Shirley Attends Catholic High School & I Chose the Public High School

In the Fall of 1950, Shirley began high school. Instead of being able to attend Catholic Central, her first two years were at the Catholic Central West Annex. It opened in 1944 for freshmen and sophomores on the west side of the river. The school was housed on the third floor of St. Adalbert School and was staffed by 7 School Sisters of Notre Dame There was room there because of a drop in St. Adalbert School attendance after World War II ended and Catholic Central was full. Renovations would eventually increase its size and the building of West Catholic was still in the future. Father Maksymowski, the pastor of St. Adlabert had to respond to Bishop Francis J. Haas’ directive years earlier in 1951 to develop a “West Catholic Central.” Apparently many of the early students resented this because of limited athletics and the desire to have more freedom to leave the neighborhood and meet students from other areas. By the time Shirley attended, the school and its reputation had grown and students from all over the city would attend dances there. Surprisingly since this was before the freeway, many who came had never seen the beautiful church and large buildings surrounding it. While it probably did not occur to her family to send Shirley to the public high school, my parents gave us a choice for high school between West Catholic and Union High School. I chose the public high school, Linda briefly chose West Catholic then transferred to Union and Lori chose Union. In 1952, Shirley began her junior year at Catholic Central. The renovated building was completed that year. Lay teachers made up 21% of the faculty (the year before) as fewer teaching sisters were available. The culture shock for Shirley was that the Catholics from the east side of the city were much wealthier and she didn’t feel like the kids from the westside were well accepted but instead looked down upon. For me,culture shock came in 9th grade with my first experience with integrated schools which was accomplished with court mandated bussing since the residential areas were still pretty segregated. Catholic Central High school was organized into nine departments: religion, math, science, English, history/social studies, foreign languages, business, physical education, and fine arts. When I was in high school there were separate college prep or vocational track classes. Amazingly, we still took aptitude tests which told us which “male” or “female” careers would best suit us. We had the option of different electives than she had such as Psychology. Shirley rode the city bus from the west side of the city over the river to the east side in downtown Grand Rapids. In ninth grade, I had a school bus to West Middle and then in high school, we had to make our own way to the high school. As I get to know new relatives, I try to place them and their family into the picture. Curt Wolf’s father Laverne Wolf was a senior at the main Catholic Central campus during Shirley’s first year of high school. They probably did not cross paths because she would have been at the West Annex that year. Pictures of Laverne Wolf (on FB page) History of Catholic education in GR--GR info starts p. 61 (p. 72 of PDF) https://commons.emich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1092&context=theses History of Polish immigrants/churches in GR https://www.therapidian.org/history-polish-immigrants-churches-and-aid-societies-westside The Rise and Fall of the Grand Rapids Polonia (https://dutchamericans.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/1993_07_skendzel.pdf The First Hundred Years: The Basilica of St. Adalbert http://www.mipolonia.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/St.-Adalbert_1881-1981_Grand-Rapids_MI.pdf