By Ed Karvoski Jr., Contributing Writer
Photo/Ed Karvoski Jr.
Hudson – Countless memories were shared July 10 in the small, two-story building with four classrooms on Green Street that housed parochial schools for several decades. Alumni were invited for a tour and luncheon before its demolition to expand the parking lot for Tighe-Hamilton Funeral Home, whose staff hosted the gathering.
Most of the over 50 guests had gone to that building when it housed St. Michael’s Academy (SMA) in the 1940s and ‘50s or Christ King School (CKS) in the 1960s and ‘70s. Chalk was provided to write on the blackboards. Many scribbled the names of their homeroom nuns, who were from the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur.
Dorothy Boland Lizotte was eager to return to the building. There, she was among 18 students in the all-girls SMA class of 1948.
“We were the first to go into this school, so we thought we were a big deal,” she recalled of their senior year. “It was a joy to come here.”
Classes in her freshman and sophomore years were conducted in the original St. Michael School (SMS) on High Street. They attended junior year in the convent, now parish offices.
Lizotte’s class was also the first to have a senior dance held at the Hudson Armory.
“We had to go to the convent first and introduce the guys to the nuns,” she explained. “I introduced my date to Sister Mary Thomas, she was such a sweetheart. She said to him, ‘You are a Catholic boy?’ He said, ‘No, I go to the Congregational church.’ She said to me, ‘Glory be to God, Dorothy, don’t tell the other nuns!’”
Enrollment rose over the years. There were 36 girls in the last class to graduate from SMA in 1958, noted Ann Kotarski Hildreth.
“We were the last and the largest class to ever graduate from the academy,” she said.
Hildreth expressed gratitude for the lifelong friendships her classmates share. They had reunions every five years up to their 50th. Now, they reunite annually.
“It’s a great bunch of girls and everyone is still very close,” she said. “We call ourselves ‘the forever girls.’”
The other SMA classes moved mid-1958-’59 school year to the newly-built Hudson Catholic High on Main Street. CKS opened for grades one through five in the 1960s; a sixth-grade class was later added. Some classes were located in the church basement.
Ann Marie Guidotti Parness returned to the building where she attended first to fourth grades up to 1969. She reminisced in the parking lot before the tour.
“When we’d play in this parking lot for recess it was segregated with girls on one side and boys on the other,” she recalled. “Inside, I remember the desks and chairs were all connected in one piece.”
CKS was preparing to close in the mid-1970s. The last class in the Green Street building was in 1975-‘76, when the sixth grades from SMS and CKS were combined.
The building opened again in the mid-1990s to mid-2000s for classes of the St. Michael’s Early Childhood Center. That’s where Brett Folman attended kindergarten. On his 16th birthday, he revisited the building and reunited with his kindergarten teacher Michele Jaeger.
“I learned my alphabet and numbers here,” he said.
The school and church property was purchased in 2007 by the late Thomas Hamilton, funeral home owner.
Helping to organize the gathering was Sally Crossman Guidotti, 1952 SMA alum, who served as class president for four years. Guests were treated to lunch catered by the Buffet Way in the former church basement. Some lucky alumni left with door prizes: authentic doorknobs from their alma mater.
