100 Years in the Making: Ascension School

The big kickoff is just around the corner! The Centennial planning committee has been busy, very busy.

We have tried hard to stay on task but as we have gone thru the various stages of the planning process, we have been side tracked on many, many occasions - stories of roller skating in the gym, Mission Day, Run-a-Thon, variety shows, sock hops, ‘insert your story here’ and you know how it goes. It is these stories that have really made the centennial events come to life.

We look back upon our years at 601 Van Buren; our teachers, our classmates, our principals, our pastors and we smile. Such great times!

Whether you are an alumnus, a parishioner, or a parent of an alum, we hope to see you the weekend of June 22-24 and throughout the Centennial year.

On Friday, June 24, we will kick off the weekend with the annual golf outing at Big Run Golf Club.  What better way to reconnect with your classmates than hitting the links?  Register soon for the best choice of tee times. 

Saturday morning we’ll stage a 5k run/walk through south Oak Park.  We hope you’re inspired to assemble your classmates and bring some of your stories back to life as you travel through the neighborhood. Even if you aren’t running, join us at the school courtyard early Saturday – we’ll have free milk & long johns.  How many of you remember this First Fridays treat? 

The All-Class Reunion is the main event for alumni, starting with the Centennial Mass and followed immediately by a Chicago-themed buffet dinner in the school.  Walk through the halls with old friends and find out what they have been up to.  Our current student body will have decorated the halls with memorabilia that will bring back memories of your Ascension days.  We’ll have a photographer on hand to capture your class for posterity.

Sunday is one big family party so be sure to bring the kids!  We’ll bless the newly laid memorial bricks at noon; music, games, great food will follow. 

As excited as we are to have you come to reconnect with classmates, family and friends and reminisce, we are equally excited for you to see what Ascension is today: a strong, vibrant school, still passionate about community as has always been the Ascension way.

See you in June!

Even More Localized Local History

My husband and I were at a graduation party early in June and did not know anyone other than the graduate and her mother. 

We had dinner with four other people; one of the women looked vaguely familiar to me but I could not place her. Someone, it might have been me, mentioned Ascension. The man sitting across the table from me said, “I went to Ascension.”

I sometimes wonder what people think when they see me react to this casual statement. I know that my posture changes, my voice rises, for all I know my face becomes more animated. I probably seem to pounce. “Did you? Are you getting mailings from us?” (This “us” before the alum has a clue who I am.) If they respond that they are getting mailings from “us” I tell them those mailings are from me, and then introduce myself with what must be obvious excitement.

No, we were not separated at birth. I am just the keeper of the alumni database at Ascension School. And if you are an alum, you, unaware as you might be, are a rock star in my database.

“Did you? Are you getting mailings from us?” For the first time ever, the person of whom I asked this question got excited, too. “I am,” he said. “Actually, my wife developed the first database for the Ascension Alumni Association in the ’90s.”

Of course she looked familiar. I was talking to Everett Bell (’76) whose wife, Laura, had indeed put together an Access-based program for Gene Kunkel (’52), Beth Dougherty (’86), Joan Pollard Waldron (’72), Katie Ryan McCahill (’72), friend Juel Marifjeren, et al, who had arranged two all-school reunions at the end of the last century and gathered information about some two thousand Ascension alums. This dedicated group of volunteers was the proud keeper of Ascension’s history until 2001 when the Ascension Development Office opened and assumed responsibility for alumni records.

I had never met Everett, but Laura had met with me several times, very generously, to help me learn how to manage the database. We used Laura’s program until 2004 when a school family helped us upgrade to a software program designed to help track gifts, events and relationships. But Laura, Gene and friends gave us an enormous head start because of their commitment to Ascension and the relationships they or their friends had developed there.

And we have grown because of the commitment of many more alumni:  those who have helped find “lost” classmates, those who have planned reunions, those who have shared photos, memories and general information over the years.  From the approximate 2,000 alums for whom we received records in 2001, we now have nearly 3,000.  (Sounds small to you?  Remember, we find people one at a time – and we lose them that way, too, when they move between mailings and we don’t receive a forwarding address.)  We are also building relationship files, tracing the siblings, the parents, grandparents – whatever you tell us about these folks, we record it.

So thank you again, Laura.  And Gene, Beth, Joan, Katie.  Juel, continue to rest in peace.  All you who are among the found – we’re so glad we know where you are. And you, all who are still missing – please get in touch!

Local History

Many years ago I came across a small article in the Chicago Tribune with a list of things
that someone had determined would lead to a meaningful life. I clipped the article from
the paper and for many years it hung on a bulletin board in my office at work. At some
point, in moving offices or leaving the job, the list was misplaced and all that remains of
it is my memory of one item that seemed odd to me at the time: Learn your local history.

I think of this often now as I am immersed in Ascension lore. I have lived in Oak Park
since 1988, which makes me a newcomer by Oak Park standards. A Wisconsite, I
arrived in Illinois by a circuitous path through Florida and Alabama and with a checkered
resume. Never would I have foreseen my position as the keeper of the history of a
Catholic elementary school in a Chicago suburb. Understand, I do not claim that
history as my own and I welcome anything that any of you can tell me to correct my
misapprehensions or fills in the myriad gaps in what we know. But I take seriously my
responsibility for keeping it.

And I have found out how it makes my life meaningful. It links me to the past in a most
immediate way: it connects my life with other people who shared a way of looking,
literally, at the world around them. Bill Kevil (’33) looked out his classroom windows to
check on the model-T he bought with classmate Bob McDaniels in eighth grade. Chuck
Collins (’32) told me about watching the construction of the church in 1927—fascinated
by the workers throwing hot rivets up to the men on the scaffolding. The parish offices
are in the former convent so my office was home to one of the Ursulines, one who left all
good will in the walls. All of us who dwell there currently agree that the Ursulines were
happy at Ascension—good spirits abound.

We share these stories with anyone who has the patience for them—shocking but true,
not everyone shares this obsession—but particularly we share them with students. They
have heard stories of how an alum’s death in Vietnam affected his family, making both
the war and the family more real to them. They honor the memory of Tim Carpenter
(’71) every spring in their conjecture about who will win the Carpenter Award this year.
How much deeper are their experiences of Ascension, knowing that our gym was Mecca
in the Oak Park basketball world of the 1970s? Knowing that there is still a boxing ring
from the 1950s, carefully stored in the gym basement? (There are rumors, squelched
annually it seems, of a swimming pool there, too.)

I hope that their opportunity to hear these stories makes a difference to them. I know that
the school is stronger for our having mined, even superficially, some of its rich history.
And I know that my own life has been enhanced by the chance to learn about your lives
at Ascension. Thank you.