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By Gretchen Keiser, Staff Writer
ATLANTA—Eleven students graduated from St. Anthony’s
School at the end of May, concluding 88 continuous years of Catholic elementary
education there.
While some alumni and parishioners of the West End parish hope the
school can reopen in the future, the kindergarten through eighth-grade school
has closed its doors for the foreseeable future.
The class of 2001 was made up of nine girls and two boys, Shameka
Clair, Nanielle English, Crista Farris, Aaron Harris, Janet Norris, Janine
Maloney, Derron Ridley, Andrea Sneed, Bauyen Than, Angelica Vaughn and Brittany
Windom, according to John Mayer, principal.
As they decide where to attend high school, admissions officers
said that five graduates have been admitted to Our Lady of Mercy High School,
Fairburn, and three to St. Pius X High School, Atlanta.
Following the May 30 graduation, and the closing of the doors at
the school, which was serving approximately 100 children, good times were
remembered as Sister Patricia Clune, CSJ, a former principal, accompanied by
Sister Anna Kearns, CSJ, also a former educator there, spoke at Mass at the
parish June 10.
In introducing the former principal, Father T.J. Meehan, pastor of
St. Anthony’s Church, said, “Although we’re closing (the school)
this year, all of us know it is our hope to reopen in a few years.”
“Part of the great history of St. Anthony’s School was
the work of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet” who were at the
school from September 1917 until 1993, he said, in introducing Sister Clune.
Now the principal of Queen of Angels School, Roswell, Sister Clune
said that “16 of the happiest years of my life” were spent as a
teacher and principal at St. Anthony’s and noted her order spent about 80
years staffing the school.
“We all learned many lessons from you,” she said to
parishioners. “In my years, I learned what an incredible depth of faith
you have . . . You taught me to lighten up . . . You have always been creative
problem-solvers . . . You always knew you were the first educators of your
children.”
“Now you are faced with change. St. Anthony’s is going
to close for the time being. Amidst that change we still stand on holy
ground,” Sister Clune said.
She added that as she looked around the church she saw 30 or so
graduates of St. Anthony’s School and challenged them to take the lead in
“re-imagining the new St. Anthony’s in three or four years.”
“It will be even better,” she said.
After Mass, the two nuns were embraced by former students and
parents.
Chaka Douglas, a 1988 graduate, went on to Pace Academy and then
Frederick Douglass High School in Atlanta, before graduating from Georgia Tech
with a degree in civil engineering. He will enter law school at Georgia State
University. He praised the education and the values he was given at St.
Anthony’s School.
“My foundation for everything I’ve done educationally
and socially was there,” he said. Sister Clune was principal for the nine
years he went to St. Anthony’s, Douglas said, and he has kept up his
friendships with fellow students.
After he graduated and entered private and public schools, he
realized the “significance of religion classes and being around students
and teachers who shared the faith. It was our community . . . They had a lot to
do with my educational and social and religious foundation.”
Siblings Chris and Alicia Stewart graduated in 1992 and 1988
respectively. Chris, who went on to graduate from the Lovett School in 1996 and
from Xavier University in New Orleans in 2000, is now studying for a
master’s degree in public health at Tulane University, New Orleans.
“It was a family learning environment” at St.
Anthony’s, he said, “learning in such a good teaching environment
where everybody cared. You’re not just a number.”
He added that he received lasting values while he was there.
“It gave you a solid foundation,” he said. “If you
don’t have solid core values, it won’t get you very far.”
His sister, who is teaching special needs children at Hapeville
Elementary School after graduating from Georgia Southern University in
Statesboro, said, “A lot of my teaching values I got from the teachers I
had at St. Anthony’s.”
Closing St. Anthony’s School “will be a loss for the
community,” said the second-year teacher. “The friends I made at St.
Anthony’s are still my friends today.”
Her father, Larry, who also greeted the visiting sisters, said he
and his wife, Brendel, “had kids there (at St. Anthony’s School) for
21 years.”
As their four children went through, he was president of the
school board and also the parish council and a member of the archdiocesan board
of education. “It was a great beginning for our kids,” he said.
“I have always been a proponent of Catholic schools. The
structure that you get, I don’t think you can beat it. One of the things
unique in the black community, they viewed Catholic school education as private
school education. That was the private school education for the inner city
because of the discipline, the tradition . . . All you could ask for was
getting a Catholic education.”
Jasmine Turk, a rising junior at Morris Brown College in Atlanta,
recalled being chosen “principal for the day” when she was in the
fourth grade at St. Anthony’s School and helping Sister Clune run the
school that day.
School students came to the parish for Mass on Fridays, she said,
and she grew up in her faith there as she grew up in years. Turk attended
summer camp at St. Anthony’s and became a Junior Daughter of St. Peter
Claver.
“Just being around the church all the time made me a part of
the church family,” she said. A collegian majoring in early childhood
education, she hopes to become a counselor. Turk still comes to Mass at the
parish rather than going to the campus Catholic center.
“It is just a big family. Everybody is concerned about your
grades. It is like having 2,000 different parents instead of only two. The
environment really cares about you. They know when you are graduating . . . You
could share your personal problems with someone in the church.”
St. Anthony’s School opened in 1912 with two Sisters of Mercy
teaching first and second grades. The first school building was located at 651
Ashby St. The second school building, on the site where the school now stands,
was given to St. Anthony’s in 1917 by Miss Hannah Kuhn. That year the
Sisters of St. Joseph began teaching at the school. The present school building
was built and dedicated in 1934, mainly through the efforts of the second
pastor, Msgr. Harry Clark. The parish was established in 1903.
According to a centennial history about the Sisters of St. Joseph,
St. Anthony’s School had seven grades from 1917 to 1932, added an eighth
grade in 1932 and a ninth grade in 1933. The first junior high graduation was
held in 1934.
Sister Clune, who left in 1991, was the last Sister of St. Joseph
to serve as principal of the school. The school was accredited in 1980 by the
Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, while she was principal.
In April the archdiocese announced that it would no longer provide
funding to St. Anthony’s School or Our Lady of Lourdes School, Atlanta. At
the same time, it was announced that Sts. Peter and Paul School, Decatur, would
become a regional Catholic school and that current students from St.
Anthony’s and Our Lady of Lourdes would be admitted to the regional
school.
The decision left St. Anthony’s and Our Lady of Lourdes
parishes free to continue the schools if they could fund them on their own.
While Our Lady of Lourdes has been striving to raise the necessary funds, St.
Anthony’s, which is on probation with the accrediting association because
necessary paperwork was not filled out, felt the hurdles could not be overcome
by this fall.
Lisa Ridley, a parent with two daughters at St. Anthony’s
School, said, “I’m saddened about everything that has happened. I am
still hopeful that the day will come that they can reopen.”
She signed her daughters up at Our Lady of Lourdes School, hoping
they could succeed in keeping the school open.
Describing herself as active in the school PTA, Ridley said her
daughters had good grades and good test scores while at St. Anthony’s.
“I just hope something will come out of it that is positive for
everyone,” she said.
“It was a family, nurturing environment in a Catholic
school,” said Phyllis Wright, a member of the parish, who brought her
daughter to St. Anthony’s School from Powder Springs. “All the
eighth-graders knew all the first-graders. All the teachers knew all the
kids.”
When she and her husband moved to Atlanta, they were introduced to
the parish by friends and “we have never left. We just try to support St.
Anthony’s School and Church,” Wright said.
A product of Catholic education herself, she said she and her
husband also work with their children at home on school work, but were pleased
with the school and were planning to enroll their kindergarten-age child there
until the school closed.
“I see so much potential for St. Anthony’s even now and
in the future. There was so much to offer,” Wright said. |
