St. Thomas Apostle School and the Sisters of the Holy Cross

A Tribute to the Nuns that Taught Us the Faith

Woodley Park and St. Thomas Apostle Parish*

Woodley Park (named after Woodley Mansion, the summer home of Presidents Grover Cleveland and Martin Van Buren, still standing on the campus of the Maret School) became a streetcar suburb of Washington, D.C. in the early 1900’s after the Rock Creek Valley was successfully spanned by the beautiful Taft Bridge in 1907.  St. Thomas Apostle parish (STA) was founded in 1912 to serve the growing population of the federal city. Our home on Garfield Street (ca. 1920), and our grandparents apartment in the architecturally beautiful South Cathedral Mansions apartments (ca. 1922) on Connecticut Avenue were witness to the growth of the parish from temporary clapboard structure (on the site of the present rectory on Woodley Road) utilized until 1923, to the Basement Church (the current Parish Hall) where worship services were held for 28 years, to the red brick and limestone Church in which we eight children received the sacraments, completed in 1951 and still standing at the corner of Woodley Road and 27th St.

St. Thomas Apostle School

Father Thomas A. Walsh, the visionary founding pastor of St. Thomas who served in that role until 1936, turned to the Sisters of the Holy Cross who agreed to teach catechism classes to the parish youth and, later, to open a parish school in 1926. The Sisters of the Holy Cross were founded in the mid 1800’s and came to the U.S. as educators, nurses, and to run orphanages. They served STA faithfully for more than 60 years.

Ann Grayson Guevara moved into Cathedral Mansions with her parents Mary and Leon Grayson in the early 1950’s. She attended STA School beginning in 1954 for 7th and 8th grades. At the time, the school consisted of 3 townhomes directly across 27th Street from the then-new upper church. Her seven oldest children attended St. Thomas on the site of those townhomes, in a new school building finished in 1964. Sadly, due to changing demographics and the decline in vocations for the Holy Cross sisters (and thus their low-cost labor), her youngest child was not afforded the same privilege. STA School closed in 1986. While I was attending, our principal was Sister Mary Paschal Hickey. Sister Paschal wore the full wimple around her forehead, neck, and chest. Like most (all?) Holy Cross sisters, she wore a silver necklace with a heavy pendant of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, pierced by seven swords. Her face was surrounded by what looked to us like a paper plate, a sort of earthly halo. This was the traditional habit of their religious order, but Sister Paschal was the only nun of our era that we ever saw that wore such a headpiece. Sister Alice Teresa Hoy (1st grade) and Sister Mary (2nd grade, whose surname I don’t remember) taught me to read, and prepared me for First Reconciliation and First Communion. I still remember when one nun looked at my outside-the-lines coloring efforts and told me “No, you must color in one direction only, up and down,” while the following year the other nun said “You must color right and left.” I was confused until later realizing they weren’t being contradictory, but merely encouraging me to use a consistent pattern. I remember both as loving women who nurtured us compassionately. Sister Conrad Grant taught 8th grade, and she prepared us for Confirmation. She loved the Washington Redskins and, at the height of their quarterback controversy between Billy Kilmer and Sonny Jurgensen in the early 1970’s, our teacher had two bumper stickers on her car (it only now occurs to me that Sister Conrad had a car!). One said “I root for Washington and I like Sonny.” The other: “I root for Washington and I like Billy.” Sister Conrad obviously felt she couldn’t play favorites.

The Academy of the Holy Cross

The Academy of the Holy Cross (AHC) is an all-girls secondary school now located in Kensington, Maryland. The Academy is celebrating its 150th anniversary, and was featured in a recent issue of The Catholic Standard, the weekly newspaper published by the Archdiocese of Washington. Our mother Ann graduated from STA in 1956, and attended AHC, then located on Upton Street – about a mile from the Grayson apartment. Circumstances dictated that the school moved to its present location that same year, and Ann commuted an hour in each direction to receive instruction from the Sisters of the Holy Cross. It proved too much, and she transferred to the local public school the following year.  The Sisters of the Holy Cross continue to administer AHC, albeit no longer in the traditional habits that Ann and her children knew in the 1950’s through the early 1980’s.

Faith Formation in the American Catholic Church has seen better days, and though many godly men. women, and religious continue to teach children what we believe and why it is true, something is missing. Could it be the love and nurture of women like the Sisters of the Holy Cross, who in their love for Jesus and His commandment to “make disciples” spent their energy and emotion passing on the faith?  Thank your priest, deacon, and religious order brother or nun for their service to carry the tradition of those that came before them. Then take a moment a pray for vocations for those that come after, if Jesus tarries.

*Many thanks to Mrs. Nancy Theis, a long-time teacher at STA, for her service and her book ‘Blessed Are They Who Believe…’: A History of the First 85 Years of St. Thomas Apostle Parish 1909-1994.