As
the 2013-14 school year came to an end, I trundled on down to 1076 for the end of the year Mass. I’ve been retired for 10 years now, but the warm
and joyful feelings of that event still wash over me. If you haven’t visited St. Ignatius lately,
the music during Mass by both orchestra and chorus is worth the trip.
One difference, since my years in
the early ‘60’s, is the special awards given to students of each class in
recognition of their achievements. Each
of the awards is named after a person of significance to the school. The Freshman-of-the-Year award is
named after Fr. Florian Zimecki, S.J., a long-time Latin teacher. The Sophomore-of-the-Year is named for Ronald
Jemiola, a student who was tragically killed while crossing Roosevelt Road
on the last day of finals in 1962. The Junior-of-the-Year award is named for Carmen
Pintozzi, an alumnus and beloved history teacher and coach.
This
year: the Zimecki Award was
earned by Mary
Lynn Dekold.
the Jemiola Award went to Michael
Levesque
and the
Pintozzi Award went to Michael Adegoke.
Congratulations to
these students and all of those students who were nominated by the
faculty. There were many awards given to
seniors at graduation…too many to list here…recognizing their outstanding
achievements in the various academic disciplines, but two are unique because
they are determined by the vote of the seniors.
They are the Ignatian-of-the-Year
and the Educator-of-the-Year. The 2014 Ignatian-of-the-Year
was Jana Michaela Bruska.
The Raymond
T. Grant, SJ. Educator-of-the-Year Award went to Maureen Lonergan, a 2004 graduate
of Ignatius and a science teacher. I
don’t think that I have ever met Maureen, but I emailed her to ask what was her
secret to success.
I was going to finish this “Reminiscence” by quoting Maureen and
describing what I have learned in my search to find what makes some teachers
stand above the rest, but that will have to wait until next time. I will tell you that Maureen credits several
others for having given her the template to follow, but, since I tried copying the
style of others early in my career, I know that’s there is more to it than that.
