‘A school of love’

St. Dominic looks to the future as it commemorates 8 decades

By Dan McWilliams

Rosie Henderson LaMont, a student at St. Dominic School in Kingsport in the 1950s and ’60s, certainly learned many right things to do in her classes but also realized one thing not to do, at least with Sister Mary Madaleva Partenope, RSM, her teacher and a future principal there.

“For fifth and sixth grade, I had Sister Mary Madaleva. The first time we all stood up and said, ‘Good MOR-ning, SIS-ter MAR-y MAD-a-LE-va,’ she told us, ‘Don’t do that anymore,’” Mrs. LaMont recalled with a laugh. “It must have taken us two minutes to say.”

That was among many memories shared at the 80th-anniversary Mass and reception for St. Dominic School held on Sept. 27. The school was founded in 1945, four years after the parish was begun, and has shaped the minds and hearts of countless students ever since.

Bishop Mark Beckman celebrated the Mass along with host pastor Father Michael Cummins and St. Dominic associate pastors Father Bede Aboh and Father Anselm Edu concelebrating. St. Dominic’s Deacons Frank Fischer and Bob Lange served as deacons of the Word and altar, respectively.

St. Dominic School students assumed many of the roles at Mass, including doing the readings, leading the intercessory prayers, and presenting the gifts. A student choir led by St. Dominic music teacher and parish music coordinator Dana Bellino sang at the Mass, performing songs that included the medley “Awesome God/Awesome Is the Lord Most High,” with 16 third- through fifth-graders singing during the liturgy and a larger group presenting “They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love” at the end.

The celebration continued in the gym at the school, located three miles from the church, where alumni, past and present teachers, and staff shared memories via a timeline of St. Dominic School on the wall that could be written on, video stations to record memories and messages, and photo books where attendees could identify those pictured and share additional notes.

Bishop Beckman had just celebrated Mass for St. Dominic students only days before the anniversary festivities.

“It is so good to be back at St. Dominic for the celebration of 80 years since the beginning of your school. What a blessing this school and the parish have been to the Church and to this community here in Kingsport,” the bishop said. “It is good to be celebrating today in a eucharistic context. The very word Eucharist means to give thanks, and for many reasons tonight we give praise and thanks to God.”

The Gospel reading at Mass came from Luke 16 and told of Jesus telling the Pharisees about the rich man who did not help poor Lazarus at his door. Lazarus after he died was carried by the angels to the bosom of Abraham while the rich man following his death faced torment in the netherworld.

“What a powerful Gospel,” Bishop Beckman said. “I remember many, many years ago, I was on a retreat at Grand Coteau, La. The Jesuits had a retreat house down there, and Father Henry Montecino was a retired Jesuit in those days. I think he must have been already perhaps in his 80s, and Father Montecino had the task of proclaiming the Gospel we just heard, and then he began his homily.

“Of course, on a retreat you’re very still and quiet, you’re praying, and you’re listening very carefully, and Father Henry Montecino looked at all of us in the pews and he said, ‘What did that rich man do to deserve to go to hell?’ And we sat in the pews and looked at Father Montecino, and he looked back at us and he said, ‘He did nothing.’ This man at his doorstep was covered in sores, and he did nothing to help him. I will never forget the beginning of that homily.”

That brought to the future bishop’s mind his own sins of omission, “times when I had not noticed or responded to the needs of the neighbors around me. It was a call and an invitation to respond to the grace of God.”

“Father Montecino went on to say, ‘You know, even after the rich man died and is in flames, he still doesn’t see the humanity of Lazarus. He sees him as a servant,’” the bishop recalled, quoting Luke. “‘Send him to dip some cold water on my tongue, send him to my brothers,’ and so forth. Always an instrument, a person to be used, not to be loved, respected, or cared for.”

‘A school of love’

Bishop Beckman said “one of the great gifts” of St. Dominic Parish and School is that they are “a school of love.”

“God is giving us eyes to see our neighbors and needs. God is giving us a heart to love them. God is giving us hands to reach out to them,” he said. “Every time we come to the table of the Lord in this place, the Lord feeds us with Himself, and by nourishing our souls, He’s inviting us to become love itself, to have an active concern for the well-being of each brother and sister.

“It really is a school of love—that is what the eucharistic community is all about, and that’s the most important thing that our Catholic schools do: they help us to become like Jesus, who came to us in pure unbounded love and reached out to us, when we were lying in our misery and needed compassion. If we’ve experienced the goodness of God in our regard, then we have to be good to each other. We have to love the neighbor, and that’s the great blessing today.”

The bishop quoted a hymn he heard children sing, “Open My Eyes.”

“How many of you all have heard that one? ‘Open my eyes, Lord. Help me to see your face. Open my ears, Lord. Help me to hear your voice. Open my heart, Lord. Help me to love like you.’ Let’s pray indeed that the grace of God will move us tonight to say yes,” he said.

Father Cummins read announcements at the end of Mass but expressed his gratitude to the bishop first.

“Bishop Beckman, thank you for being here with us and our St. Dominic community as we celebrate eight decades of the ministry of St. Dominic School. As you said, it is the school of love,” the pastor said.

Roni Banayot, a representative of Bethlehem Christian Families, a ministry supported by St. Dominic Parish for two decades, spoke at the end of Mass.

Bishop Beckman made closing remarks.

“What a blessing tonight as we’re celebrating 80 years of the school of St. Dominic,” he said. “I loved the children singing tonight. Their enthusiasm when I celebrated Mass with them last week was equally rivaled tonight in your beautiful songs, so thank you all for that beautiful gift of music, which raises our hearts and minds to God. There are great reasons to be grateful to the Lord tonight, aren’t there?”

History in the making

Father Cummins after Mass called it “a wonderful day” for the school.

“We’re celebrating 80 years, eight decades of Catholic school here in Kingsport. Just to know that the humble beginnings of this school and how it’s continuing to grow and how it continues to transform lives is beautiful,” he said.

St. Dominic, with 116 students in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade, is small but has shown growth from its former double-digit enrollment.

“It has kept on going,” Father Cummins said. “The parish has again and again demonstrated their commitment to the school and their desire to keep the school going. It has grown, and we hope it keeps growing. That’s where we’re at right now, and it’s good. We’re happy.”

Mrs. Bellino is an alumna of St. Dominic and an 11-year member of the staff as music teacher, and she has additional family ties to the school with her late mother.

“My mom was Debbie DePollo. She was principal here for 17 years. I went to school here in fourth and fifth grade, and my three boys went to school here. They’re all alumni from here as well, and now I’m music teacher here,” she said.

The anniversary “is really special to me,” she added, “especially because I know that tonight a lot of my former teachers are here. I’m really looking forward to being able to catch up with them and seeing the rich traditions that this school has here.”

Bonnie Saleh is principal of St. Dominic and said, “It’s so amazing to just see the longevity of this Catholic school in East Tennessee and how far we’ve come from really a small house that was the school originally to this wonderful place we have now that we continue to grow.”

The enrollment at St. Dominic “has definitely grown over the years, and even with people moving every year, we just really seem to gain more and more attention and people realize what a loving and necessary place this is,” she said.

Mrs. LaMont, 74, started in first grade at St. Dominic in fall 1956 and went through eighth grade at the school, at a time when it had middle-school grades. Speaking in the school gym at the reception, she recalled what used to be on that spot before additions to the campus were made.

“Our first- and second-grade recess was underneath this building, where this building stands. We had great big swings. It was asphalt with big swings with 10-foot chains, and you could go super high. There were seesaws with big 10-foot boards,” she remembered.

The Sisters of Mercy served as principals and teachers at St. Dominic from its beginnings into the 1980s. Lay teachers have been a part of the school from the start as well.

“I had Sister Mary Lillian for first grade. I didn’t get along with her quite well, but mostly I did,” Mrs. LaMont said. “When I was in first grade, I got hit by a car walking home from school. She had all the kids make a TV for me. It was a box with two rollers, and everybody drew a picture, and they taped them all together. It was very sweet.”

The Sisters were her primary teachers, she said.

“I had mostly Sisters of Mercy. In third and fourth grade, I had Mrs. Stallard. She taught here for a long time. She was a really good teacher,” Mrs. LaMont said.

Sister Mary Linus was her principal in fourth and fifth grades, she added.

“She took me in this teachers’ room, and we had this model of the solar system, and you turned a crank and all the planets moved around the sun. I was quite impressed,” Mrs. LaMont said.

The first school building at St. Dominic, located on Center Street, was dedicated in 1951. Previously, students met in the basement of the original St. Dominic Church nearby on Crescent Drive before moving to a house. That first church was destroyed by fire in February 1983. The school then hosted all Masses and other parish events until the new church was completed in 1987.

“All of my older brothers and sisters were in the first classes when they built the new school,” Mrs. LaMont said. “The school was good. I had Sister Mary Vernon in seventh grade, and I had Sister Mary Grace in eighth grade. We had Mass every day.”

The original church was on a hill above the school.

“Every morning we had Mass, then we all marched down the hill and lined up, boys and girls, and then if there was anything else to do, we’d march back up,” Mrs. LaMont said with a laugh.

After living on the west coast, Mrs. LaMont moved back to Kingsport in 2020 and is a parishioner at St. Dominic. She recalls Father Thomas Woodley, who became the first resident pastor at St. Dominic in 1948, as well as the next two pastors, Father Ed Elliott and Father Carl Fassnacht.

The latter did not possess the best singing voice, she said.

“That was when priests always sang the Mass,” Mrs. LaMont said. “He did his best, though.

One of St. Dominic School’s longest-serving staff members, Joy Mullen, attended the anniversary celebration. She served as music director from 1978 to 2015.

Asked at the reception in the gym for her favorite memories, she said. “Oh, my goodness. That’s a big question.”

The first St. Dominic Church hosted all of the school Masses, she said.

“I had the first Christmas program there, which was a mistake because it wasn’t big enough, and there wasn’t room for all the people to be in there. That was in 1978,” Mrs. Mullen recalled.

The fire at the old church did spare one item, which soon found a spot on the stage at one end of the gym.

“They were able to save the organ from the balcony. The whole roof came down, but the organ was saved,” Mrs. Mullen said. “They brought it in the school here on the left-hand side of the stage. And for [more than] three years, the church had everything, all of the Masses, and all of the committee meetings, and all of the social events, right here in this room while they built the new church. I would play the school Masses on the organ.”

School Masses continued to be held in the gym after the new church was dedicated.

“They took the organ up to the new church,” Mrs. Mullen said.

That organ is still in use at St. Dominic Church.

St. Dominic School offered grades one through six when Mrs. Mullen arrived in 1978, she said. She had to teach her young students how to read music and came up with a distinctive method using a small instrument.

“I decided one of the best ways is to make the business of reading notes mean something. I started using recorders, which are like a little song flute, so they learned how to play the recorder and also read the notes,” she said. “Later on, we got larger recorders so that we could play ensemble. Also, we got what I call chime bells. Some people call them bars, but they have to read notes in order to play the bells, too.”

Mrs. Mullen then began teaching music appreciation two days a week, taking her students through the entire history of music.

“In order to do that, I needed to start in third grade. We started way back with cavemen, worked up through everything, talked about different nations and their music. By the time they get to fifth grade—they finally moved sixth into the public school—they had a pretty good background, not only of listening to music but understanding how music evolved,” Mrs. Mullen said. “That got so busy for the two days a week that I talked with the principal, and we decided that we could have a chorus, rather than trying to teach singing in the classroom with everything else. So, we formed a chorus of third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students.”

Mrs. Mullen also had operettas at St. Dominic and began writing her own in 1998.

“That was a lot of fun—a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun.”

When St. Dominic added pre-kindergarten as well as art classes, Mrs. Mullen had to move from her music room at the school into the former Sisters of Mercy convent. She recalled the Sisters who served at the school in her early years there.

“When I first came, I had a nun for principal. I had Sister Clarice and Sister Madaleva next,” she said.

Sister Madeline MacDougall, a Sister of Notre Dame, was pastoral associate at St. Dominic in those days.

“When [the Mercy Sisters] left and we started getting other principals, Sister Madeline was at the church, and she played the organ up at the new church,” Mrs. Mullen said. “She also came down and accompanied for me for the chorus, which was great.”

The music teacher recalled former St. Dominic pastors, including the late Monsignor Bill Gahagan and current St. Jude-Chattanooga pastor Father Charlie Burton.

“Father Gahagan was very nice. I was very fond of him,” Mrs. Mullen said. “Then Father Charlie—I didn’t call him Burton, I called him Charlie.”

‘A gem of a school’

St. Dominic School has celebrated anniversaries in the past, including its 50th and 65th. At the latter event in 2011, Marvin Hagey Jr., one of the original students as a first-grader in 1945, remembered Father Woodley, who had served as an associate at St. Dominic before he became pastor.

“I started there with Father Woodley and Sister Mary,” Mr. Hagey said. “There were three Sisters down there at the school in the house before they built the (current) school in ’51.”

Mr. Hagey served in the safety patrol at the school and shared one classroom with three other grades besides his own.

“We had the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade all in one room,” he said.

Susan Woodruff was a substitute teacher at St. Dominic from 1990-96. And her three children, who now are 45, 42, and 40, attended the school from 1985-96.

“We have been parishioners at St. Dominic since 1976. And St. Dominic is a wonderful school. It’s not only academically great, but it has all the other—the music, the religion, and everything. The teachers were wonderful. We spent a lot of time here,” Mrs. Woodruff said.

Bishop Beckman praised the St. Dominic community for its faith and dedication to the church and school.

“I am delighted that this school is celebrating its 80th anniversary. The presence of the children at Mass, especially the way they sang together, shows the great gift this school is to the whole community and to the parish. Hopefully it will continue to grow for many years to come, at least another 80 years,” the bishop said. “It’s a gem of a school. The school I studied at, Sacred Heart in Lawrenceburg, was about the same size as St. Dominic. This is a beautiful-sized school for kids to grow up in and study in.”

Bishop Beckman wanted parents who may be considering St. Dominic for their children to know they couldn’t find a better school. “If their kids are entrusted to the care of this school, they will have a great experience. I experienced the gift of a small Catholic school. It’s a great gift.”