Our Lady Star of the Sea School - the first 25 years

By the time the new church was completed in 1928, 139 Catholics were registered in the parish, and Fr. Alexander once again appealed to the Archbishop for a school and a community of sisters. With approval, he began the task of finding sisters to open a Catholic school in Solomons. In 1933 he succeeded and thus began a longstanding relationship with the Sisters of Divine Providence of Kentucky. To Fr. Alexander they were the best community east of the Mississippi, the area he covered in his search.

Some time during the summer of 1933, Sister Francis Agatha Paris. Sister Mary Praxeda Jasnoch, Sister Mary of Jesus Menke and Sister Mary Hilda Doheny arrived from their motherhouse in Melbourne, Kentucky for their new mission.

The rectory, where Fr. Alexander and his mother lived, was an older frame building purchased in 1924, known as the "Bridge House" on the corner of Solomons Island Road. This house was remodeled to accommodate the needs of the sisters’ and became their convent. Fr. Alexander moved into a residence purchased personally by him in 1928. It was at the corner of Sedwick, the site of the present convent.

True pioneers, working side by side with Fr. Alexander to make the school and parish successful, the sisters opened Our Lady Star of the Sea School in September, 1933, conducting classes in the church basement. Thirty one students were enrolled that first year.

Rolling partitions separated four groupings of students - primary, middle grades, junior high and high school students. The open classroom concept of educational learning, popular in the 1970’s, was the successful reality of that first basement school.

Sr. Mary Hermana, Sr. Mary Beatrice, Sr. Mary Hilda, Sr. John Martin

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