Rock Workshop April 29
PowerPoint script
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St. Stanislaus has an interesting and inspiring history. Most people don’t realize that our school was founded more than 20
years before Mississippi State University, 50 years before Southern Miss, 30 years before Millsaps and about 60 years before
Loyola of New Orleans.
When it was founded in 1854, St. Stanislaus was the only institution of higher learning on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. So we
have an important history to tell and venerable tradition to be proud of.
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In the Fall of 1854 Father Stanislaus Buteux, the pastor of our Lady of the Gulf parish sailed to France to find Brothers of the
Sacred Heart to start a school.
Click: sail boat
He visited the superior of the Brothers in France, who found five volunteers willing to leave their country and learn a new
language. Brother Polycarp asked the pastor to pay half of the expenses of buying property and building the school. Father
Stanislaus agreed. The brothers bought beachfront property on a single lot fronting on Bay St. Louis where the school is now.
The campus started at the beach and went back about 1½ miles, that is, up to what is now Highway 90.School started in a very
small building behind the church. It was plainly too small for a school.
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And the five brothers had no residence. So one of the brothers with experience in construction designed and built a two-anda-half-story building with galleries in the front to serve as the school.
Click: school drawing
Click: St Stanislaus Academy
The brothers named it St. Stanislaus Academy in honor of Father Stanislaus the pastor and Saint Stanislaus, the patron of
youth. The brothers lived in the attic. From this humble three-classroom building, St. Stanislaus would grow into the most
renowned educational institution along the Gulf Coast.
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The man who made St. Stanislaus really take off was Brother Athanasius. He was the leader of the original five French
missionaries. He was a very capable administrator and he took charge of the growth of St. Stanislaus. He put the school on a
good financial footing.
Click: tuition receipt
We have in the archives a tuition receipt with Brother Athanatius’ signature on it from 1858 to a certain Mrs. Ladner. It shows
that for one-half year, room and board and tuition for her son was $12.00. And school supplies were $1.90, for a total
semester expense of $13.90. That means a full education for a year was under $30. Brother Athanasius’ financial records show
that teachers earned $15 a month. A pair of shoes cost $1.40.
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The first crisis of the new school was a regular occurrence of severe outbreaks of yellow fever. Since there was no system of
running water, many Gulf Coast homes as well as the school got drinking water by draining it off of the roof into a cistern,
which is a giant barrel standing next to the house. It took a while to discover that a certain type of mosquito bred in the
cistern, and bites from that mosquito spread the fatal infection rapidly.
Click: Yellow fever clipping
Click: Black vomit
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Known as Yellow Jack or “Black Vomit, yellow fever killed many people in New Orleans and all along the Gulf Coast. There
were many outbreaks, one of which caused the school to be closed. Three brothers, presently buried in the cemetery, as well as
a number of students died. Because of the ravages of yellow fever the number of boarders diminished the next school year,
but by degrees the enrollment increased and St. Stanislaus began to grow.
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Under the direction of Brother Athanasius, the reputation of the school spread. Before long boarders flocked from the sugar
plantations in Louisiana. The school was not big enough. As more students came, more Brothers came to St. Stanislaus. To
keep pace, in 1859 Brother Athanasius attached another 2 ½ story building the first building. It contained two dining rooms, a
chapel, and living space in the attic for 13 brothers.
Click: 1859 addition
Notice the cistern at the left on a brick base. It is well-covered. Notice there are no electric lines. There were no public utilities
and no electricity. Notice in the center of the photo, there is the post in the yard. On the ground next to it there’s a metal tub
like what’s inside a washing machine. At night the basket was mounted on the post and a fire was set in it. This was the
famous torch that did service as a beacon through the years, around which students gathered as soldiers to play their pranks,
sing their songs, or talk their battles over.
The big attraction of Saint Stanislaus was its spacious grounds with wide live Oaks. The only athletics at the time were baseball
and gymnastics. The playgrounds consisted of a sandy regulation baseball diamond and trapezes of different kinds in scattered
places. Under the shade of a line of oaks behind the school was a large piece of 12 by 12 inch timber 12 feet long that had
washed up on the beach. This was the traditional log. The common punishment for misbehavior was to walk the log or to
stand on it for a certain number of minutes to learn a missed lesson.
Click: Pier
Another thing that attracted students to Stanislaus was the pier and access to the water. Remember, there was no air
conditioning, so on hot summer evenings boarders would sit on the end of the pier to take a dip or be fanned by cool breezes
until the dorms had cooled down enough to go to sleep.
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Civil War came in 1861. During the first two years of the war, school life continued without too much disturbance. Because
the brothers were consecrated religious they were exempt from military service. They kept a certificate on their person so they
could travel freely to get provisions for the school. And they protected the school grounds. Because of the war, travel was
difficult for students; besides, some went off to fight. Enrollment decreased. Two wartime stories illustrate how, for five long
years, war affected life at St. Stanislaus.
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One boarder named John Moore ran away from St. Stanislaus to join the Confederate Army in 1861.
Click: name
He was only 12 but nearly 6 feet tall, and somehow he got accepted, probably because he lied about his age. His mother set
out in her carriage and located his camp. There she found John, standing sentry duty. She promptly put him in the carriage and
brought him home. She also returned him to St. Stanislaus. Later in life, his daughter came to donate photos and letters and to
testify that he had turned out to be a well-dignified man of character.
Click: Brother Hugh picture
Click: name
Brother Hugh Hamel, who was not born in the South, was very outspoken in his sympathy for the armies of the North. For
his protection the Brothers transferred him to Bardstown Kentucky but as he was traveling he was stopped in Chattanooga
and conscripted by the Confederate Army for a three year term in spite of his loud protests he was born in Canada. He served
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in the Alabama light artillery until his company surrendered in May 1865. After three years of Confederate Army he rejoined
the brothers and served 32 years at Stanislaus. He is buried in the cemetery on campus.
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The first two years of wartime were tolerable, but in 1863 the Brothers panicked. Union forces blockaded the Gulf Coast to
cut off all trade in the South. Northern generals called the blockade “Operation Anaconda” because the ring of warships kept
getting tighter and tighter.
Click: map pin
Saint Stanislaus had to close, but the Brothers were determined to take care of their students. They opened a temporary school
in New Orleans until the end of the war. Throughout the blockade, the Union soldiers were friendly and helpful to the
brothers and allowed them to go back and forth by boat through Fort Pike. While many boarders attended the New Orleans
location, three brothers kept the school going in Bay Saint Louis for local students and a few boarders who were not affected
by the blockade.
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After the war ended Stanislaus would have to pick up its tattered edges and began to flourish again.
Click: Flag
In 1865 it reopened with 103 boarders, 50 day students, and 16 Brothers. By 1867, a new principal sent to help with recovery
after the war, Brother Odon was so successful that he had to expand the facilities. He built a Science and Music hall and made
music and science part of the required curriculum.
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To both meet the needs of local pupils and fill a gap in higher education before there were any colleges in the southern part of
Mississippi; St. Stanislaus branched out and became two somewhat independent schools. In 1869, the Brothers opened a new
free school for local boys in grades 1 to 8;
Click: Free School
It stayed open a hundred years after other local Catholic elementary schools opened and the older boys were transferred to the
main school. The Brother most responsible for the free school’s success was Brother Stephen O’Hanlon, a native of Brooklyn,
who ran it for 26 years. He exerted a tremendous influence to hundreds of young men, many destined to become community
leaders in Bay Saint Louis. Brother Stephen sported a long snow-white beard which earned him the nickname “Rip van
Winkle.”
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The main campus continued to evolve. Besides its program of religious and moral studies, by 1870 St. Stanislaus had
developed a two-track curriculum, the Commercial Course and the Superior Course. The Mississippi State Legislature passed
an act incorporating the school as St. Stanislaus Commercial College.
Click: Commercial College
Not only did it award secondary school degrees, but, with courses in Commercial Law, Surveying, and Navigation, it awarded
commercial diplomas.
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A certificate of award and Diploma of Honor was won by St. Stanislaus Commercial College in competition at the Chicago
World Exposition in 1893. At the Paris Exposition four years earlier, St. Stanislaus students prepared an extensive exhibit and
won a Silver Medal. As a result, the school received a letter of commendation from the US Secretary of State.
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The scholastic giant of this period of national and international acclaim was Brother Stanislaus Keating. A man of deep faith
and prayerfulness, we could call him our third patron and namesake, after Saint Stanislaus and Father Stanislaus. As president
of St. Stanislaus Commercial College for 17 years, he proved himself to be a visionary, creative, and an innovative educational
leader. He is chiefly responsible for making St. Stanislaus’ sterling reputation known in the US and the world. He developed a
program leading to Bachelor of Arts and Letters degrees. In 1891 he hired an architect to construct a science hall and an
auditorium and to tie all the campus buildings together with arches and galleries.
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This is the overview of Brother Stanislaus’ vision, an imposing educational complex and a sanctuary for brothers and boys.
This is a drawing. One photograph exists, and it was taken from the point of the red map pin.
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This photograph from the back of the college in 1891 shows that Brother Stanislaus’ dream became reality; it shows the
entrance of the Exhibition Hall which he built to seat 1,000 people. Its huge innovation was electricity. The stage was
equipped with electric lighting. It also a new science room and a museum with precious Aztec art, Civil War photos, and an
Edison phonograph.
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The older part of the school did not yet have electricity. This study hall for the boarders shows kerosene lanterns for nighttime study.
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The technology of the day to be taught in the commercial college was typewriting.
In 1900 the school had 178 students. Most of them came from Louisiana and Mississippi, but there were ten foreign students
from Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Puerto Rico.
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In the early 1900s, students remained on campus for all weekends and holidays Every Saturday evening there was some form
of entertainment in the large exhibition hall. Weekends, Thursdays, and holiday periods provided opportunities for fishing
from the pier, crawfishing and snake hunting in the swampy woods on the back property, where the athletic complex is now,
swimming and rowing in the Bay, cookouts and walking through town with a prefect to buy candy and cigarettes at local
stores. Smoking was allowed since its harmful effects were not yet recognized.
A life-changing event happened on the last day of the school year 1902-1903. It would wipe away the achievements of Brother
Stanislaus.
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At 9:20 pm a watchman discovered flames issuing from the roof of the central building, where the trunks and surplus baggage
of the students and faculty were stored. The alarm was quickly given. The students and faculty fled from the burning college in
their night clothes. Everyone was safe and accounted for, but the fire had already made such headway that the efforts of the
local fire companies, added to those of the boarders and the neighbors, could not stop the progress of destruction.
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The flames spread from the central building to the entire main structure then leapt across the open spaces to the adjoining
edifices.
Little was saved. In spite of intense heat which scorched their clothes, student and brother bucket-brigades doused the dining
hall, music hall, and kitchen, which were separate buildings to limit the damage to them. Everyone was put up in two local
hotels and in a number of private families.
According to the diary of Brother Louis Felix, students and teachers woke up the next morning and met to vow to return after
the summer break even if classes had to be held under the oaks.
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The brothers were discouraged. Not only had they lost their school, but they had lost their leader, who was appointed by the
superiors in Rome to a higher office. But another leader took charge. Brother Felix Hoffman was a native of Bay Saint Louis
and he had graduated from St. Stanislaus. He knew it inside-and-out, especially its graduates and supporters. Officials in the
city of Biloxi offered the brothers one-third the cost of a new school if they would relocate St. Stanislaus there, but Brother
Felix refused and the Mayor of the Bay said that there was “an inseparable bond of good will” between the city of Bay Saint
Louis and SSC. So Brother Felix had new drawings made for a state of the art school. He wanted to keep the main lines of
Brother Stanislaus’ architecture, using brick instead of wood, and making the new cupola higher than the old one as a
statement of pride that St. Stanislaus was up from the ashes.
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In six short months this impressive red-brick school was complete! To motivate the bricklayers to meet their deadlines,
Brother Felix provided them with kegs of beer when they finished a section. Classes went on during the six months of
construction wherever place could be found. The boarders lived in small cottages on and just off campus.
St. Stanislaus entered the 20th century. Because Mississippi State, Milsaps, and USM were now up and running, it kept its name
“St. Stanislaus College,” but changed its curriculum to be college preparatory. The new school had electricity and plumbing. It
even had telephones! No more carrying water. No more cisterns to harbor mosquitos. No more kerosene lanterns!
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Chimneys meant hot water and heating. The third floor levels, with windows in the roof, were dormitories. The Brothers lived
in the upper level of the middle building. The new school was put on a Bay Saint Louis picture postcard. This one shows that
the city considered it a landmark.
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The town’s 4th of July parade in 1911 toasted the school as cruisers passed in their cars and carriages in an early version of
Cruisin’ the Coast.
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Most photos show only the front of the school. This aerial view of 1948 from the back of the school shows that construction
didn’t stop with the front three buildings. To give you some perspective, the tree in the middle of the picture is the same big
moss-covered oak right behind today’s school building. You see that the campus is full of little buildings and gardens and
fences. That’s because during the early 1900s, Stanislaus was like Amatongas. Brothers ran a farm to raise food for the
students. A vegetable garden was where the bus parking lot is. The dairy barn with milk cows was where the dorm is. And the
chicken coop was where the College Café is.
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The picture of the boys in the dining room was on a feast day; there are table cloths and they’re wearing what else but oxfords
and ties! Their food came from those cows, those chickens, and those rows of vegetables.
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In the 1920’s two new and important buildings were added behind the three main buildings. First the gymnasium with a
basketball court on the second floor: the first indoor court on the Gulf Coast! It’s the boarded up building behind the band
hall. You’ve probably never seen the inside before.
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PE class is going on. Notice the stage in the background. It doubled as an auditorium.
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This is the chapel building which was also the Brothers’ residence and science lab. This building is also boarded up. Let’s have
a closer look at the outside and the inside.
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The outside.
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The inside. It appears to be a Sunday Mass. In these days the priest celebrated the mass in Latin with his back to the people.
And it took a lot of altar servers because mass was celebrated each day for the Brothers.
Click:
Here are the altar boys from all grades. In oxford-and-tie. And some in knee-length knickers.
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Underneath the chapel is where the boarding students had their study hall. The camera man who made this shot is standing
under the altar. Notice the windows open. No air conditioning.
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Next to this study hall room was the science lab
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Let’s take one last look at the aerial view from the back of the school. The present school was built in front of the oak tree
where the pin is, in the former back yard of the school. That means that the tower with the cupola used to rise up right along
the wall between Coach Lala’s and Coach Conides’ classrooms. It also means that roughly in the ceiling above those two
rooms is where the fire of 1903 got started.
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Before 1900 there were no competitive sports at St. Stanislaus--only club baseball and basketball squads. Today we have a first
class competitive sports program because of one really important man, the one standing on the right in this photo . He was the
first real lay partner of the brothers, bonded so closely to them that he’s buried in the brothers’ cemetery on campus. He was
the first full-time coach Stanislaus had and he put the Rock-a-Chaws on the athletic map of the South. He coached everything:
football, baseball, basketball, track, and cross country. Coach Commagere was the first person inducted into the SSC Hall of
Fame. He started coaching all those sports in 1915, which means that 2015 is the 100th year of competitive SSC athletics.
Click: 100
Next year will mark the century for the Rock-a-Chaw. Brother Macarius, school president, inspired by Coach Commagere’s
very successful first year, gave Rock athletes their mascot in 1916.
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Let us take a look at some of the teams that Coach Commagere fielded.
Southern Prep School Track Champions 1916-1917
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Southern Interscholastic Baseball Champions 1916-1917
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The New Ballpark of 1916-1917 seated 1000 spectators.
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Coach Commagere’s Football team won its very first game 82-0. Shoulder pads were minimal. Note the shape of the ball. The
player at the bottom right is holding a leather helmet in his lap
At games, cars lined up along the sidelines. After sunset, they turned their headlights on to illuminate the field.
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It was not until 1938 that a real lighted football field was available.
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Once again, in only the second year of competition, the basketball team won the Southern championship. Not South State, but
the whole South.
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Since the early1900s SSC boasted of having some of the best tennis courts in the South, second only to Tulane’s.
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Members of the Junior Varsity tennis club of 1916 pose in ties with their team beanie.
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Besides team sports, there were two favorites for times of recreation. Handball was a special recess sport of the Brothers’
schools.
Click: pier
And special to St. Stanislaus, of course, was a daily swim in the Bay.
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A noteworthy landmark in SSC’s history was homecoming weekend in 1929, when graduates returned to campus to celebrate
their memories. It was for that occasion that the senior class published a brochure calling St. Stanislaus “The School of
Character.” Here is what they wrote:
“The above is our accepted motto and we do our utmost to uphold it while we are at school and hope to practice it when our
campus days are but memories.
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“That spirit pervades all about our institution. You breathe it, you live it – it is the stuff which has made Stanislaus what it is
today: foremost in scholarship, athletics and character-building.”
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Here are the students that named us the School of Character. The photo is from when they were on the JV football team two
years before their senior year. Their coach, standing in the back row, was Brother Edmond O’Hara, who became their class
moderator. He won his students’ hearts during his 35 years as prefect, coach, and teacher, and it was no doubt he who inspired
them as seniors to proclaim at Homecoming 1929 the challenge of being The School of Character.
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Brother Romuald took the motto seriously. Although Stanislaus had an excellent music program from its beginnings, it
became eclipsed by athletics. He built the band to the point that over 25 years the Rock-a-Chaw band amassed a total of 16
state first-place ratings.
Click: Marching Band
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The must public face of the motto “School of Character” was Brother Peter, who became school President at the same time
Brother Edmond was coaching and teaching the class of 1929. He became the voice of character formation not only for the
student body, but for Catholic educators across the nation. The Boston Globe published an article about him. The TimesPicayune described his “unequaled ability to get next to a boy to bring out the best in that boy.” It called him “truly an
ambassador of God.”
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Brother Peter was asked by the National Catholic Education Association to do character talks on national radio broadcasts. He
called them talks on “boy-ology.” Here he meets with younger students in front of the recording apparatus.
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One of the young brothers at the time, Brother Albert Ledet, told the Sea Coast Echo a story of a time when everybody at
Stanislaus showed proof of being a School of Character. It took place in 1947. At the time hurricanes didn’t have names and
there were no weather planes or reports with forecasts to warn the coast to evacuate. On a school day, the students were at
breakfast when slates from the college roof began to fly like zinging bullets. The wind was too strong to go through the yard.
The boys had to climb through windows to get to a safe place; they huddled together overnight in the big study hall: 232
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students and 30 brothers. As the wind screeched, Brother Romuald led the band playing most of the night, hoping to drown
out the howling of the wind and to calm down the younger boys.
The wind had broken loose three of the bolts anchoring the statue of Jesus in front of the school. The fourth held, and the
statue turned to face the east, the direction the storm was coming from as if it were its intent to calm the storm and protect the
school and its occupants. Not a single person was hurt.
School was called off for twelve days to repair the roof and twenty students remained on campus to help the brothers and
National Guard to clean up. Brother Peter told a reporter who asked how the boys withstood the crisis, “Discipline was
perfect. Not one of the students showed signs of panic or hysteria.”
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Twenty-two years after the 1947 hurricane, Bay Saint Louis took a more powerful hit and a 32 foot tidal surge from Hurricane
Camille. This time there had been evacuation precautions and only the brothers and some refugees were on campus. No one
was hurt. President Nixon declared a major disaster. The storm destroyed the main buildings once again. There was no
question that the school year would proceed after clean-up.
Brother Pierre St. Pierre, President said that there was over a million dollars in damage. The brothers were not discouraged,
but set about making plans for a modern first-class school that would allow for a larger enrollment.
Click: rectangle
The new school was designed to go in the space outlined in red and completed in 1971, with an addition in front in 1991.
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This is what the campus looked like from a seagull’s point of view in 2005, when the next crisis hit it: Hurricane Katrina.
The school was such a solidly built bunker on deep pilings that even Hurricane Katrina in 2005 did no structural damage to it.
We will leave it up to another time to present the story of the ten years since that disaster. But what a reporter from the Times
Picayune of New Orleans said can be repeated here because it sums up everything you have seen and heard over the last halfhour. He wrote it about Hurricane Camille, but it is equally true about Katrina. “Venerable old St. Stanislaus is accustomed to
disaster … and has a long tradition of endurance behind it. Even the worst hurricane can’t shatter that.”
56 Concluding Frame
Let us conclude with a silent prayer of thanksgiving to God for sustaining our school through crisis after crises and for
sending us courageous Brothers and lay partners to make it a place where we can grow and be protected and graduate to
become leaders in our Church and society.
Pause
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Ametur Cor Jesu! Ametur Cor Mariae!
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