SPRINGFIELD — Latoya Cole-Williams knew that her daughter, Addisyn, would be graduating from St. Patrick Catholic School this week and would be looking to attend another school.
Cole-Williams wasn’t ready for that fate to fall on her other daughter, Ashtyn, a first grader at St. Patrick’s, as well.
“It was a shocking, hard blow,” Cole-Williams said about the announced closure of the eastside school in March. “They see other students who have graduated come back, but that’s something they won’t be able to do. That’s the part that’s going to hurt.”
Both Cole-Williams’ daughters will be attending St. Aloysius Grade School where their tuition will be covered for the 2026-27 school year.
Cole-Williams always saw St. Patrick’s as a family affair–different cousins attended there and have children enrolled there–and a place where structure and accountability were expected.
“The faith they brought to the kids is one thing I wanted to have instilled in my kids first and foremost,” she said.
Former students, teachers and administrators were drawn back to the school for a final open house May 16.
Amid tears and laughter, they reflected on the legacy of the school, how it shaped them and how they were able to assist others.
Others searched for their old classrooms or remarked how the school, founded as a parish school in 1910, had changed physically.
Rose Marie Bates taught second and third grade classes at St. Patrick’s from 1974 to 2017.
Standing in a doorway, Bates called the school “iconic” and “needed in the city.”
While she had a lot of good memories about the place, Bates said she was mostly sad to see it go away.
“I would see kids coming in (and) they might not always have been right on grade level (reading-wise), but you could see progress,” Bates said.
Brian Giddings, who graduated in 1979, said he built lifelong friendships at St. Patrick’s.
Schools like it, he maintained, were more than classrooms.
“They were communities, traditions and foundations for generations of families,” said Giddings.
Margaret (Dodge) Giddings, Giddings’ mother, also attended there, as did his grandfather, Charles Dodge.
Sister Marilyn Jean Runkel, a Springfield Dominican whose religious order staffed the school from the beginning, was school board president when it announced in 2010 that it was closing.
John Eck, Dr. Joseph Link and George Fairchild pitched in, with others, to launch the “Second Chance for A Second Century” campaign. Within two months, $400,000 was raised.
“That saved us and from then on, we’ve been stable,” said Runkel, the former Catholic schools’ superintendent for the Springfield diocese.
Being back in the building, she admitted, “touches my heart deeply. And it’s very sad. I know what so many children got from here. I know the attitude that was here, the love, the community, the caring. It was like a family.
“The only really good thing is most of (the students are transferring to St. Al’s) or Little Flower (another Catholic school) and their tuition is being paid through our scholarship program. It’s very hard for me (to see it close), I have to be honest.”
St. Patrick’s Principal Bridget Timoney said the evaporation of COVID grants and Empower Illinois grants, along with spiraling operational costs, contributed to the closing.
Parents/guardians paid $75 per month for two or more kids or $50 per month for one child over 10 months for tuition. Upping tuition, Timoney said, would have chased off families.
Timoney said she wanted the students’ experience to end on a positive note, so money raised by the PTO, headed by Cole-Williams, has gone to an all-school field trip to the Illinois State Museum and lunch and unlimited play at Malibu Jack’s, a concert by the Tater Tots, an ice cream truck and pizza on Fridays.
Students will be able to build their own home libraries with donated books from the school library, Timoney said.
The school rents the building from the diocese and will have a Title I tutoring program there through the summer, she said.
Longtime District 186 teacher and administrator Gary Sullivan later served as principal at St. Patrick’s.
Sullivan compared leaving St. Patrick’s to standing in quicksand.
“You can’t get out,” he said, with a laugh.
Many of the parents of the kids Sullivan had at St. Patrick’s were his students at Southeast.
“They were parents who desired their kids have religion spoken in class, not necessarily (wanting to become) Catholic, and they wanted discipline,” Sullivan said. “(St. Patrick’s) was just a very enjoyable place.”
Cole-Williams said she was excited about the opportunities for her daughters at St. Al’s, activities it can provide that St. Patrick’s couldn’t.
“You would definitely want to have that cornerstone, that backbone, for kids coming out of this area,” she said. “There are so many challenges they have to deal with, just waking up every day.”
Contact Steven Spearie: 217-622-1788; sspearie@sj-r.com; X, twitter.com/@StevenSpearie.
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: ‘A very enjoyable place’: Alumni, teachers say goodbye to St. Patrick’s
Reporting by Steven Spearie, Springfield State Journal-Register / State Journal-Register
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