Web site chronicles Catholic high school days from long ago

Published: 2008-04-28

NEW YORK (CNS) -- If you're a 1943 graduate of Immaculate Conception Academy in Davenport, Iowa, and you lost your class photo, you're in luck. Rita Piro has a copy. In March Piro launched catholicschooldays.com, a Web site documenting U.S. Catholic high schools from about 1900 to the present day. The bulk of the site is devoted to memorabilia from schools that have closed, like yearbooks, newspaper articles and vintage photographs. Piro came up with the idea in 2007 after writing a book on the history of her alma mater, the Mary Louis Academy in Jamaica Estates, N.Y., where she chairs the foreign languages department. "What has struck me the most is that people have all had the same reaction: Their experience has been so different from what is portrayed," she said. "Catholic school was such an important thing, and they'll say, 'If it weren't for them I wouldn't be the person I am,' rather than, 'I remember this one, she used to hit me.' That's what you hear from the stereotypes," said Piro. She said she has listed every Catholic high school that existed in 1965, and about 90 percent of those before 1965.

Copyright (c) 2008 Catholic News Service /U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service .