ANNE M. HOLLAND MEMORIAL LIBRARY at Our Lady of the Elms High School

_{A Dominican Vision on West Market Street in Akron}

A Pictorial History of Our Lady of the Elms School

Hundreds of hours of work and many prayers preceded the first day of school at Our Lady of the Elms on October 15, 1923. To get to this momentous day, a score of Sisters of St. Dominic from the Dominican Province of Caldwell, New Jersey, led by Mother General Avelline Quinn, OP, purchased Elm Court, the beautiful mansion, grounds and buildings on West Market Street that had belonged to Arthur Marks, an Akron industrialist and inventor.

They saw beyond its beauty as a piece of property. They envisioned it as a center of operations where their beloved Dominican way of life could evangelize this corner of God’s world of Akron, Ohio. They envisioned it as a Dominican Novitiate in the Akron area to form young women into Sisters of St. Dominic who would join their ranks and share their blessed work. They envisioned it as the site of a new school for young women where the Dominican vocation of teaching the young could be accomplished through the particular charism of Dominican education. A little band of Sisters of St. Dominic led by Mother Beda, newly-appointed leader of the new Cleveland Diocese Dominican Motherhouse, in just a few months in 1923, transformed Elm Court into Our Lady of the Elms, a convent and a day school. Classes for the first thirteen students were held in the convent building.

Below, the first page of the handwritten roster of the school of  “Our Lady of the Elms” includes only one second, one sixth grader and no fifth graders. In the photo above taken during the winter months of 1923-4, fifteen children posed, a couple of them boys. In just a few months numbers in all the grades numbers began to fill. Classes for the new grades were added in the convent immediately.

By June of 1924, the Dominican Sisters began building the first new school on the property. The new school would be built onto the large carriage house. Pictured below is Archbishop Joseph Schrembs breaking ground.

The sisters had to have kept the builders’ noses to the grindstone because by September 29, 1924, the 82 pupils of Our Lady of the Elms moved into their newly-constructed school building in less than four months.

Mother Beda taught high school 9th and 10^th grades and Sister Aloysius taught high school 11^th and 12^th grades. Sister Constance taught the 7^th and 8^th graders. Sister Borromeo taught the 5^th and 6^th graders Sister Arthur taught the 3^rd and 4^th graders. Sister Dominica, who had just entered the convent, taught the kindergarteners in the convent.

By September 15, 1926, the Elms enrollment was at 135. On October 4, 1926, the school began to serve hot soup and soda crackers at lunch time for 15 cents with the proceeds to raise money to establish a school library. In just four months carpenter John Sues remodeled the horse stable area of the carriage house into a school library by installing a new floor and improvements, a large closet and building two tables. A month later the books were on the shelves and students were using the new library.

Because the Elms had begun in 1923 by accepting students of all ages, in just three years the Elms had seniors ready to graduate in 1926. An amazing, three-day event was planned for that first Elms graduation in 1926.  On Monday, June 7th, graduation day, the ground was too wet for graduation to be held outdoors, so it was held indoors at the Knights of Columbus Hall. The following day, Tuesday, June 8th, high school graduates Anna Ruth Byrider ‘26 and Elizabeth Tisch, ’26 led the rest of the high school students  in a dramatic outdoor production of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King on the Elms’ lawn.

The production included all the characters of the Arthurian story with the young Elms women playing with aplomb the mostly male roles. The program included a summary of the action of the play.

Then on Wednesday, June 9^th, the “Little Elms” performed “A Spring-time Pageant” outdoors on the Elms lawn. It was directed by professional dance teacher Mrs. Gertrude Holvey. The program included dramatic readings, a small play of the story of Proserpina in four episodes, and several groups of little girls dancing to music in identical costumes as “Fairies,” Flower Girls, ”“Grecian Maidens,” and “Snowball Girls”.  Eleanor Maglione’s father was so taken with her Snowball Girl Costume that he had her picture taken professionally.

Besides yearly graduation ceremonies, student social events were a regular feature of Elms High School life in those early years. The May 1926 the Junior-Senior Banquet was held on campus in the Dominican Sisters' dining room, and the girls had an enjoyable evening in the Dominican Sisters' library. The topmost floor of the convent made an excellent ballroom and in later years it came to be the site of many high school dances.

On June 10, 1927, the second Elms graduation was held on campus at 3:30 PM. The 1927 Elms Graduates were Rosemary Dray, Marion Davison, Jane Stanton, Harriet Winter, Mary Jane Walsh, Ruth Mae Tanner and Madeline Grace Huston. In the fall of 1927 attendance reached 149. For the first time Elms high school girls wore their uniforms of blue serge and white collars. On June 8, 1928, five students graduated: Madeline Bernard, Mildred Dietrich, Margaret Dirrig, Veronica Kunkler, and Dorothy McKean. Because of rain, graduation was held indoors again at the Knights of Columbus hall. The next day on June 9, 1928, the marble statue of Mary was raised in front of the convent—a donation from Mrs. Elizabeth May in memory of her husband, Mr. Rudolph A. May.

On September 10, 1928, school opened with 170 children. Tuition was raised for high school girls from $7 to $10 a month in the elementary grades and from $10 to $15 a month in the high school.

On March 9, 1929, sixty-seven sisters (forty final professed, twenty temporarily professed and seven novices) signed the document to officially transfer into the new independent Akron Congregation. By signing they committed to spend the rest of their lives in the Akron Congregation and never again return to the Caldwell Congregation. On March 11, 1929, the Sisters of St. Dominic of the Immaculate Heart of Mary became a separate novitiate within the Cleveland Diocese.  Mother Beda Schmid, OP, became the first Mother General of the new Akron Congregation. Later that year, Cleveland Bishop Schrembs came to the Elms Convent and said Mass after which he blessed the rings of the twenty temporarily professed Akron Dominican Sisters who had completed their formation and taken their vows.

Graduation in June of 1929 was held outdoors on the front lawn in front of the convent. It included a Mass and a May Crowning. Each Elms graduate was accompanied by her own personal flower girl from the “Little Elms.” Marie S. Schwartz, senior class president, was chosen by her classmates to give the “Farewell Address of 1929.” Below is her entire address in its quaint formality:

Classmates, Juniors and Friends: I, the President of the Class of 1929 of Our Lady of the Elms School, having been honored by my class by being chosen their president, do take this occasion to say unto you, in their behalf these last few words.

Much has been said of our past life at school, and I feel there is nothing to be added to the words that have been spoken. Much has been prophesied for the future and of that, too, I do not think I have anything more to say. There only remain the words that are hardest of all to frame, and I feel myself unable to say any of them at all well. They mean so much and seem to express so little when once put into speech.

Much has been done for us since we entered this school and so much else that we have been taught to do ourselves that we are leaving this school feeling ourselves finished women, ready to take our places among citizens of the larger world. So much have we grown up in these four short years, and all this development have we to be thankful for to those who have had our instruction in hand.

Then it is indeed well that we reflect with great gratitude upon the benefits we have derived from our work here, and upon the pains that have been taken with our training by each and everyone who has been appointed to the task. To our teachers we feel it more deeply that can be expressed and to our parents and friends we must feel the same assurance that we realize the large part they have played in making this a possibility and that we are none the less grateful because our words seem pitiful and weak.

Classmates, in conferring this honor on me, you made me your debtor, and I have tried to make adequate return for the favor by saying to these friends all what I felt sure you would each wish to have said. As I took my place, I felt an inspiration that this generation expects everyone to do his duty. But I feel sure you will understand how much more every word has meant than its face value and will take what you know I would like to say in place of the little I have seemed to express.

Tonight, to all appearances, we have reached the end; but the first end rather than the last—the commencement of a more real and complete life. Therefore, Classmates, while we are in sympathy and understanding more vital and complete, feeling this in all its fullness, Classmates, I cannot with any sincerity bid you “Good-bye” but will simply call to each a cheery and triumphant “Goodnight,” sure that there will be an ever present opportunity for each of you in “some brighter clime” to bid me “Good Morning.”

The class ring worn by Marie Schwartz and the other 1929 graduates featured the Dominican shield between two elm trees. Atop the shield was a crown with “veritas,” the Latin word for “truth.” 

On Jan 2, 1931, Sister Helen’s class had a Sophomore Hop in the Knights of Columbus Hall. The parents of the sophomores chaperoned, and Denny Thompson’s Orchestra played. The class cleared $375.

The 1931 May Crowning was a memorable event in Our Lady of the Elms’ ninth year as a school. On May 1, 1932, Betty Ahern, the granddaughter of Mrs. Elizabeth May, who donated the marble statue of Mary in memory of her husband, had the honor of crowning Mary as “Queen of the May.” Betty Ahern was also one of the first thirteen students registered when the school opened in 1923. The crowning was attended by Elizabeth Breiner and Berdelle Keller, both graduates who also enrolled when the Elms opened nine years earlier. The annual May Crowning of the Mary statue in front of the convent as an Elms tradition continues to this day when every May the Elms' 6^th graders lead the whole elementary school in song, prayer and a May crowning with many of the Sisters of St. Dominic in attendance.

For the next fifteen years Our Lady of the Elms School prospered. The above aerial photo taken in the late 1940’s shows the Our Lady of the Elms School as it existed for its first twenty-five years from 1924 through 1948. Two silos tower over the carriage house and the boxy addition of the 1924 school building which the Akron Sisters of St. Dominic built in just four months. Students went to classes in both the school wing and the carriage house, which had a courtyard in the center. The east wing of the carriage house had a music classroom downstairs and an art studio upstairs. The opposite wing held a spacious industrial arts classroom.

In 1948 a new high school classroom and gym complex was built between the carriage house and West Market Street where the trees stand in the upper left in the photo. The high school faculty and students moved into the new building and the elementary classes expanded within the old.  The new high school building featured a modern science classroom, a large library, and a new gymnasium with a stage for performances. The elementary school continued to flourish in the original carriage house and 1924 school building. The photograph below shows the new high school library in 1948.

Two decades later in 1968 the Sisters of St. Dominic broke ground on the largest building project to date: a new state-of-the-art high school. The new high school would be so much larger that the space occupied by the first Elms school building and the entire carriage house building would be needed for the new high school. The 1924 school building and the carriage house complex were razed, and ground was broken for the new high school in 1968.

Above, Archbishop Edward F. Hoban speaks at the 1968 ground-breaking ceremony. The new high school was state of the art for the time with up-to-date science labs and a huge team room. The enrollment at the high school continued to grow, and the new high school facilities allowed the arts, especially music and theater, to flourish. The next several decades saw the Akron single-gender schools one by one become co-ed until only Our Lady of the Elms remained as a single gender school in Akron. The decision to keep Our Lady of the Elms a single-gender school was validated innumerable times by her many alumnae who continued to support the Elms by sending their own daughters and granddaughters there to receive a Dominican education.

In 1999 the relationship of the school with the Sisters of St. Dominic was changed. By separately incorporating Our Lady of the Elms school as a sponsored or founded ministry of the Sisters of St. Dominic, the school took financial responsibility for its own administration and funding while continuing to benefit from the Sisters' spirituality, and their Dominican wisdom and traditions.  A close spiritual relationship between the convent and the school continues to this day with many liturgical school events throughout the year taking place in the sisters' chapel and the sisters attending many school events in the school buildings.

In 2006 Elms Alumnae Lisa Holland Toth and Lynn Holland Gorman gave their alma mater a quarter of a million dollars to renovate the high school library. The existing high school library was gutted to the bare cement floor and remodeled to suit the current demands of technology in education. The new Anne M. Holland Memorial Library and library annex provided a total of 40 computer stations and two Sympodia for a variety of technological uses. With a rebuilding of the ELMSNET network the previous year, Our Lady of the Elms was poised for a major leap forward as an educational institution.  That leap forward was provided by three daughters of Our Lady of the Elms with the hearts to share the gift of a Dominican education which they were given as girls and which they never stopped cherishing. In 2007 with gifts of $6 million from Ann Amer Brennan, who graduated from the Elms in 1951, and her husband, David Brennan, and another $1.5 million from alumnae Lisa Holland Toth and Lynn Holland Gorman, Our Lady of the Elms began the greatest renovation project in its history.

Ground was broken on the huge project on September 20, 2007. Pictured above from left to right are Sister Mary Anne Wiesemann-Mills, O.P., Prioress of Our Lady of the Elms’ Akron Dominican Community, Elms alumna Ann Brennan and her husband, David Brennan, elementary student Caroline Hummel, high school student Allison Hubbell, Elms alumna Lisa Holland Toth,  Elms alumna Lynn Holland Gorman, a representative of Regency Construction, and Elms High School Principal Lisa Massello. The existing theater was gutted and remodeled from the ground up. The existing gym was elevated and transformed into a performing arts and fitness center. A much larger, state-of-the-art gymnasium was built and a new administration wing was added. The project was built to many GREEN specifications. The work was completed by the end of the 2008-2009 school year.  

In 2010 the scope of Our Lady of the Elms School mission broadened through an initiative begun by the Akron Dominican Sisters in 2003. After seven years of prayer, dialogue and clustering work on how to better achieve their common Dominican mission, the Akron Sisters of St. Dominic joined six other Dominican congregations from across the United States.

On Easter Sunday of the seventh year of their common journey, the Akron Dominicans joined Dominican congregations from New Orleans, LA, Great Bend, KS, St. Catharine, KY, Columbus, OH, and Oxford, MI, to form a united new congregation – the Dominican Sisters of Peace. Today Our Lady of the Elms School is a sponsored ministry of the Dominican Sisters of Peace and shares in their Dominican vision and mission on a wider scale than ever before.

By Timothy M. DeFrange, May, 2010