Our Lady of Mercy Academy: 135 Years of Memories and Women Leaders by Andrew Wilson
Memories aren’t the only thing left for the graduates of Our Lady of Mercy Academy (OLOMA). Spend time talking with alumnae about their alma mater, and a stronger emotion quickly surfaces.
“I loved Mt. Mercy,” says Linn McCarthy Swanson, class of 1968 and the chief audit executive with UPMC/ University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, whose mother and sister are both OLOMA alumnae. “I really enjoyed it.”
“We had a lot of fun,” agrees Katie Welsh McSorley, a member of the class of 1969, who is an executive vice president with Euro RCSG Magnet, a national marketing communications firm with an office in Pittsburgh. “There were always activities going on at school.”
Intramural sports, debates, school assemblies, and plays were a few of the organized activities that OLOMA students look back on with affection. Some of the activities, however, were impromptu. One of the things McSorley remembers well were the occasional snowy days when students would take a lunch tray from the cafeteria and slide down the hill behind the Monroeville facility where OLOMA spent the last 16 years of its existence. Helen Hanna Casey, president of Howard Hanna Real Estate Services and chair of Carlow University’s Board of Trustees, fondly remembers sitting on the grassy hillside where Grace Library now stands, watching the college students go about their daily activities.
OLOMA alumna Katherine Donahue Freyvogel, president of Oakland Catholic High School, says there was never any question about where she would go to school because her mother and two aunts are also alumnae. She attended the Oakland campus for one year before the Academy moved to Monroeville, and speaks movingly of the connection she felt as she walked through the halls where her mother and aunts walked. Yet she also greatly appreciated the amenities that the Monroeville facility offered. She says the classrooms, language labs, and athletic facilities rivaled any school of that era, and there was even a bonus that was not in the building plans.
“We had peacocks in the courtyard (in Monroeville),” she says. “[OLOMA] was a very positive experience for me.”
Our Lady of Mercy Academy, or Mt. Mercy Academy—as it is often referred to—has been closed for 27 years. It’s been 43 years since it moved from the Mt. Mercy campus in Oakland to Monroeville. During the course of its 135-year existence, it created great memories for students and their teachers.
More important than the memories, though, OLOMA also created something few schools have done with regularity since—and absolutely no schools were doing when it was founded in 1844 by the seven Sisters of Mercy who came to Pittsburgh from Ireland. It created women leaders.
“What the academy really stressed was leadership and independence for young women,” says Ellie Wymard, PhD, an OLOMA alumna and an English professor at Carlow University. “There was a strong academic curriculum, but students weren’t stereotyped. Your talents were uncovered and you were encouraged to develop them.”
Freyvogel agrees with that assessment. She recalls studying Vatican II documents “hot off the press” in ninth grade religion classes. She also remembers that she and several classmates had the opportunity to create the curriculum for an independent study their senior year.
“We learned early on that if you wanted something to happen you could effect change,” she says. “It certainly gave us a level of confidence in who we were and where we could go, even if we didn’t know what our exact path would be.”
Developing students’ talents often meant encouraging them to look at the ordinary in extraordinary ways. Wymard recalls pausing for a moment to admire a relief of the layers and colors of an ordinary onion displayed on a table at the entrance to the art studio. Sister Hilda Giegerich, an art teacher and accomplished artist who had her classroom and studio on the second fl oor of Tiernan Hall, noticed that the work had caught Wymard’s eye, and spent a few moments pointing out the variation in the colors between the layers in the onion.
“She taught me to open my eyes to what was around me,” Wymard says, recalling the moment that showed her skills that she could use as a writer and author of four books including the forthcoming, Steel Towns: Women and Men of America’s Steel Valley, to be published by Carnegie Mellon University Press. “You were encouraged to stretch out. It was not a parochial environment.”
Wymard, who says she was always interested in writing, used the space provided by her teachers at OLOMA as editor of the school newspaper to interview such luminaries as the von Trapp Family Singers, of The Sound of Music fame, Cy Hungerford, who was the editorial cartoonist of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and other local papers for many decades, and Mildred F. Schmertz, a local architect, a career that was not typical for women in those days. Wymard also wrote a daily newsletter, Flash, which was posted on a bulletin board.
“Every day students gathered around Flash to see what was going on at the high school,” recalls Yvonne Thel Driscoll, MD, who was president of Student Council when Wymard was editor of the paper, eventually becoming a pediatrician in New York City.
While Wymard recalls getting some heat for her “left-ofcenter views,” Driscoll says the Mercy sisters gave her—and all of the students—a lot of rope.
“Ellie was phenomenal,” says Driscoll, who says she knew Wymard would end up a PhD in English. “Even if they didn’t agree with her, the nuns tolerated her views and never took Flash down. That freedom gave her a voice that was heard by all of us.”
Driscoll had a different experience from many of the students, as she boarded at the school during the week. Each Sunday evening her parents would drop her off at the school in Oakland, and every Friday she would catch a train back to her home in Aliquippa.
“We would get up early in the morning and go to chapel,” says Driscoll. “I still remember hearing the nuns sing their offi ce each morning. It was inspirational. They helped us become leaders, but not just leaders—Christian Catholic leaders. Don’t lose sight of that.”
It’s impossible to lose sight of the impact that these Sisters of Mercy made on their charges.
“We had small classes led by nurturing, bright Mercy nuns,” says Driscoll, who can still remember the room numbers and the Sisters of Mercy who taught in those classrooms. “We felt that these nuns knew everything about each one of us. I’m still amazed that they were so invested in every single girl in the class.”
Sister Patricia McCann, who was formerly known as Sister Marie Josepha and currently is the archivist for the Sisters of Mercy, taught English, history and public speaking at Our Lady of Mercy Academy from 1959 through 1965, and later returned as principal at the Monroeville site in 1969.
“The Academy was an enjoyable school in which to teach. Long-time principal Mother M. Gerald Dunn was a wonderful mentor for a young high school teacher,” says Sister Patricia.
“The students were friendly and, for the most part, interested in school. The majority of them were college-bound, so they took their studies seriously.”
Not that the Sisters of Mercy would allow them to slack off. Library time was an opportunity for the Sisters to suggest students read great books.
“Reading was encouraged. The library was a quiet, revered space,” recalls Wymard, who says she first read a book by Thomas Hardy because one of the Mercy sisters took it down from the shelf and encouraged her to read it.
“If you were interested in a subject,” says McSorley, “there were teachers like Sister Maristella who would take you under their wing.”
Sister Maristella Collins, who went by her baptismal name, Corinne, in her later years, taught religion and English at OLOMA. McSorley recalls the impact she had on her life.
“I loved to read—loved the written word—and loved to write,” McSorley says. “I can remember truly beginning to understand what authors were writing, and how descriptions could be fi gurative, not literal, and how the written word might stand for something else.”
“We were taught by nuns you knew were exceptional in their field,” says Wymard. “They didn’t blur into a single, stereotyped nun.”
That opinion appears to be something graduates in every decade share. Denise Shanahan McCarthy, class of 1943 and the mother of Linn Swanson, recalls that several of the Sisters of Mercy who taught at OLOMA were tapped for other service.
“All of the nuns teaching were excellent,” says McCarthy. “Many went on to careers in other fields. Sister M. Michael Rowland was a math teacher who became supervisor of schools for the Sisters of Mercy, and Sister M. Gonzales Duffy was a science teacher who became a pharmacist and director of the pharmacy at Mercy Hospital.”
“What the Religious women did for us was to help us grow up in a safe, appropriate, yet innovative and challenging environment that was conducive to a young girl’s growth,” says Freyvogel. “One of the reasons that I’m involved with single gender education today is because of my experience at Mt. Mercy. It was very similar to what we do at Oakland Catholic today. We provide holistic education for the body, mind, and soul. Aside from a faith tradition, education is the most lasting gift you can give an individual.”
Perhaps the excellence exhibited by the Sisters of Mercy was one of the reasons why excellence—and by extension, leadership—was encouraged in the students at OLOMA.
“OLOMA did provide me with a foundation for leadership,” McSorley says. “Being taught that you could do anything at school and having that concept reinforced at home by my parents provided encouragement to succeed.”
Swanson agrees, and credits the all-girl environment of the school for creating opportunities too.
“It did foster leadership opportunities,” she says. “I think it’s important for girls to be in an all-girl environment. I think girls tend to be quieter when they are in a co-ed environment.” Driscoll went from OLOMA to Trinity College in Washington, D.C., another all-female environment.
“I was so well prepared for that prestigious women’s college because of my experience at OLOMA,” she says. “I can’t tell you the impact it has had on my life.”
“Women’s education provides a fostering environment that helps young women learn to have assertive voices and independent minds,” says McSorley. “Catholic education fosters development of a stronger connection to our faith and provides a lens through which we learn moral behavior for life.” And it does something more too.
“There is a camaraderie that you get from being at an all-girls’ school,” says Swanson, who has stayed in touch over the years with about 10 of her 52 classmates, even though a formal reunion hasn’t been planned in about 15 years.
“My best friends (from those days) are still my best friends,” says McCarthy.
“The Academy had an incredible ability to be a wonderful Catholic environment which served not to separate Catholics from the world, but to prepare Catholics to live in the world,” Helen Hanna Casey recalls, adding that the Oakland campus itself was conducive to refl ection and exploration, as she and her classmates would explore the underground tunnels which linked the Academy to the college facilities. “The tunnels brought everyone together,” she says.
In many cases, they have stayed together—or at least in touch—even as life’s journey has moved them in diverse directions, such as real estate and health care, writing and medicine, and education and communications. The distance they have covered in that time is just as amazing and stretches far beyond Oakland or Monroeville, and—in at least one case—all the way to the Vatican.
“Serving as chaplain at Our Lady of Mercy Academy was a great experience,” says Cardinal Adam Maida of the Archdiocese of Detroit about his days of service as chaplain at OLOMA in the mid-1960s through the early 1970s. “The students were wonderful. Many of them are today’s leaders. I like to think I helped plant the seeds. I’m still in touch with some of them and we exchange Christmas cards.”
Kurt Vonnegut, the noted author and humorist, once remarked, “True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.”
But he got it wrong—at least partially. True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that not everyone running the country graduated from Our Lady of Mercy Academy.
Because, as anyone who spends a few minutes talking to them quickly discovers, OLOMA alumnae have done just fine.
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