Bishop McDevitt High School
They are closing my High School and building a new one right down the street from where I live. What kind of shite is this?
We’re talking about Bishop McDevitt High School formerly known as Catholic High School. The castle on the hill. BMcD. Marian Hall, Tracy Hall, Aquinas Hall and St. John Hall.
This place was built in 1929 and my Mom graduated in 1940. There was at least one of my siblings in school there from 1964 until I graduated in…..the plesticine era of the mid to late 70’s. My little sister’s daughter even went there. Three generations of my family were educated in this building. The twin towers and those huge red doors are now being sloughed off. No more trying to find a parking space in Bellevue because you’re late for school. No more sneaking ‘round back of Tracy Hall to smoke cigarettes. I would even bet that TJ is still teaching there. TJ was Sister Theresa Joseph she was there when my mom went to school and was still there when I did. She taught typing and business.
As I write this it has dawned on me that this is the second time in my life this has happened. You see I went to Progress Elementary School for 4th and 5th grade. It was closed years ago and today is an office building with an auditorium and a basketball court. I wonder if they are still using those really small chairs.
I have mixed feelings about all this. They are planning on turning a perfectly good field into a new high school. What’s wrong with the field? Now I know the building is WAY too small for the needs of the diocese but C’mon! Generations of people around here have called that old building school. Why not do what Central Dauphin School District did and turn it into a Junior High School or something like that? Will the new school have twin towers? If it does will they be as daunting as the originals or will they be dryvit and aluminum, cheap shit renditions of the originals Will there be a Tracy Hall with an Olympic sized swimming pool in the basement? I didn’t think so! Well hell, there isn’t even an O.L.B.S. school anymore. We use to call them the Old Ladies Barber Shop but it in fact stood for Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament and when I played basketball for St. Margaret Mary’s, O.L.B.S. were our sworn enemies.
I have such mixed emotions about this. Will the new school have chandeliers in the hallways like BMcD does and will the twin towers survive the move or will they be reduced to a cheap shit visage of their former selves?
I don’t know. The diocese will do what they damn well please.
Progress they say ….. and what they’ll build will come nowhere near the quality of the old school.
I think the worst of it is the years of memories that will close down with the school … they will eventually fade away.
Ah Brian,nothing more inevitable than change . . we don’t have to like it but it’s as sure as death and taxes.
Change may be inevitable but why can’t they just extend? Both the schools I went to became too small to meet the needs of pupils – so they bought up some more land from adjacent properties and just expanded – leaving all the original buildings and their beautiful architecture in tact.
This tear down and start again is just all too easy and has become all too acceptable, no respect for what was – must be new and bright and shiny, Rubbish, says I! It’s just a way of saying people won’t take the trouble to think laterally.