Green and gold legacy
Bishop Kenrick High School alumni invited to Pope John Paul II gathering
ROYERSFORD >> The diverse heritage that built Pope John Paul II High School is always on the minds of those running the nearly 10-year-old product of a widereaching merger.
More than ever, they’re aware of the importance of engaging with the alumni from the legacy schools that fused into Pope John Paul II and they’re gradually reaching out to all of them.
Next up, graduates of the former Bishop Kenrick High School in Norristown are invited to reconnect with fellow graduates, share memories over hors d’oeuvres and drinks and be included in a major surprise announcement at Pope John Paul II High School’s Legacy Atrium, 181 Rittenhouse Road, Royersford, Feb. 7 at 7 p.m.
“There’s never been a Bishop Kenrick event at John Paul High School, so we’re trying to reconnect with the Bishop Kenrick community at Pope John Paul with a great night of stories, festivities, food and drink,” noted 1985 Kenrick grad and onetime football star Rich Wesselt, who is a board member at Pope John Paul II.
Wesselt’s Worcester company, Wesselt Capital Group, is co-sponsoring the event with the school, noted Pope John Paul II president Jason Bozzone.
“This is my third year as president and from my first year it was really important for me to understand our legacy alumni,” he noted. “I understood right away how John Paul was built and the how the merger of Bishop Kenrick and Archbishop Kennedy, with St. Pius X, St. Pat’s in Norristown, St. Matt’s in Conshohocken, all came into one. It was important for me to understand that culture because it’s very important to celebrate the past and the future for us to be successful at Pope John Paul. It’s so important for us to bring our Kenrick folks back because Kenrick is really the foundation of who we are. The most important thing we do is to provide a high quality Catholic education,” Bozzone added, “but a lot of things we do stem from our legacy schools like Kenrick. This is essentially an event to re-engage our Kenrick alum and let them know they are part of our family at PJP. It’s also a way to let our Kenrick alum know that this is what PJP is all about. We also want to share with them our plans for the future and a really important announcement that’s going to happen that night.”
The school is aggressively trying to engage every bit of its legacy roots, Bozzone said.
“We’re John Paul but we all have one common denominator as part of Catholic education. This will be a celebratory night, a way to reengage with who we are, where we came from, and how we can move forward as one collective body of schools. In addition to Bishop Kenrick there was St. Patrick’s in Norristown, St. Matthew’s High School in Conshohocken, Kennedy-Kenrick, St. Pius X. Each one of those legacy schools has their own traditions and we want to embrace that and also embrace it for the future because it makes us at John Paul that much stronger. As we bring them back as individual schools, we want to bring them back collectively to say you are part of the bigger picture of John Paul II.”
Events will be organized to reunite alumni from every school, Bozzone allowed.
“We had a gathering recently for St. Pius X about a month ago. Now we’re trying to gather the Kenrick folks. We’re doing this in segments because each school has its own culture and its own traditions. By doing each one of these segmented events then we want to bring them all together as one school. We can impact today and forever if we all come together as one Catholic entity.”
In 1993, Bishop Kenrick High School had merged with Archbishop Kennedy Catholic High School from nearby Conshohocken. The new entity was housed in the Kenrick building, which was built in 1955, as KennedyKenrick before it ultimately closed in June, 2010, when the Archdiocese of Philadelphia merged it with St. Pius X High School in Pottstown to form Pope John Paul II High School.
“We really want to engage the Kenrick alumni because they’re such a strong alumni. In 1993 Kenrick was closed to create Kennedy-Kenrick, so all those years up until 1993 Kenrick had a really strong base. From 1994 to 2010 Kennedy-Kenrick has their own culture, so its important for us to bring all those cultures together and let them know that even though we’re not the brick and mortar they once had, we’re here and we do celebrate what they once were and want to keep their legacy intact for the future.”
Many legacy school alumni may be surprised to know that Pope John Paul houses artifacts from the schools that are long gone.
“When the schools were closed we actually took all the artifacts and organized them here at John Paul,” Bozzone said. “We actually have the cross that was on the Kenrick building here in our courtyard and we want to show the alumni that they’re still alive in our school. The foundation of our school came from Kenrick and it came from Kennedy-Kenrick. This night is really a night to let the Kenrick alumni know they’re not lost, that they’re part of us.”