News
Parish Says Farewell To Old St. Agnes School
By Muriel J. Smith
ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS - The gracious old St. Agnes School, a brick and concrete two-story building constructed in 1924, goes under the wrecking ball Monday morning, (April 13) but it leaves behind memories, laughter, joy, tears, and even its doors, transoms and windows to help build another school in another place.
More than 300 parishoners, friends, and graduates of the kindergarten through eighth grade school attended a special Mass at St. Agnes Church, Sunday, before gathering in the Hesse Parish Center for a reception and a final farewell to the building, which is being torn down because of deterioration and making room for a grotto to enhance the church grounds.
"We weren't going to let it go without a proper farewell," said former Mayor Helen Marchetti, a graduate of the school, a neighbor who lived a stone's throw from it all its life, and a lady who loves parties in the first place.
"There are too many memories, too much fun, too many lives touched by this school and its teachers to let it go without a fond goodbye," she said.
Ms Marchetti headed a volunteer committee comprised of other graduates Paul Anderson, Rose Kelly, Gloria Lorri and Judy Grasso, as well as Katie Grimm, who wrote a poem about the school, and Rose Sodon, a long-time supporter of the parish. During the reception preparations, at the mass, and during the reception, they joined others in sharing favorite memories of the building.
"Sue Caffery, also a graduate, found a school bell for me," Ms. Marchetti said, "and I hid it in the podium at the Center until the right time. Then I rang it just like it was rung to call us to class back in the 1930s when I attended." And, she added, it simply wasn't true what Father Bob Tynski, the pastor, said jokingly during the homily at Mass. "It's true there were old report cards at the Center during the reception, and it's true there were some of mine. But it isn't true that mine had all D's," she laughed. Reflecting, she added, "well, maybe he wasn't far from it. My brother was the smart one. I had to work for everything I got." Ms. Marchetti's brother, John, died in the 1990s.
Anderson was a 1960 graduate of St. Agnes, and spoke about the years he spent at the parochial school and how it impacted his life. Phil Dinkelberg, who graduated with Ms Marchetti in 1939, wasn't able to attend; he was recently injured shoveling snow and is in rehabilitation at the Care One Care Center.
Each of the graduates through the decades had special memories of the Sisters of St. Francis of Stella Niagara, N.Y., who staffed the school.
Those were the days, some remembered when the nuns couldn't leave the convent unaccompanied. "My brother and I even had to walk them to Mary Jones' store," Ms Marchetti said, referring to a sweet shop half a block away. Others remembered the blue skirts and white blouses early students wore as uniforms, some remembered the Highlands kids who came by train to attend the nearest parochial school, getting on at Bay Ave. or Waterwitch for the three-mile trip to the Atlantic Highlands railroad station. Some could name four generations of families who all attended the school.
The salvage company demolishing the building had already removed solid wood doors, transoms, banisters, and other materials from the building, to be used by others in new construction of schools and other buildings.
Do-It-Yourself Network filmed the removal of the artifacts, and the video will be shown on television sometime in the future. The basketball hoops went to Mother Theresa Regional School, the parochial school that accommodates students from St. Agnes and Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Highlands, where that parochial school was closed two years ago.
