Principal’s Newsletter
July, 2018 Jesuit High School www.jesuitportland.org
ILLUMINATION AND INSPIRATION The end of a school year always brings important rites of passage. This year, within the course of three remarkable days, we experienced a richness that we can still “relish and savor” – as Fr. JK Adams, SJ, channeling St. Ignatius, exhorted us to do at the Baccalaureate Mass held on Saturday, June 2. Father JK is passing the torch after 12 years as Superior of our Jesuit Community to Fr. Pat Couture, SJ. We will miss Fr. JK, and will long savor his years of service to our community. On Sunday, June 3, we celebrated the amazing accomplishments of the Class of 2018. What a privilege to witness this close-knit class joyfully bring their four years at JHS to a close, as senior speakers Andy Johnson, Jack Clevenger, and Nicole Goffena traced the arc of their journey with artful aplomb and no small measure of hilarity. Our newest alums then headed off to the all-night Grad Party, while the rest of us prepared for Monday’s “Moving Up” ceremony, in which the Class of 2019 processed in to the Knight Center to take the place of the just-graduated seniors. We look forward to watching a new crew of leaders emerge from this terrific class.
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As we celebrate 25 years of coeducation at Jesuit, we also bid farewell to three female members of the faculty who have been superb role models for all of our students, especially our young women: Gail Fleenor, Carol Young, and Carol Wyatt. Jesuit schools have emphasized the arts as key to an Ignatian liberal arts education for over 470 years. A quarter-century ago, Ms. Fleenor and Ms. Young helped honor this legacy by creating from humble raw materials our now-robust visual arts and vocal music programs.
Gail Fleenor is known as the no-nonsense ruler of “the Queendom,” her particular pedagogical patch in Art Room 2. Gail ran her program with the belief that “anyone can learn to draw (or paint!),” so long as the student has proper instruction from a teacher who offers high standards, a careful eye, and a listening ear. In addition to Gail’s attention to so many individual students over the years, she has also been a significant artistic force in the Jesuit community. In her early days at JHS, Gail lent her artistic skills to the Crusade for Coeducation, as well as provided visual themes for several auctions in the early 1990s. Along with her colleagues in the Fine Arts Department, Gail and her students have been key contributors to the decorations at our lovely Mass of Christmas Anticipation for many years. Gail also played a crucial role in the design of the Alex L. Parks Performing Arts Center. Former President William Hayes, SJ acknowledged that the beautiful PAC was built on the sturdy foundation of the artistic excellence of such stalwarts as Elaine Kloser, Jeff Hall, Al Kato, Gail herself, and of course, Carol Young. When Carol Young came to Jesuit in fall of 1993, she arrived alongside all those brave pioneering female students in the first year of coeducation. Within a few years, Carol had created a choir for freshmen, a Women’s Choir, the Concert Choir, and the Chamber Choir—and she learned to teach art in the Freshman Wheel from her new friend, Gail Fleenor! For 25 years, Carol inspired the soaring sounds of the Jesuit choirs and served as the quiet genius behind our nationally-known musical productions on the Moyer Stage. To the thousands of songsters that Carol taught, continued on page 2
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