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Saint Paul
Friday, March 29, 2024

School milestones

Three schools responded to The Catholic Spirit’s query of schools celebrating milestone years in 2015: Immaculate Conception in Columbia Heights, Bethlehem Academy in Faribault and Holy Cross Catholic School in Webster.

Immaculate Conception School,
Columbia Heights: 75

The preK-8 school opened in 1939 and graduated its first eighth-grade class in 1940.

To commemorate its milestone, it hosted an October alumni gathering and is planning an all-class reunion March 21.

Former Immaculate Conception teacher, Franciscan Sister Ruth Margaret Peterson, 84, was in its fourth grade the year it opened. She recalled that the Sisters of St. Francis of Sylvania, Ohio, the founding congregation, had to make due at first with an unfinished school building and no convent, living in classrooms.

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She joined the community at age 24 and returned to teach from 1986 to 1996. She now works in the parish’s faith formation department, and describes her homecoming as God bringing her “full circle.”

Rochester Franciscan Sisters also taught at the school.
Bethlehem Academy, Faribault: 150

At the request of St. Paul Archbishop Thomas Grace, himself a Dominican, five Sinsinawa Dominican sisters founded Bethlehem Academy in Faribault in 1865. The school (grades 7-12) is celebrating through July 2016, with an all-school reunion Aug. 7-9.

According to school lore, the sisters and their students were beneficiaries of an undocumented miracle attributed to St. Joseph, the school’s patron. They had run out of firewood during a harsh winter and were praying for help when a stranger arrived with wood. After stacking it, he was never heard from again, and no benefactor ever mentioned the gift.

Holy Cross Catholic School,
Webster: 10

Holy Cross Catholic School in Webster is planning an all-school reunion in October to commemorate
10 years in its school building.

Parish schools at Immaculate Conception in Lonsdale, St. Nicholas in New Market and Most Holy Trinity in Veseli consolidated in 1969 as LNMV Area Catholic Schools but continued to use all three buildings. In 2005, the preK-8 school changed its name to Holy Cross Catholic School and opened a new building.

 


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