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Fighting to save North and Dougherty

When memories & tradition aren't enough

Demonstrators gathered over the weekend at Cardinal Dougherty High School. Here, organizer Steve Schmidt addresses the crowd. ( April Saul / Staff )
Demonstrators gathered over the weekend at Cardinal Dougherty High School. Here, organizer Steve Schmidt addresses the crowd. ( April Saul / Staff )Read more

AT HIS HOME in Port Richmond, John Conway - a student who helped organize emotional rallies against the Archdiocese of Philadelphia's plan to shut down Northeast Catholic High School for Boys - was talking about one of his favorite teachers.

"His name is Father Kilty," the 15-year-old sophomore said. "He's the wisest man I know."

Conway said Kilty teaches Latin and French during the school year and Greek over the summer.

But John Conway isn't the only one in his family who knows Father Kilty, a longtime teacher at North Catholic, as the school is known.

John's father, Michael Conway, graduated from North in 1991; his uncle, Ray Pazdunkiewicz 3rd, in 1996; his maternal grandfather, Ray Pazdunkiewicz, in 1969; and his father's stepdad, Joe Christensen, is Class of 1974.

"I remember Father Kilty," Christensen, 53, chimed in as the family gathered at the Conway home on Edgemont Street near Ontario. "He used to live down on Agate Street."

It is this kind of legacy - with North Catholic, having educated generations of the same families in the "river wards" of Port Richmond, Frankford, Kensington and Fishtown since it was founded in 1926 - that explains why so many students and alumni say, no matter what, they will fight to save their schools.

"It's heartbreaking," Frank Dougherty, a North Catholic, alumnus, Class of '59, said of the Oct. 8 announcement that both North, on Torresdale Avenue, near Erie in Frankford, and Cardinal Dougherty, on Second Street near Chelten in Olney, will close next June, due to sharply declining enrollments.

"It's not just a sadness at the closing of a Catholic high school, but for the city of Philadelphia," said Dougherty, a former Daily News reporter.

"We've got this mosaic, or quilt, called the city of neighborhoods, and this is just another rip in the fabric of the city," said Dougherty. Over the years, North Catholic has "taken in many river-ward kids and turned them into gentlemen."

John Conway, who was seated in a living room that just happens to be decorated in the red-and-white of North Catholic, put it this way: "I heard stories about some of my teachers from my dad long before I got to North."

"I expected to grow up and graduate and one day see my own kids go there," said John. "North Catholic is a great school."

The archdiocese said many Catholic families have moved out of the city and with an average high school tuition of $5,100 a year, it is tough to compete with free, public charter schools.

In the block where the Conways live, many of the rowhouses are decked out in autumn colors for Halloween. The Conway house has orange and gold leaves strung along the porch railing, but the pumpkin and scarecrow were taken down from the front window, Donna Marie Conway, John's mother, said.

In their place she put up two small signs: A placard with a drawing of a Falcon (the school's mascot) that says "Save North Catholic" and a red North Catholic pennant.

It was about 4 p.m on Thursday, Oct. 8, that the announcement went up on the archdiocese's Web site that both North Catholic and Cardinal Dougherty are closing. That's when North Catholic's sophomore class president called John Conway to ask him to help organize a rally.

"I created a Facebook group - it now has more than 3,300 members - and started calling and texting classmates," John said.

"In two hours, he'd gotten 200 people to rally outside the school," Donna Marie said.

The group was protesting outside North by 7 p.m., the very hour that Cardinal Justin Rigali and Auxiliary Bishop Joseph McFadden, head of Catholic education, made it official in a press conference at the archdiocese Center City offices.

Conway and his mother have not only written letters to archdiocese officials, but they've ordered "Save North Catholic" T-shirts to raise money for the school.

In his letter to McFadden, John Conway wrote: "The Archdiocese can say it is a final decision all they want, but it is not that simple. . . . We can save this school. There is a great alumni and current student body willing to do whatever is necessary for North.

"Never has our motto seemed so relevant to me: 'We have taken hold and we will not let go.' "

That motto in Latin, Tenui Nec Dimittam, translated literally to "I have taken hold [of the faith] and I will not let go," was also written on one of the many protest posters John and his mother made for the rally that first night.

"I do see the reality [of the dropping enrollment]," John's dad, Michael Conway said. "But I'm feeling it for him. They can make all of the business and financial and demographic reasons they want, but this is a place my son loves."

John's grandfather, Ray Pazdunkiewicz, showed off a photo of himself from 1969 and joked that he hasn't changed much.

"It was a good school," Pazdunkiewicz said. "It was what you made of it. It was great to meet all kinds of people there."

In the days after the announcement, North Catholic students protested several days in a row, in the morning before school and again after school.

And, on Saturday, hundreds of students, parents and alumni of Cardinal Dougherty High School stood in a drizzling rain outside locked gates in Olney to vow to fight to "Save C.D."

The Cardinal Dougherty alumni, like North Catholic's, include many successful graduates who went on to achieve prominence in Philadelphia. For example, Seamus McCaffery, justice on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, graduated from Dougherty in 1968.

But the archdiocese cannot continue to operate "half-empty buildings," Bishop McFadden said.

North Catholic has only 551 students in a school for 1,700. And at Cardinal Dougherty, with room for more than 2,000 students, enrollment is at only 642.

Donna Farrell, an archdiocese spokeswoman, said the closings are painful for officials too.

McFadden once protested in 1975 when his alma mater, St. Thomas More in West Philadelphia, was being closed. And, Richard McCarron, secretary for Catholic education, graduated from Cardinal Dougherty and taught at North Catholic for years, Farrell said.

"It's because people care so much that this is so hard," she said.

As a life-long Port Richmond resident, Donna Marie Conway had heard rumors that North Catholic would close, even back when she was in grade school at St. George Parish School.

Both her children went to the same school: John graduated from St. George and her daughter, Julianne, is a sixth-grader there.

Donna Marie, 33, said she is fighting for the school because she knows how much it means to her son and her family school.

"During his freshman year, he was only there a few days when he said to me, 'Mom, North Catholic is the best place on earth,' " she recalled.

"I thought he was joking at first," she said. "But he said, 'Mom, you don't understand how great it is. There's school spirit and there's the camaraderie . . . .' "

As other North Catholic parents noted, Donna Marie Conway said it seems unfair the archdiocese is building new schools in the suburbs while closing schools in the city.

Her family doesn't plan to move to the suburbs, she said. Port Richmond is home.

"My ancestors got off the boat, not too far away, on the Delaware. They settled here in the 1900s, and we're still here to this day," said Donna Marie Conway, 33.

Her parents live "around the corner" on Thompson; her daughter's school is three blocks away.

It's the kind of community where residents who may visit the Columbia Social Hall on Almond Street, near Tioga, are reminded of their roots becaue the Catholic cemetery, with hundreds of Polish names, is just across the street. And you can hear the bells ringing from St. George Catholic Church on Venango, at Edgemont, several times a day.

"I am a practicing Catholic . . . and I'm raising my children in the faith. I'm not just sending them to Catholic schools because I think it's a better education, but also for the religious aspect of it.

"That's why this is so hard."

John Hanejko, a retired Philadelphia police officer, is president of the North Catholic Alumni Association, Class of 1965.

Like young John Conway, Hanejko said the alumni isn't giving up easily on North; many are reaching out to the archdiocese to find a way to save the school.

"We're not pessimistic," Hanejko said. "We're not overly optimistic; we're realistic. But it's not over."