View From Above: Mr. Jim DeAngelo, '85

Principal: 2007-2022

Also: former faculty member

Looking back over my time serving as Principal since 2007, it’s hard not to reach back to other pivotal moments in my own history: to 1989 when I began my time as German teacher, or to 1985 when I graduated, or further still to 1982, when I sat for an interview to transfer in as a sophomore.

Throughout my childhood, Prep loomed as large and as distant as the twin towers of the World Trade Center I could glimpse for a couple of seconds as my father maneuvered the jughandle turn of Route 440 (or “back highway”) when returning home to our apartment building at the bottom of Danforth Avenue. Indeed, most of the boys in my 8th grade class from P.S. #20, as well as the other guys from my neighborhood, set their sights on schools other than Prep. Nonetheless, about halfway through my freshman year at St. Aloysius High School, I decided I wanted something else, something more from school.

My interview with the principal at the time, Fr. John Browning, S.J., ‘46, had its comic elements, but what I most remember is his gentle manner as he posed some pretty deep questions about why I wanted to come to Prep. All I knew was that I was looking for something that I couldn’t quite put words to as a freshman. Eventually, what I found here at the corner of Grand and Warren would come to define my life and worldview to this day.

Fr. Browning was patient and kind with me as a student, as well as for many years after I joined the faculty upon graduating from Boston College in 1989 and he was no longer principal. Many times he would sneak up behind me in the hallway or faculty room and whisper in my ear, “You know, I’m the only reason why you’re here!” And just as quickly--and quietly--he would disappear, cackling down the Hogan corridor toward his hideaway counseling office.

In my time as teacher, I continued the good work of Mr. Bill Donahue, who in 1985 founded Prep’s German Exchange program with Clara-Fey-Gymnasium in Schleiden, Germany, that endures to this day. As department chair through the late 1990s and early 2000s, I worked with colleagues to expand exchange offerings to other schools. Today, Prep’s Global Initiatives ranks among the leading programs of the Jesuit Schools Network of the United States.

In addition to global education, so many aspects of Prep’s daily workings have changed and evolved to reflect the best trends in educational research, pastoral care, character development, and faith formation. So, too, has Prep’s external context changed: the gentrification of the historic Paulus Hook neighborhood, the explosive growth of Jersey City waterfront, and closer to home, the Warren Street Plaza and many renovation projects that have defined the last decade of our physical plant upgrades.

Any conversation I have with a Prep alumnus seems to inevitably focus--at first--on what has changed. But quickly it comes back to what has remained the same, the life lessons we have carried beyond Grand and Warren and into our lives and careers, however storied or humble they may be.

For me, transferring to Prep quite literally broadened my horizon and affected my worldview, setting off a series of decisions that has rippled through my life, and grounding in me a faith and search for God in all things that has sustained me through good times and bad. The colleagues I have been privileged to work with at Prep have been nothing short of loving, courageous and supportive.

As my time at Prep drew to a close after four decades since that initial meeting with Fr. Browning, I looked back in gratitude for the relationships that nurtured me as Prep student, teacher, administrator and alumnus every step along the way.

In my classroom visits to history classes, I often hear discussions about continuity and change. What remains for me? A sense of marvel as I take in Prep’s neighborhood: the Statue of Liberty, the Hudson River, the English Building, Shalloe Hall. But what also remains is a sense of pride, tempered with a bit of challenge to live up to the glory of those who have preceded me in the pantheon of Prep’s history, and what I learned, and how I grew up, sub umbra Petri.