St Marys Academy - Blue Star Yearbook (Austin, TX)

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HERITAGE A few crowded days are yet to be spent before we are ready to walk up the long aisle proudly clad in the white that is always symbolic of graduation. In a short while, our diplo- mas held reverently, we shall depart from school for many other ways of life. The time we have spent here can be compared to the swift flight of birds, that after they have rested, spread eager wings and soar into the sky. We have paused here in our flight toward maturity, and now the time is at hand when we must scatter before the elements of chance and change. When we have gone and our laughing voices have been swallowed up by the stillness that is peculiar to deserted schools, ghosts of us will keep watch here all through the summer. In fall, new faces, young faces, bright with dreams, will quickly fill the places we left vacant. Too many of us who graduate will lay aside our school days in the dusty closet of forgotten memories, and will forget to remember that long after our names have ceased to echo through these halls, some part of us still lives on here. We have become part of a vast group of girls----------girls who have graduated from the schools of the Sisters of the Holy Cross. Our heritage, the ideals which our school attempts to inculcate, the standards which are given as measures, the traditions, the demands made upon us by our school, did not come into being with the first St. Mary’s Academy established here in Austin almost seventy-five years ago. The origin of these ideals, the conception of our heritage, took place in a chapel of the Good Shepherd Sisters, Le Mans, France, on the vigil of Our Lady of the Snows, a day in August over a century ago. There four girls, girls each sharing the same dream, banded together to form the religious congregation of the Sis- ters of the Holy Cross. Today over ten thousand girls have dressed in the black of Holy Cross, and these courageous women are still perpetuating in the hearts of countless girls the dreams shared by four young novices so long ago. Our school then, is much more than graceful buildings set on a plot of ground and being administered by a group of Sisters. It is a dream become tangible, a dream dreamed especially for us before we were born, a dream whose realization for us is a clear indication of the presence of God’s hand. Too often we measure our school by materialistic standards; we judge its worth by its physical framework alone and completely exclude consideration of its soul. Ideals and heritage make a school; without them it becomes just another building, existing, but not living.

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Back Entrance

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These years are the green years of our lives, but even now, caught and held as we are in the breath-taking and heart-breaking business of becoming adults, there are times when a sudden silence overtakes us. We are all too sharply aware of the steady footsteps of Time; we sense the impending change that maturity is certain to bring into our lives; we long wist- fully for the secure and happy days of childhood. In moments like these a keen sense of realization breaks over us, and we see our school for what it truly is: alma mater, foster- mother, a tender protector of all that is cherished by mankind. We then begin to appreciate the gifts that our school has to offer to all who will take them. Appreciation of beauty, love of truth, a desire for a Mary-like life: these are the priceless treasures which our school can give to us. And years after we are gone she will continue to give them to the girls who follow in our paths, for she is a generous mother, our alma mater. We leave soon, not only with our diplomas in hand, but also with this worthy heritage in our hearts. The years will mellow it,and before long the ideals we harvested here will take such firm root in us that no change which the world can bring will be able to make us different from what we are today: Saint Mary's girls standing on the threshold of a new tomorrow and at the same time clinging in spirit to the ideals, standards, and dreams of an ageless yesterday. Catharine Wolters