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Ceremonies begin Lauralton Hall centennial

Posted on Sep 26, 2005

By Frank Juliano, September 24, 2005
©2005CONNECTICUT POST (Used with permission)

MILFORD - How do you say thank you for the gift of knowledge, guidance, values and community?

The 430 current Lauralton Hall students did it simply and tastefully during a convocation Friday morning that opened the centennial celebration of the private high school.

Mary Albano, the student council president from Trumbull, presented a book in which each student had written a thank you message to the Sisters of Mercy on behalf of themselves and the several thousand young women who have gone through Lauralton before them.

The book was given to Sister Dorothy Synkewicz, one of four nuns on the current faculty, as a representative of the Sisters of Mercy in Connecticut.

Lauralton Principal Ann Pratson said the heartfelt messages in the book “will make you cry. This was something that the students did not have much time to prepare, and they did it beautifully.”

Albano, a senior, said it was easy to find the words to write. “I know the four Sisters of Mercy on the faculty now; I’ve seen how they’ve created a warm, loving community here.”

Other students and faculty members went to St. Mary’s Cemetery to place flowers on the graves of Sister M. Augustine Claven, the school’s founder, and 18 other Sisters of Mercy buried there.

Deceased alumnae were remembered too. Their names were written on a scroll presented as one of the offertory gifts at the Mass for students in the fieldhouse.

The Rev. Timothy Devino celebrated the liturgy, using lyrics from the Broadway musical “Wicked” in his homily. “Who knows if I have been changed for the better, but because I met you I have been changed for the good,” the Jesuit priest quoted.

The campus has been made holy by the women who have walked the grounds, Devino told the students. “They then went out and changed the world for good, and you must also.”

The school’s Advanced Vocal Ensemble performed the hymns, including “Our Lady of Knock,” a tribute to Catherine McAuley who founded the Sisters of Mercy in Ireland in 1841.

The order opened its Connecticut convent in 1852. Fifty three years later, Claven, the mother superior at the time, purchased the High Street campus. Classes at the Academy of Our Lady of Mercy, as Lauralton Hall is formally known, began on Sept. 12 that year.

Barbara C. Griffin, Lauralton Hall president, reminded the students that the school was preparing young women for college right from the start, at a time when many women didn’t even get to go to high school.

Rosemarie Jeffries, a member of the Sisters of Mercy and president of Georgian Court University in New Jersey, used her keynote address to challenge the Lauralton students.

“We believe as Catherine McAuley did, that women will make the difference,” Jeffries said. “Would women leaders have handled the Iraqi war or the response to [Hurricane] Katrina differently?

“It’s not what you know, but how you use what you know that will make the difference,” she said. “The generation I represent looks to you to give us new answers.”

The ceremony concluded with the raising of a flag that had flown over the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 12, the actual anniversary. U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3 and 1960 graduate, arranged for the flag.

Two Milford students, senior Courtney Donovan and freshman Molly Yardley, said the all-girl Catholic high school is a supportive, welcoming place that encourages women leaders.

Although Friday’s observances continued with a Mass for alumnae celebrated by Archbishop Henry Mansell and a formal dinner, the students were dismissed at noon.

“I get to do a lot of fun things in this job,” the president said. Then, pausing for effect, she continued “…and I am declaring Monday a holiday with no classes.”

That announcement drew the loudest applause of the morning.



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