Celebrating a legacy

    This past Saturday I returned to Masontown Pennsylvania, one of my former pastorates, to join in the festivities marking the 100th anniversary of the establishing of the local Catholic School.  The committee had a wonderful banquet at the Church Social Hall that evening, with a Mass the next day.  The hall was filled with alumni and former teachers of both the grade school as well as the parish high school eventually named after the first pastor, Father Francis Kolb.  The high school is now closed.

     The history of All Saints School goes back to almost the beginning of the parish in 1908.  Father Kolb had a vision and the newly formed parish worked hard to bring that vision to fulfillment.  After the parish was established, they built a church and attached rectory.  The school building and convent was built in 1910/1911, with the school opening on September 25th, 1911.  The All Saints high school opened in 1926.  The photo of that accomplishment shows the complex on the "edge of town" with nothing but fields surrounding the buildings. The school was opened in 1911 and was staffed by the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart from of Mary from Scranton.

     One of the ladies sitting at my table at the banquet was a little upset.  She was from the high school class of 1942, had travelled from the Boston area, and was sure that she was the oldest in attendance.  But there was another, Virginia Tassone, who got the award for being the oldest - from the class of 1938.  I did my best to console the traveller from Boston.

     I recognized a friend from high school days - Roger Abinader - who began high school with us in the minor seminary but left and attended Kolb.  He came in from Chicago for the event.  One of our priests - Monsignor William G. Charnoki - is also a graduate and was in attendance.  His uncle served as pastor at All Saints before I arrived in 1986.

     It was a great celebration of Catholic education and the blessings of a long history.  All Saints School still is open, but now is a Regional Catholic School, continuing the rich traditions of these past 100 years.