Thanksgiving Memories of St. Mary High School (1957-1990)

Greenwich High School will play arch-rival Staples High School for the FCIAC Championship on Thanksgiving. For me, the classic Thanksgiving football game will always be the match-up between the Blue Knights of St. Mary High School and the Cavaliers of Norwalk Central Catholic held every year on Thanksgiving Day. Both schools are gone now merged with Stamford Catholic into Trinity High School.

In 1957 St. Mary High School opened in the basement of the old St. Mary Grammar School on Greenwich Avenue. That 1900 brick building was torn down years ago and replaced with a large commercial building next to St. Mary Church. (The Old Convent was also torn down and, in one of life's little ironies, was located right about where Victoria's Secret is today). In those days, St. Mary Parish included the back-country before St. Michael and St. Agnes were spun off and was the wealthiest Catholic parish in the state. Monsignor Michael Guerin, St. Mary's redoubtable pastor, decided to build a Catholic high school so that all the Catholic grade schools, like St. Mary's, St. Catherine's and St. Roch's, could act as feeder schools and send students to the new Catholic high school. St. Mary High School was built on North Street (after overcoming ferocious back-country opposition), at the present site of Greenwich Catholic School and St. Michael Church.

By 1964 St. Mary High School had been taken over by the Diocese of Bridgeport and became part of the dioscesan secondary school system. Unfortunately, this put St. Mary High School under the control of Bishop Walter Curtiss who decided to separate the sexes and build a girl's high school on Stanwich Road where the Greenwich Reform Synogogue is today, despite the admonition from your younger but still impertenent blogger, then in eighth grade at St. Mary Grammar School. St. Mary Girl's High School lasted until the '70s when economics and enrollment concerns led to the merger of the two schools and coeducation once again became the norm at St. Mary High School. By 1990 St. Mary High School had closed, collateral damage to the scandals that rocked the Church and changing demographics.

My time at St. Mary was 1964 to 1968, when it was known as St. Mary Boys High School. During those years we had legendary athletic teams. Coach Walter Rothenheber's swim team was a regional powerhouse. The GHS swim team of that era was no competition. In 1968 the swim team's only losses were to the Yale and Dartmouth freshman teams which featured returning Olympians. In 1968, the baseball team under Coach Bill Bergeron was undefeated at 21-0. GHS was not even close. Our track team under Coach Bill Mongovan was very good, although not up to the levels he achieved later as a legendary women's track and cross-country coach at GHS. In football, we did not play either GHS or Brunswick, but competed with Catholic high schools in Westchester, the Bronx and Long Island. Our special rival, Norwalk Central Catholic, was a perennial Connecticut contender in the small school category of the CIAC. 

That brings me back to Thanksgiving Day 1966. Norwalk Central Catholic was undefeated and ranked Number One in the State. We traveled to their field and upset them 9-0 thanks to the superb field goal kicking of Phil Fitzpatrick, an Irish immigrant, who in another game kicked a forty-two yarder, which in the days before soccer-styled kicking was very impressive. Later St. Mary played a Connecticut schedule, found another legendary field goal kicker, and introduced the wishbone to local high school football, but that was after I was long gone from SMHS, so I'll let some else comment on that. Before he died recently Bill Bergeron confided that the 9-0 win was his most memorable victory in football. Peter Gasparino, our line coach, confirmed that as well.

The Thanksgiving Day games are faded memories now, except I hear that there are St. Mary alumni that still get together for a touch football game at the Williams Street field with their children even today.

"Go St. Mary, go St. Mary, Blue Knights riding high. Bring the victory to our banner, conquer be our cry, cry, cry. Go St. Mary, go St. Mary, thunder out our name. Fight Blue and White and we will win this game." (Sung to the tune of "on Wisconsin").