Initiative aims to collect, preserve heritage of local  Catholic schools

Detroit — It started with a love for history and an old yearbook from St. Theresa of Avila High School’s class of 1929. It was falling apart, but Mike Butler relished pouring through its pages, which contained invaluable history — a relic of a time long past, but one with invaluable family significance.

“As a kid, I loved looking at it. My dad appeared in the first grade group photo … the kid in the short pants, impish grin and Moe Howard haircut. He looks like a pint-sized cross between a young Jimmy Cagney and Leo Gorcey,” wrote Butler in a blog post in 2011.

The yearbook also contained photos of other relatives — uncles, cousins and great aunts — and some people Butler didn’t recognize. But others might, he thought. And thus was born the Detroit Catholic School Heritage Project.

Aiming to “preserve the rich history, tradition and heritage of the Catholic schools of the Archdiocese of Detroit, past and present,” Butler decided to launch an effort to collect artifacts, stories and materials from the countless local institutions of Catholic education over the decades and publish them to an online blog at www.bishopgallagher.org. An ambitious project, Butler knew it wouldn’t be easy, given the magnitude of such an undertaking. What he didn’t expect to find was that nothing of the sort had been attempted before.

“If it was easy, everybody would do it, and it would already be done,” said Butler, who graduated from Our Lady of Loretto School in Redford in 1967 and Detroit Catholic Central in 1971 and is now a parish council member at the Redford parish.

The Bishop Gallagher Society — the official name by which his group of about a dozen history-collectors goes — has yet to uncover “even 10 percent” of the schools and buildings that once existed, let alone the treasure trove of historical artifacts they might offer, Butler said.

“Back when these places were built, every ethnic group wanted their own church,” Butler said, adding that Bishop Michael Gallagher’s reputation as the “building bishop” inspired the society’s name. “Detroit was the biggest boom town in the world in the early 20th century. All they did was build, build, build. It was a very vibrant atmosphere, but some of the population is gone, the neighborhoods have deteriorated and memories of a lot of these places are fast disappearing.”

To preserve those memories, the society seeks anything it can get its hands on — “yearbooks, pictures, memories, stories of people who went there,” Butler said, as well as trophies, class lists and other artifacts.

While Butler currently posts what he finds to the society’s blog, his dream one day is for a local Catholic college or institution to devote space — either digital or physical — to house a sort of “museum” to chronicle the area’s Catholic school history. Eventually, he’d even like to start raising money to help fund current Catholic education.

But right now, it’s just community building and preservation — which doesn’t cost much, save for a little effort.

“There’s all kinds of neat stuff, and it’s going to be forgotten unless there’s a real effort made to perpetuate that,” Butler said. “I got a Catholic education, and so did my kids and my parents, and I think there are values learned that should be promoted and continued.”

In one of the more interesting finds, Butler said he discovered documentation of President Ronald Reagan’s visit to Redford’s St. Agatha High School in 1984.

“I didn’t even know about that, and I had grown up a mile away from the place,” Butler said. “He had just shown up there, and landed the helicopter in the parking lot of the YWCA across the street.”

In another find, the daughter of legendary Catholic League coach George DuFour sent in material on her father, who coached in the 1930s and ‘40s, after Butler posted a blog about him.

In addition to collecting and posting artifacts, the society also hosts a banquet each year to honor the places, people and institutions that helped make Detroit’s Catholic school heritage, and began the “Order of St. Bede,” after the 8th century educator and doctor of the Church, to honor those who have made significant contributions.

Butler said those interested in helping with the project or submitting material can contact him at [email protected].

“If someone decided to seize the power of all the graduates of Catholic schools around here, they could do a lot,” he said. “I just don’t think it’s been done yet.”