Celebrating 80 Years of Educational Excellence in the Xaverian

VOL. XX NO. 1 SPRING 2012 CRYSTAL HI-LI TES CelebratingCelebrating 8080 yearsyears ofof EducationalEducational ExcellenceExcellence inin thethe XaverianXaverian TraditionTradition malden catholic high school magazine Today’s Outstanding Students…Tomorrow’s Outstanding Leaders CRYSTAL HI-LITES Headmaster Mr. Edward C. Tyrrell Principal Brother Thomas Puccio, C.F.X. Director of Institutional Advancement Mr. Robert J. McCarthy, P 2007 Director of Advancement Operations and Constituent Relations Mrs. Jean Campbell Assistant Director of Advancement for Annual Giving Ms. Carolyn Rolfe Archivist/Editor Brother Edward Bozzo, C.F.X. Advancement Office Assistant Ms. Lisa Schlosberg Advancement Office Volunteers Ms. Patricia Chisholm 1965 Brother Robert J. Green, C.F.X. 1964 Mrs. Nicole O’Callaghan, P 2014, 2015 Design Sands Creative Group Crystal Hi-Lites A publication of Malden Catholic High School, a Xaverian Brothers Sponsored School since 1932. Comments and contributions to this publication, as well as updates should be directed to: Advancement Office Malden Catholic High School 99 Crystal Street Malden, MA 02148 781.475.5331 [email protected] Address Changes For parents whose son(s) are away at col- lege or have new addresses, please send us a note if you prefer that future editions of Crystal Hi-Lites, other publications, and mail be sent to them directly. Please email address changes to [email protected]; and we will be sure to update our records. HEADMASTER’SLETTER TABLE OF CONTENTS Dear Alumni and Friends of Malden Catholic, With this first 2012 edition of Crystal Hi-Lites, we proudly announce that Malden Catholic is embark- 4 Feature Story- ing on a period of growth and renewal. Much has changed in the eighty years since the Xaverian Brothers arrived in Malden to teach local boys, and yet much has stayed the same. As they did then, 80th Anniversary our young men need an environment that challenges them to reach their potential, stretch for new 13 On Crystal Street heights, and assume a mantle of respect and responsibility to others. As we celebrate our 80-year anniversary, we are grateful for God’s continued blessings on our school community. 17 Alumni News Moving forward, being mindful of our Catholic, Xaverian mission, we have announced a Strate- gic Plan to provide our students an updated facility and enhanced academic program designed 20 Advancement to respond to the world’s need for young men of character, intellectual excellence and faith. We Office News are making solid progress on our plan, having secured essential, sufficient funding to completely 22 Acknowledgements upgrade our outdated heating and cooling system, which had been originally installed when the building was built in 1968. You may also have seen the architectural renderings of the re-devel- Back Upcoming Events opment plan we are pursuing jointly with the City of Malden for South Broadway Park. Viewed as part of our campus, the park is set to open September 2013. It will include tennis courts and additional soccer, lacrosse and baseball fields. As you may realize, this is only the first step toward campus enhancements designed to significantly improve the Malden Catholic educational environment. Our plan also provides for a secure future, building an endowment that will solidify Malden Catholic’s excellence in faculty, scholarship, program, and the ongoing maintenance of facilities. Across the United States, educators and students celebrated Catholic Schools Week during the last week of January and beginning of February. This year’s theme, “Catholic Schools: Faith. Academics. Service,” was a particularly appropriate one for us as we reflected on the impact that Malden Catholic has had in providing a values-added education for young men during the past eight decades. By attending to the needs of our students in that “familial” atmosphere which we recognize as MC and by demonstrating the value of our interpersonal relationships, Malden Catholic faculty and staff members have always been the most significant ingredient in the suc- cessful formula of an MC Education. In addition to the popular feature known as “Class Notes,” this edition of Crystal Hi-Lites will give you the opportunity to take a look back over the past eighty years and then to see where Malden Catholic is today. The “history” will highlight some of the events and activities of those decades and will attempt to include the names of many of those faculty and staff members who shared their energies and talents with MC boys. We hope that the account will trigger memories of your Malden Catholic years, and allow you to formulate the only true history of our school, the history that you lived and “wrote.” Certainly, your own story-telling will include some of the Students light candles at Mass events and the characters mentioned. As appealing as the nostalgic past can be, our school is committed to uncompromising excellence now and in the future. Our Strategic Plan is our roadmap to “future excellence.” As part of the Plan, we launched a program to introduce MC students to the future of engineering and are adding two new courses for the coming school year: Engineering Design Concepts and Robotics. The Xaverian Brothers say, Concordia Parvae Res Crescunt, or “In Harmony Small Things Grow.” Each step forward in our plan, including the new Engineering Program, is a small step toward making Malden Catholic a harmonious school of uncompromising excellence, a school whose students contribute to the fabric of Boston, of Massachusetts and beyond. As you’ll read in this issue, Malden Catholic continues to provide our country and our world with men of skill, energy, faith and compassion: it is a legacy developed and nurtured since 1932. This winter has generated considerable energy in the classrooms and athletic facilities of Malden Principal Br. Thomas Puccio, CFX, Bishop Catholic, and we are already eager for the events of spring. We will have the honor of acknowl- Peter J. Uglietto, and Headmaster Ed Tyrrell edging the accomplishments of Dick Connolly, class of 1957, at the 80th Anniversary Gala to be held in Boston at the Sheraton on April 26. We encourage you to attend this important event for Malden Catholic. Visit our website at www.maldencatholic.org for details or contact Jean Campbell at 781.475.5331. Cardinal Sean O’Malley, OFM CAP will be the main celebrant of our annual Baccalaureate Liturgy on Friday, May 18, and the next day we will welcome another class to the ranks of Malden Catholic Alumni. Thank you for your continued support of the work my colleagues and I strive to do on behalf of the current generation of Malden Catholic students. It is our honor and our pleasure to do so. Sincerely, An Engineering student nears completion on Edward C. Tyrrell his project Headmaster CRYSTAL HI-LITES 3 80TH ANNIVERSARY This year, Malden Catholic High School will complete mid-1840s the Brothers had opened their doors to the eighty years of service to the young men of Malden and children of their local parish, the poorest in Bruges, a city many other cities and towns north of Boston. This article is whose population in those years numbered 46% receiving designed to inform readers about the major events of the some kind of welfare aid. One or two other Belgian schools school’s eight decades and to remind alumni and friends followed. Then, in 1848, an opportunity arose to serve the about some of the adults who established relationships of children of the industrialized slums of England. care and challenge with the students entrusted by parents to them. These mentors and friends encouraged each The first group of Brothers came to the United States in student to contribute to the development of the fraternal 1854. The Xaverian pioneers in America opened Catholic community sometimes called the Malden Catholic Family. elementary schools for German and Irish immigrant boys in Louisville, Kentucky, and in that century other schools The story actually began a century earlier in the Nether- and childcare institutions in the eastern part of the United lands where a young man named Theodore James Ryken States. American Catholic Bishops had determined that experienced some kind of humiliation which encouraged parishes needed to establish grade schools in order to pro- him “to turn to God, to fall in love with God, and then to tect the Catholic faith in the hostile environment of public place myself in God’s service.” After a decade of seeking education of the time. The Brothers’ first school in New just what God wanted of him, Ryken found himself in England was established in St. Patrick’s Parish in Lowell the 1830s as a volunteer teacher of Christian doctrine and in 1881, with other schools following in Lawrence, Somer- trades to Native Americans in several states of the east- ville, East Boston, Worcester and Danvers. ern half of the United States. Seeing the needs of both the young people of America’s forests and those in the fast- Before the late 1920s, most of the Xaverian schools were developing immigrant neighborhoods of its cities, he felt grade schools for young men who would likely be re- that God wanted him to organize a community of vowed quired to find employment after finishing the eighth laymen who would dedicate their lives and their talents grade. There was a real sense of providing all the essential to God as trained missionary educators in service to these knowledge and skills for a Catholic male citizen of the often marginalized boys. United States. By the end of the first quarter of that century, it became clear that more and more youngsters would be able to continue their formal education beyond grade eight, and secondary schools (like Malden Catholic) began to be opened.

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