BAY RIDGE — The Ita Ford Building at Fontbonne Hall Academy was completed in 1980, the same year its namesake, Maryknoll Sister Ita Ford, was martyred while on mission in El Salvador.
Sister Ita, a 1957 graduate of the all-girls Catholic school in Bay Ridge, also attended Visitation Academy, which, in September, moved under the Fontbonne umbrella after its own campus closed in June.
Despite the headlines from Sister Ita’s tragic death and her enduring legacy of caring for the poor, students at Fontbonne have wanted to learn more about the famous alum. To that end, the school’s administration has redesigned the walls in the Ita Ford Building with a new multi-panel mural depicting her life story.
Fontbonne’s students and three Maryknoll sisters who befriended and worked with Sister Ita dedicated the mural on Monday, Dec. 2 — the 44th anniversary of her death at age 40.
“We lost Ita so young,” said Sister Ann Hayden, who was in formation with the Brooklyn native. “When Ita came in, she was a delightful, joyful person, but she also seemed more sophisticated than I would be, and so, I was a little bit in awe of her.”
Sister Ann added that it was “a real pleasure” to attend the dedication alongside the students and remember Sister Ita, “who knew how to give her talents and was always reaching out to people.”
Sisters Helene O’Sullivan and Bernice Kita also attended the dedication.
Rocco Gentile, Fontbonne’s principal, said the idea for the mural came about during campus upgrades over the last year. School officials, he said, realized that the only reference to Sister Ita was a plaque on the front door of the building, which houses classrooms and rows of lockers.
“So,” Gentile said, “we thought, ‘we can do better than that. Why don’t we put together something that really celebrates the life and legacy of Ita Ford?’”
The new mural is exactly that. It depicts Sister Ita’s childhood in Brooklyn, her formation in the Maryknoll community, and her work in the mission field, which took her to Bolivia, Chile, and, finally, El Salvador.
Aaron Padin, a graphic artist from Long Beach, New York, depicted the story with some of her quotations and enlarged black-and-white photos. The mural starts in an entryway of the building, continues up a staircase, and concludes in a first-floor hallway.
Padin said he did “a ton of research” on Sister Ita.
“It was so profound for me,” he said after the dedication. “How do you tell a story about somebody who was killed in a manner like that?”
For that reason, the timeline avoids the details of how Sister Ita — with two other sisters and a lay worker — was tortured, raped, murdered, and buried in a shallow grave by members of El Salvador’s military. Padin instead focused on positive messages from Sister Ita, including a birthday greeting to her niece and goddaughter, Jennifer Ford, in 1980, four months before her death on Dec. 2.
Sister Ita wrote, “I hope you come to find that which gives life a deep meaning for you. Something worth living for, maybe even worth dying for, something that energizes you, enthuses you, enables you to keep moving ahead.
“I can’t tell you what that might be. That’s for you to find, to choose, to love. I can just encourage you to start looking and support you in your search.”
Padin said he hopes the photos and quotes, like Sister Ita’s letter to Jennifer, “resonate now and forever with the students who will come through these hallways.”
Venetiana Garyfallos, a senior at Fontbonne, said she has come to view Sister Ita as an “ideal role model to follow in terms of perseverance and commitment and dedication.”
“Seeing this mural today,” Venetiana said, “will help remind me that Sister Ita Ford’s legacy will live on forever.”
Gianna Stines, a sophomore, said it’s “very encouraging” to know that she’s walking the same halls that Sister Ita did and can “possibly be like her in the future.”
Another senior, Abegael Mullaney, said the mural will inspire her daily.
“Seeing Ita and all of the beautiful other women on here will definitely inspire me and keep a reminder in my head to do good,” Mullaney said, adding that the mural also inspires a kinship with Sister Ita. “It just helped me feel like she is our sister because Fontbonne is a sisterhood.”
