Editor’s Note: July 2017
By Mike Saucier
In October, Saint Mary’s Catholic High School will commemorate 100 years of education in Arizona. Its proud past will meet its present during a much-anticipated centennial gala at the Sheraton Grand Phoenix.
Not many institutions in Arizona can claim a century of existence. This central Phoenix school, the oldest Catholic high school in Arizona, has served a diverse population of students since its founding by the Sisters of the Precious Blood in 1917. Since then, over 10,000 young men and women have passed through its hallways and classrooms en route to a strong Catholic liberal arts education.
Education is an enterprise that touches everyone’s lives in the community. Because of the thousands of young people it has shaped since 1917, St. Mary’s is a living monument to the history of Phoenix. The students it has turned out over the past century walk a little taller because they’ve passed through its doors.
With generations of family members to count as alumni, St. Mary’s is an iconic symbol of Phoenix. It also helps that it has a storied past in athletics, turning out greats like Andre Ethier and Channing Frye, to name only a couple. The memories made there bind uncles, aunts, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and neighbors – forging an immutable community memory and marking its permanent place in the life and lore of Phoenix.
A school can meld a population. It can be a catalytic institution that can positively influence the socioeconomic outcomes of the children it serves. It can infuse a sense of pride. St. Mary’s does all of that. In seeking a deeper understanding of the meaning and purpose of education, St. Mary’s is rooted in the ancient tradition of western civilization, an approach that is ordered toward happiness. In other words, St. Mary’s isn’t some automaton of a school churning out students who only understand competition and getting ahead. The students also understand that “man was not created just for career and college; he was created for happiness,” as the school’s magazine states. They teach students how to fulfill their purpose, how to find happiness.
The high school or college experience is something that we tend to see fully in retrospect. We don’t realize until far later that it was such a pivotal moment in our lives. That is almost certainly true for the thousands of students who got their start in life in the classrooms of St. Mary’s.
