As students and staff at Nazareth Academy in La Grange Park prepare to celebrate the school’s 125th birthday, they’ll be continuing one of its longtime traditions by giving back to the community.
Instead of a birthday party, the school is participating in a Day of Service on Oct. 20.
Called Roadrunners Give Back, the event involves Nazareth volunteers spending an afternoon assisting at sites throughout the greater La Grange area.
“The 125th Anniversary is such a great opportunity to emphasize the idea of serving the people in our neighborhood,” event coordinator and Nazareth French teacher Elizabeth Balge said. “And I think this is probably the biggest Service Day Project that we have ever done as a school community. It’s really exciting to give people an opportunity to serve in places outside of places they normally serve. Service has always been a huge part of the culture at Nazareth Academy.”
Volunteers will process and sort contributions at several local food pantries, including those at St. Francis Xavier and St. Cletus parishes, both in La Grange.
Nazareth Roadrunners will also fan out to Bemis Woods forest preserves, Memorial Park in La Grange Park, Wolf Road Prairie in Westchester and Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Hillside to help with autumn outdoor work.
“They’ll be cutting down shrubs and trees,” Balge said of the efforts at Bemis Woods. “That’s one of our biggest sites. They said they would be able to take as many volunteers as we have.
“The Sisters of St. Joseph are sort of the stewards of 200 gravesites in Queen of Heaven Cemetery, so our volunteers will be helping them to clean and tidy up the gravesites.”
St. John of the Cross in Western Springs will host volunteers sorting supplies for its Bucket of Hope program that provides 5-gallon buckets of cleaning supplies and household goods to families who have recently moved into a home or who have suffered some type of household disaster.
Residents of the nearby Edgewood neighborhood will get some assistance with yard chores and other household problems that need addressing.
“Part of this is about helping people who are closest to us,” Balge said. “We ask the neighborhood to put up with a lot of noise and light from our football games and events, so we thought we’d reach out and see what needs to be done in individual homes.”
Quinn Center of St. Eulalia for teens and their families, will get assistance in setting up its Fall Festival scheduled for the end of October in Maywood; Bethlehem Woods retirement home in La Grange Park will host students there to mingle with the residents and socialize. The visits are in addition to a regular club activity at Nazareth.
Another contingent of Nazareth Academy volunteers will help out at Congregation of St. Joseph’s Blanket Ministry, making fleece blankets to be donated to hospitals while others will assist in the painting of an outdoor mural at the Loft At Eight Corners, a Brookfield facility specializing in the mental health of teens.
“We’ve got 20 different service sites that are scheduled for students and families, so there’s something for everyone,” Balge said. “That’s what we were going for, we want to find a bunch of different ways for people to be involved.”
A common theme at Nazareth is that many of the people who make careers there are Nazareth grads. One of them is the school president, Deborah Tracy, who graduated from Nazareth in 1982.
“I think it speaks highly of the school, of the Sisters (of St. Joseph, founders of the school), and our mission, that so many of us really credit our high school years being so formative for the rest of their lives,” she said. “We want to give back to future generations.”
Tracy talked about the process of deciding on the Day of Service being appropriate for the school’s 125 anniversary, saying the decision was made by a committee of faculty and staff.
“Hands down, a day of service was something that was well received by the whole group,” she said. “To be able to express our attitude of gratitude back to the whole community. Many of the places where we’ll be doing acts of service have been great partners with us and the Sisters over these many years.”
Village Trustee Joe Caputo, a 1987 graduate of Nazareth, has had one daughter graduate from the school and another a beginning freshman this year.
Caputo, a Westchester native, had a choice of attending high school at St. Joseph, Nazareth, or St. Ignatius, chose Nazareth to stay close to home and have a coeducational high school experience.
“I had a great education there,” he said. “Education-wise, the discipline and culture were great. Some of the nuns are still in the school, and my history teacher was Therese Hawkins (’79) who is the principal now.”
Another Nazareth grad, Donna Poljack Kurcz, class of 1972, attended Nazareth when it was still in the building now home to Park Junior High.
“My time at Nazareth was significantly formative and I’ve made lifelong friends from many of my classmates,” she said. “It’s very dear to me.”
Hank Beckman is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.