SUNSET PARK — Generations of current and former students came together to walk the halls of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Academy one final time — a school that has served the community for more than a century.
Sue Mollano (Class of 1968) called the academy’s impending closure a heartbreaking moment, not just for herself, but for the neighborhood.
“I was very sad because of all the wonderful memories that were made in the school and how well I feel we all did and what we learned coming out of the school,” Mollano said.
Our Lady of Perpetual Help decided to open its doors on May 17 to offer people a farewell tour, following the February announcement that the school would close at the end of the current academic year.
Ralph Nofi, an academy board member and a graduate, said the school has been having “enrollment troubles” in addition to financial problems, which only grew during the COVID-19 pandemic. He added that Our Lady of Perpetual Help “didn’t benefit from staying open the way other schools did” during the pandemic.
Over 500 alumni, families, and clergy attended the farewell tour, the preceding Mass, and a closing reception for the school.
Our Lady of Perpetual Help pastor Father Robert Wojtek celebrated the Mass and Father Kevin Moley, a Redemptorist priest for the parish, and Father Ken Beale of the Franciscan Center in Tampa, concelebrated.
In his homily, Father Moley paid tribute to the Sisters of St. Joseph, who, while no longer actively staffing the school or residing in the convent, answered the call of the Redemptorists in 1903 to open the school, where they maintained a presence for decades.
“Dear Sisters, over 300 of you have served this school and parish with dedication, sacrifices, and love,” Father Moley said. “You have given your lives, your youth, your talents to God. We are most grateful for all that you have done for each one of us.”
Now that the academy is closing, the Sunset Park neighborhood will be left without any Catholic schools, which Father Moley described as “unfortunate” because of what a Catholic education can provide.
“When I was the pastor here, we took all of the exams that New York State gives, and we had a good principal, we had great teachers,” he said. “We came out better than all the public schools, and we even came out better than some of the Catholic schools.”
Mary-Ryan Shivers (Class of 1970) drove from New Jersey to say goodbye to a school that held “a lot of happy memories” for her.
“We were all so close growing up together, living in the same area,” Shivers said. “It was just wonderful.” Mary-Beth Brolly (Class of 1984) helped organize the farewell tour as a way for the community to celebrate the
place where “most [of them] started out in life.”
“The teachers, the parishioners, the staff, guided us with love. It’s a place where we fell in love with Jesus, where we were highly educated, and we were just surrounded by love,” Brolly said. “I don’t know somebody through the walls of these schools, and they’re not good people.”
The farewell tour was a collaborative effort between students who conducted the tours and the Catholic Academy staff and board members, like alumnus Dorothy Rivera, who has been serving the school as an administrative assistant for two years. Rivera called it bittersweet because of the deep history at the academy, noting how it has “pretty much educated everybody in the neighborhood.”
Rivera also emphasized how much the school did to instill faith and a sense of safety in its students — something she says will be difficult to replace. She said the academy’s closure is a “big loss for the children of the community.”
“They’re safe here. They come here and they feel happy. They all have friends here, and we also graduate very successful students,” Rivera said. “We’ve really done a good job, and the staff here are amazing, and the principal. … Everybody worked really hard to try to keep this going.”
