Musings: This Catholic school empowered its girls

Gloria Steinem was known for her enduring leadership of the women’s rights movement, which raised feminism to the forefront of our nation’s conscience.

With her recent passing, I was reminded of the path my life has taken as a young woman of the 1960s because of such valiant trailblazers. I reflected on the advancements made because “Ms.” Steinem, Betty Friedan and other heroic women who continued the fight for equality.

I felt privileged to attend an all-girls Catholic high school in Brooklyn, Bishop McDonnell Memorial, which opened its doors in 1926 and closed in 1973 because of declining enrollment and higher operating costs. Bishop Loughlin was our brother school, but ours was unique.

The faculty was entirely female, including members of five orders of religious women — Sisters of St. Joseph, Sisters of St. Dominic, Daughters of Wisdom, Sisters of Mercy and Sisters of Charity — all of whom had a strong presence in New York City’s boroughs and on Long Island.

Though their numbers are dwindling, the nuns’ impact on their students remains vital through the thousands of graduates who learned what it meant to be strong, successful, relevant women in a changing society through their example.

This year, as I attend my 60th high school reunion in five days, on Saturday — the school’s centennial — my classmates and I will be honored to have Bishop Robert J. Brennan of the Diocese of Brooklyn celebrate Mass with us in the same building. It is now St. Francis de Sales School for the Deaf under the auspices of the diocese.

I look forward to seeing my classmates who have made their marks in diverse fields throughout our country and beyond its borders.

We proudly refer to ourselves as “Bishop’s Girls” in the best sense of the phrase. Our legacy to future generations is to secure and extend the banner of women’s rights that was gifted to us so many years ago.

— Marie Lombino Palagonia, Coram