Holy Trinity, Stritch Foundation celebrate 50 years of accomplishment

 

By Sheila Elliott

Holy Trinity School for the Deaf, one of Chicago’s best known programs for deaf and hearing impaired children, begins a year-long 50th anniversary celebration this month on the Near West Side.

A religious education center for the Archdiocese of Chicago’s youngest hearing impaired students, Holy Trinity is located within Children of Peace School at 1900 W. Taylor St. Anniversary plans call for a series of special events throughout the 2007-08 academic year that will honor the school and the Cardinal Stritch Foundation, the school’s principal fundraising arm.

Events include a luncheon and fashion show, commemorative advertising book, Drury Lane banquet, and two special Masses. The celebrations begin Sunday, Sept. 16, with a Mass at Notre Dame de Chicago Church at 1334 W. Flournoy St.; Cardinal Francis George is expected to attend, according to the Rev. Joseph Mulchrone, the Archdiocese’s chaplain to the deaf.

“We’ve weathered the storms,” Fr. Mulchrone said. “An education like that provided by Holy Trinity is now and always has been very expensive. The families of students struggle to meet tuition costs, transportation is often difficult, and public education has never been a strong supporter of the school, he added.

Fr. Mulchrone said those woes are offset by the uniqueness of a parochial school whose educators have the additional training to meet deaf children’s unique challenges.

According to Phyllis Winter, president of Holy Trinity, the school opened because a parish priest at old Holy Trinity, the Rev. John Marren, saw an opportunity for service that his small parish could fulfill when he heard a philanthropic group wanted to withdraw from the deaf education programs it operated in Catholic school buildings throughout the Archdiocese. Working largely on his own initiative, he approached the Archdiocesan hierarchy with the idea for a larger program based in one school providing a central resource for deaf students and their families.

Fr. Marren’s proposal coincided with significant changes in deaf and hearing impaired education, which moved from reliance on articulation of spoken words to sign language from the 1950s to the 1970s, according to Winter. His interest in deaf education and willingness to shoulder much of the responsibility for organizing the new school brought a favorable response from Cardinal Samuel Stritch, who agreed to establish a foundation bearing his name to provide ongoing funding.

 
In 1957 Holy Trinity School for the Deaf welcomed its first students to a classroom inside a traditional parochial school that had opened only three years earlier.

That school, now known Children of Peace, today enrolls about 223 students, according to its principal, Arlene Redmond. About 28 students attend classes in the deaf and hard of hearing program at Holy Trinity, which she also supervises.

Holy Trinity students come from all economic background and from neighborhoods all over the city and suburbs. Once on campus, they become part of a multicultural student body. “Diversity is strength,” Redmond noted.

Students also benefit from modern facilities including a science lab that opened in 2006 via a donation by Rush University Medical Center. Earlier this year, the school opened a fenced play area for preschoolers, with plans in the works for a new play area for older students. School officials also are considering a new driveway outside the pre-school building.

While the school’s physical environment is important, Fr. Mulchrone said the most important benchmark for Holy Trinity’s progress is what has transpired inside its classrooms for the last half century and the minds it has  helped enlighten.

“In the end, the students and parents want a great education,” he commented. “That is the school’s goal.”

For more information, call (312) 243-8186.