Bishop Connolly's last ever graduating class faces the future with faith and dignity

FALL RIVER — “May God bless all your tomorrows,” read the electronic sign at the Elsbree Street entrance to Bishop Connolly High School on Wednesday afternoon, where 37 seniors filed one at a time across the Cougar football field to their seats for the school’s 54th commencement ceremony.

With so few, each graduate — their red and white gowns stirred by a tender breeze — was given time to bask in the crowd’s full attention. The students carried themselves with solemnity, some offering only discreet waves to family members in the crowd, honoring the dignity of this occasion.

They are the last people ever to graduate from Bishop Connolly.

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The event was reserved but not somber.

The focus has really been on the graduates and making this a wonderful celebration and a memorable one for them,” said Kathleen St. Laurent, the school’s president and principal. “Of course it’s a bittersweet time for all of us, but ... they’re wonderful kids, so talented.

“We wanted to focus on the legacy of Bishop Connolly that is going to live on in all of them.”

Connolly students faced and adapted to multiple challenges

The Diocese of Fall River announced the school’s closure in March, an abrupt move that left students and parents blindsided. The diocese said years of dwindling enrollment and financial hardship forced its hand.

St. Laurent noted in her speech that these students had already been tested emotionally throughout their high school years — the COVID pandemic and the response to it defined their early years, marked by struggles to implement remote learning overnight and then a hybrid model. In their last few months, the stunning news that their school was closing left them in uncertainty.

“Time and again you demonstrated perseverance, adapted to change, and came together as a class noted for its care and concern for others," she said.

The school valedictorian, Anya Costello, echoed the theme of discovering the positive angle of what might be an otherwise wistful ending — both for her class and the school in general.

“There is always sorrow in closure. There are moments we’re all going to miss,” Costello said, listing everything from favorite classes and teachers to friends’ faces in the halls. But, she added, “Each of these experiences that shaped us over the years can be put to use in the world — perhaps in college or a career, and certainly through service.” 

The Connolly school motto asks that students be “not only hearers, but doers of the word.” Costello, who will be attending Princeton University as a mathematics major and a creative writing minor, gave that appeal her own interpretation, when she suggested to her fellow graduates, “In an epidemic of egotism, be the altruist.”

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Connolly students told to hold on to their faith

Connolly was founded in 1966, and the following year moved into its Elsbree Street location at the end of a landscaped private drive. Though by its end holding fewer than 150, Bishop Connolly’s building was meant for 800 students; at its 1967 dedication the school’s namesake founder described himself as a “professional optimist.”

That faith, in God and in the promise of a better future, has real value, said superintendent Daniel Roy, and faith is what students can rely on during tough times to give them wisdom and patience.

“You have been formed by a Catholic education that has come not only in the pages of textbooks, projects, papers or assessments, but in the lived experience of a faith community that has shaped your friendships, perspectives, curricular and extracurricular experiences, and your service to the broader community," Roy said. “As you move on, you will encounter a world in great need of people like you — lifelong learners and leaders who embrace the gospel values of love and service to others, demonstrated in what you say, what you do, what example you set, and how you relate to who you know.”

Bishop Edgar DaCunha advised the students to hold on to those values as they enter the next phase of their lives, living with integrity and compassion.

“Please allow your faith to be a source of strength and guidance throughout your whole life,” he said.

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More than a building, Connolly is its people

Led off the field by a bagpiper playing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” the graduates clasped the red-bound diplomas they'd strived for and, cheering, tossed their caps into the cloudless blue sky.

Though given the burden of being the school’s final class, the new Connolly alumni shouldered it with love, holding bouquets of flowers, hugging friends, kissing loved ones, posing for photos with multiple combinations of brothers, parents, aunts. The students racked up acceptances to a host of colleges and universities across the United States, from Bristol Community College up the street to Washington State. They'll be continuing their studies in math, economics, the humanities, psychology, finance, engineering, art.

Running along the grass, a couple of young kids wore their older siblings’ graduation caps; they won't be able to earn one of their own. The diocese has said that underclassmen currently attending Bishop Connolly will be offered spots at other diocesan high schools, either Bishop Stang in Dartmouth or Bishop Feehan in Attleboro.

Earlier in the ceremony, student body president Brandon DeFaria had addressed the closure head-on with determination, and insisted that “the memories, love and bonds that we created” would live forever outside one building’s walls.

DeFaria noted that that he'd written a first draft of his speech in December, before learning about the school’s closure. He edited it to suit the new circumstances, but not every line needed changing.

"I remember writing that, the more I think about it, Connolly was never the place, but rather the people — and I stand by that statement."

Dan Medeiros can be reached at dmedeiros@heraldnews.com. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Herald News today.

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Bishop Connolly High class of 2023 marks school's final graduation