faulty sump pump. Sister Judith Anne Kreipe, IHM, of Philadelphia, who served as principal and math teacher from 1969-79, said that the school held many a fund-raiser and had parents help with things like mopping the floor, as "we didn't have any money." She recalled how the chairperson of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools visited St. Joseph's and said the sisters, like hippies, were "counter cultural," because they provided an excellent education despite "a building that was falling apart."

As the community pulled together, Sister Kreipe said they formed a deeply spiritual community that she hasn't found elsewhere. Upon returning to St. Joseph's for the 50th anniversary, she noted that while the school has grown, the spirit is unchanged.

"I think the fact that we really had to work together and we needed each other and we needed God (fostered spirituality). This kind of experience brings out the best of people and their spirituality."

Her time at St. Joseph's was one of the happiest in her life.

"We had an awful lot of help from people. The parents that were there were wonderful in helping us meet the challenges," she said. "I just loved it there. I felt very much at home. I loved the whole Southern atmosphere. Everything over there really was wonderful. The Missionary Sisters had done a wonderful job. We were just trying to educate young people with a sense of values, with that (sense) there's more to life than making money."

Gearhart takes credit for Sister Kreipe and other Yankee sisters' appreciation of the South.

"I can remember teaching Sister Judith Anne Kreipe, when she came here, to fry chicken. They aren't going to eat grits. There are a lot of Southern little terms that they don't understand. We've come through and made Southerners out of them and sent them back up north to work on them."

By the 1980s it was time for another new building as the school expanded to eight grades with two sections each and the student body bulged out of its facilities and into trailers. Following an $800,000 community-wide fund drive, a new 12-classroom building for its 350 students was completed in 1984 on the site of Cobb Mansion, which had been moved to Stone Mountain Park. The original plans included 18 classrooms, but concern over money and finding the students to fill them scaled back construction. Completion of the project was one of Gearhart's proudest school moments.

"I was very proud the day we moved into the new building. It was like a dream come true. We worked so long and hard to finally have something," she said, adding that within a year they realized they needed more space.

Gearhart said the school has become more than a place.

"It's my second family. My children went here and it's just a general love," she said.

In the late 1980s the school was blessed with computers and in the early 90s, a middle school band, a newspaper and an after-school program formed. The school also hired on other office staff.

As St. Joseph's branches stretched further into Athens, principal Sister Teresa Ballisty, IHM, took her position in 1993, where she instituted a middle school and added, among other things, art and drama clubs, mobile classrooms, intramural sports, soccer teams and foreign language and computer classes for every student.

As enrollment tops 400 and the school considers another building expansion project entering the new millennium, Sister Ballisty said it's important for the community to remember the commitment, vision and dedication of those before them. As they look back, she said, they see the continuity of its Gospel commitment to Catholic education amidst the half-century's many changes. She said the school has become well-respected in the community and a center of evangelism.

"With the few Catholics that were present in the Athens community, there was a desire to have a place for worship and to educate children in the faith," she said. "Even though Christ had a handful of people at the beginning, it didn't stop him from making a church. It was a strong faith commitment that was very evident and is something that is very much a part of the parish and school today."

Cobb said that continuity was the theme of the school play, which shows children they have something on which they can truly depend.

And to Cobb, Father Clark is another steadfast presence. "I just think he's kind of been our guardian angel and (has) looked over us and been there all along with us. I think that truly he's one of our saints."