Windsor gears up for royal wedding
LOS ANGELES— Meghan Markle stood out to the students and teachers of her Los Feliz Catholic school long before she started standing out to the world.
Ever since her engagement to Prince Harry last November, the school has gotten many, many calls to know more.
It could drive those on campus crazy. But mostly it doesn’t.
“It’s a huge amount of work,” said her former homeroom adviser, Christine Knudsen, who still teaches at the school. “But we just want the world to know who the real Meghan Markle is.”
Markle graduated in 1999 from the all-girls school, which wants its students “to become women of great heart and right conscience through leadership, service, and a life-long commitment to Christian values.”
She was a theater kid who excelled not just academically but also as a leader—someone to whom others listened, recalled Knudsen, who taught a senior elective Markle took on spirituality and literature.
“She had a lot of depth, probably because of her own experiences and hard knocks growing up,” Knudsen said, referring to Markle’s experience of her parents’ divorce. “She’d take conversations to a deeper level.”
Maria Pollia, who taught Markle theology in her junior year, described her as a focused young woman who challenged herself to reflect on the toughest texts. Pollia particularly recalled Markle’s commitment to understanding the thinking of Thomas Merton.
In 2017, Markle appeared in a book called “The Game Changers: Success Secrets From 40 Women At The Top,” in which she credited Pollia for inspiring her activism. When Pollia talked in class about her own volunteer work, Markle told the teacher she had worked with homeless people and wanted to know how to get involved again. Pollia sent Markle to the skid row kitchen where she worked. Markle volunteered there for a year and a half.
“The people that I knew at the kitchen would tell me what a natural she was,” said Pollia, who also still teaches at Immaculate Heart. “Skid row is a very scary place. Once she got over that and she was talking to people, she knew everybody’s names.”