Our History

The history of the building began in 1961 with the wisdom and foresight of Archbishop Boland who selected the site and appointed Monsignor John Cain, pastor of St. Bartholomew Parish in Scotch Plains, to be the administrator of the first diocesan high school erected under the Archdiocesan Development Program. On August 17, 1961, Monsignor Cain gained approval for the proposed building from the Zoning Board of Adjustment; on September 26, 1961, he secured the approval of the Township Committee. Groundbreaking ceremonies were held on October 14, 1961, with Archbishop Boland officiating.

By September 5, 1962, construction of only ten classrooms in the boys' wing was completed when three hundred uncertain boys and girls forged their way through rain and mud to become the first class of Union Catholic High School. During the first year, classes went on with incredible regularity in the midst of steam rollers, cement mixers, carpenters and engineers. "Our side" consisted of a mysterious mélange of mud and steel behind a huge wooden door. Clandestine pilgrimages behind this door were frequent. In September 1963, we returned to a completed complex of auditorium, gymnasium, cafeteria, library, chapel, and two faculty residences. On January 26, 1964, Archbishop Boland laid the corner stone and blessed the three structures. The building history of Union Catholic was complete.

The history of the Union Catholic family began in August 1962, when Sister Veronica Joseph and five Dominican sisters took up residence in a small house on Martine Avenue surrounded by seven acres of pine woods. The members of the original faculty were Sister M. Veronica Joseph, principal, Sister Elizabeth Michael, Sister Gerarda, Sister Helen Francis, Sister Mary Immaculate, and Sister Trinitas. Father Moran and Father Arico were our first priests. On August 4, 1962, the first Mass was offered in the sisters' convent. Very few of us ever penetrated the woods to find this house, but on October 15, 1963, the sisters emerged from the "hidden life " and moved into more conventional quarters in the convent erected next to the school. In that same year five lay teachers were added to the faculty.

In June of 1964, Sister Veronica Joseph was appointed to Caldwell College, and throughout the summer, students searched yearbooks for pictures of someone named Sister Virginia. The faculty which Sister Virginia headed consisted of seven sisters, seven priests, and eleven lay teachers. Finally, in 1965, with a full enrollment of students, the faculty expanded to twenty religious teachers and twenty lay teachers.

But the story of the Union Catholic family is more than a quantitative expansion. It is the story of a deepening personal commitment between teacher and student, teacher and teacher, and student and student. It is a deeply personal relationship which began in the leisurely days when girls could stay after school simply to talk, to explore the campus, or to engage in extracurricular activities which involved neither competition nor deadlines. It has endured beneath the pressure of activities and will endure after they have been forgotten. It is the history of a friendship, a history which has just begun.

Finally, there is the history of the Union Catholic person. She is, first of all, the "pioneer" who can remember starting school on an island of mud and viewing the first Christmas tableau on a cinderblock stage, but who conveniently forgets that she made her high school debut in a beehive hairdo. She has had the privilege of editing Volume I of a newspaper, a yearbook, a literary magazine, and of being on the first team, of winning the first contests in art, Latin, cheering, writing, forensics, of performing in the first concert, the first pageant, the first everything. She has made history and history has made her.

And what exactly has emerged from all this? What exactly is a Union Catholic girl? She is first of all an individual and best of all contemporary. She is a lot more articulate, a lot less docile, and many times more complex than her remote ancestor "the academy girl." She is raucous at a pep rally and reverent at the advent wreath. She wants earnestly to preserve what is sacred in tradition, and ruthlessly to discard what is false in convention. Her faces, her fads, her achievements are recorded in these pages. Her unique spirit cannot be recorded.