Thanks to modern technology and the sheer determination of five members of its final graduating class, a beloved all-girls Catholic High School bridged a half-century gap to unify its alumni in a celebration of faith and academics.
The 1972 graduating class of Cathedral Academy, Camden, held a reunion luncheon Sept. 10 in Tre Famiglia Ristorante, Haddonfield. The event was made possible by nearly a year of modern sleuthing by the quintet of graduates, who worked diligently to find alumnae and former staff members.
Music from the 1960s and 1970s served as backdrop at the luncheon, which also featured memorabilia from the school, a memorial to deceased members and a directory of current contact information to assure graduates might stay in touch.
“Our school was loved. It was our Camelot,” said Marianne Valvardi Dwyer, one of the five tasked to find and notify graduates of the milestone event. Quickly naming the school’s mascot (the Tigers), school colors (black and gold), even their class song (“The Impossible Dream”), Dwyer also expressed her admiration of the school’s academics and pride in its neighborhood outreach.
“I loved being in a women’s high school, and my parents were committed to send me to a Catholic high school that taught college prep classes,” she recalled. “We were children of the ‘70s who cleaned up Broadway on the very first Earth Day, and tutored kids from Holy Name School, Camden.”
Cathedral Academy, located on Seventh Street near Market Street in Camden, closed its doors permanently in June 1972. The all-girls secondary Catholic school had opened six years earlier at the former site of Camden Catholic High School; factors attributing to its closure were the rising cost of tuition, the declining numbers of religious teachers from the Baltimore-based School Sisters of Notre Dame who staffed the school, and the rising popularity of coeducational secondary education in the Camden Diocese, reports show. The building now serves as the Diocese’s Pastoral Center.
The reunion brought together nearly 38 attendees from the class of 75 graduating students as well as three staff members; surviving lay teachers and clergy were also invited, as were any women once in the class of 1972 who concluded their education elsewhere. In order to locate and communicate with women spread across 12 different states across the country, many methods were utilized, explained alumna Margaret McBride.
“The organizing committee relied on genealogy to locate classmates, a private Facebook page, email, Zoom, Google surveys, and a state-of-the-art reunion website to organize the celebration,” McBride said. “The search for classmates was so successful that the reunion committee joked about hanging up a new shingle!”
McBride said members not able to attend arranged for live FaceTime calls to participate with their classmates.
In addition, committee member Ellen Kerr Potter compiled a trove of pictures from each classmate into a movie, for which she promised, “You’ll need tissues!”
For more information, or to contact members of the Cathedral Academy Class of 1972, email Potter at EKERRPOTTER72@gmail.com.
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