St Bernards High School - Bernardian Yearbook (Fitchburg, MA)

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Bernard's Ftigh School Htchburg . . . Massachusetts

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Presentitg ; 1962 — BERNARDIAN ST. BERNARD’S HIGH SCHOOL Fitchburg, Massachusetts i 5 RR aii i eM i a ame ™ AAR ee rs

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ae? ... Because Youre Ours... TG 5 Qa 7C Hise you're ours, our alma mater, we love and praise you. Why do we love you? Not because you are the most modern of high schools. In fact, you are the oldest of our three city high schools and so old that many of our fathers and mothers have walked the same corridors, climbed the same stairs, and sat at the same seats that we occupy today. But in spite of your age, you are still a beautiful school, well preserved and never allowed to become run-down, shabby, or drab. Those who know and appreciate a well-built building, marvel at the strength and resistance of your foundation and walls to the wear and tear of the years. You are like that house built upon a rock mentioned in St. Matthew, 7:24-27, which did not fall when “the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew.” Throughout the years, the winds of adversity have beaten against you also. You were only three years old when the greatest of all depression periods, that of 1929, began and continued through the ’30’s. How- ever, you managed to produce a Bernardian yearbook during every one of these trying years, although some years did show a deficit. During these years you saw your boys and girls leave you at graduation with no bright prospects facing them, only the grim reality of being forced to join the ranks of the millions of un- employed. During World War II, your gym was the shelter for the entire school in the air-raid drills. You witnessed the departure of some of your undergraduates and many of your graduates, boys and girls, to enter the armed services, knowing only too well that some of them would never again return to their alma mater. But all this does not give us the reasons why we love you. These go far deeper than your material structure and past history. We love you because of your friendly spirit which reaches out and envelopes each and every one of us. We love you because we find happiness within your walls, not only in the con- genial companionship of our classmates but in our daily contacts with our principal, Father Donahue, and our faculty, who look upon us as God and our parents look upon us—each one of us as an individual, a very important person, and not as a collection of names recorded in roll books, marking books, and permanent record cards. You are interested in us because of what we are and are to become, and you take a personal interest in each of us, trying to make us develop the best that is in us. Because of our immortal souls and our eternal destiny, you keep before us our importance as children of God and potential heirs to the kingdom of heaven.