Gut-check time
A prominent sports journalist turned Catholic educator returns to tell of his Chicago school’s toughest season yet
By Dan McGrath, Jour ’72
From big-city newsman to inner-city educator was the theme of a piece I was honored to write for Marquette Magazine two years ago.
I had graduated from Marquette’s College of Journalism with an irrepressible desire to write sports for a living after two seasons covering Al McGuire’s Warriors for The Marquette Tribune. Thirteen years as sports editor of the hometown Chicago Tribune was the culmination of a 37-year odyssey that took me all over the country.
Fabulous run. Wouldn’t trade a day of it.
I was eight years into a second-career job as president of Leo High School, a feisty little all-boys Catholic school in the hardscrabble Auburn Gresham neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, when the magazine piece ran. Titled “Rookie Season,” the story told of a grizzled newsman starting anew to help a new generation of inner-city kids get their shot at productive lives and fulfilling careers.
I’m a Leo graduate, as are half my male co-workers and about 80 percent of the donors whose generosity keeps Leo alive and thriving as a symbol of hope and an oasis of learning in one of the toughest pockets of the city.
I’m a Leo graduate, as are half my male co-workers and about 80 percent of the donors whose generosity keeps Leo alive and thriving as a symbol of hope and an oasis of learning in one of the toughest pockets of the city.
We have engineered a 40 percent increase in enrollment over the last four years. The bills are paid, and we’re on pace to graduate 100 percent of our seniors for the 10th straight year.
Wouldn’t trade a day of it.
But the current year has been the toughest of my tenure … because of a damn virus.
The senior luncheon was first to go, followed by the choir’s spring concert, the spring sports schedule and the senior prom.
But not graduation. No chance we’d cancel graduation.
In some form or fashion, we will graduate the class of 2020 — our seniors deserve the send-off. As anyone who has ever attended one will attest, a Leo High School graduation is a ceremony unlike any other, owing to the pride, excitement and sheer jubilation experienced by our participating families. And they’re not shy about expressing it, any of it.
So for now, we channel a song title from the late, great Tom Petty — The Waiting Is the Hardest Part — as we long for the resumption of a routine bearing some resemblance to normal at Leo.
Waiting around, though, is clearly not what we’re known for at Leo. In response to the ominous health threat posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Office of Catholic Schools announced a system-wide shutdown on Friday, March 13. When we let the kids go that afternoon, I had a disquieting feeling of not knowing when we’d see them again. But we were determined not to lose contact.
We had an online learning platform in place by Monday, March 16. Teachers were interacting with students in online “classrooms” by midweek, plus maintaining office hours and offering individual instruction to anyone who might be struggling. Twice-weekly faculty meetings on Zoom help us deal with any problems that might arise. A weekly evening session keeps parents apprised of what’s going on.
Parental involvement is integral to the Leo mission. We like to say we don’t just recruit students to Leo, we recruit families. And since the effects of the COVID-mandated shutdown are landing heavily on many of our families, we are working hard now to fulfill that promise, doing so with help from generous Leo alumni and from the Big Shoulders Fund, a mission-driven nonprofit committed to sustaining Catholic education in Chicago’s inner-city neighborhoods. Marquette graduate Joshua Hale, Comm ’95, is Big Shoulders’ president, CEO and driving force.
We didn’t need COVID to remind us that our families are poor — more than 80 percent meet federal guidelines for free or reduced lunches. Many Leo parents are “gig economy” laborers — day-care operators, restaurant servers, hair stylists, Uber drivers — who have lost jobs or had their hours cut by state and city stay-at-home orders.
We didn’t need COVID to remind us that our families are poor — more than 80 percent meet federal guidelines for free or reduced lunches. Many Leo parents are “gig economy” laborers — day-care operators, restaurant servers, hair stylists, Uber drivers — who have lost jobs or had their hours cut by state and city stay-at-home orders.
But we’re committed to keeping our families whole. An alum from the Class of ’65 provided seed money for an emergency fund and suggested we name it for a fellow Leo grad who’d been a generous benefactor up to the time of his death in early March. Through the Bill Kay Relief Fund, we have offered tuition deferments to more than 40 families that have been hit especially hard. We also have distributed more than $10,000 in gift cards to help with groceries, prescriptions and other household necessities. Many Leo families put a nice Easter dinner on the table using the gift cards we provided.
Long before the current crisis hit, Big Shoulders offered a lifeline to schools like ours that might have faced closure because of rising costs and on-off enrollment struggles attributable to Chicago’s changing demographics. In January, Hale and Big Shoulders announced a groundbreaking $92 million agreement with the archdiocese to provide additional scholarships and related support to 30 schools on Chicago’s poverty-stricken south and west sides, including Leo. Built into the arrangement is a 10-year guarantee of continued operation, a welcome security blanket for schools used to operating on the thinnest of margins.
No sooner had the ink dried on that deal than Hale — a high-energy visionary and joyously effective champion of Catholic education — was out raising $1 million in emergency funds to help families from Big Shoulders schools deal with COVID-driven economic strife.
Big Shoulders helps us buy boxed lunches from neighborhood restaurants and distribute them twice a week to our Leo families, as well as the homebound elderly people in Auburn Gresham and the residents of a nearby veterans home. Five weeks in, we have served more than 1,000 meals. And we are helping the restaurants, which have lost much of their business to the stay-at-home mandate that restricts them to carry-out and delivery orders.
Our efforts have not gone unnoticed. A story in the Chicago Sun-Times recounted the plight of Nikkia Bell, single mother of a Leo senior and three younger children. Résumé in hand, she had stood in a block-long line outside a job-placement agency for several hours, only to be told she’d have to come back another day and start the process over. Subsequent car trouble had her in tears before she came to Leo for a meal giveaway that fed her family for the day.
“Leo High School has been great,” Bell told reporter Stefano Esposito. “From the time I stepped in the front door, there’s been nothing but family love and support. It’s a big lifeline.”
That lifeline is extended each Friday for the distribution of meals and gift cards. Friday is also the day we check in with our seniors for an update on college plans. Some are sticking with previous commitments. Others are waiting to see how the world will look post-pandemic, including a half-dozen student-athletes who are talented enough to play sports in college. But the recruiting process is up in the air — who knows when college sports will resume. Or if they will. Or what they will look like assuming they do.
Our kids have worked hard, done all we have asked to earn these college opportunities. And a virus is snatching them away?
Ten years into this, would I trade a day of it? A year of it? This semester in particular? It would be tempting, but no. Leo’s mission — to prepare young men for life — didn’t change when neighborhood demographics changed. Now, that mission has expanded: We have a duty to help our families deal with these pandemic-imposed hardships. And we will. It’s my belief that the intrinsic value of people helping people will be the enduring lesson of this crisis.
Three weeks ago we “zoomed” through an online honors assembly to recognize students who qualified for the third-quarter honor roll. Parents were invited. The smiles on the faces of our proud moms would not have been any brighter had they been sitting in the school auditorium watching live as their sons were introduced.
Lovely. But a proper and polite afternoon tea in comparison with the energy and exuberance of a Leo graduation.
Those from more comfortable environs may take high school graduation for granted — everybody does it, right? At schools like Leo, the ceremony not only recognizes achievement; it celebrates our young men making it to age 17 or 18 without succumbing to the violence and trauma that shatters so many young lives around them.
Some of them we know.
Jerome was as talented a kid as we had while he was at Leo, a college prospect as a football quarterback. Now he languishes in Cook County Jail, awaiting trial on a murder charge. There was a gun, a shooting and a death; the only question is who pulled the trigger.
We mourn and miss Antonio even though we never really got to know him. An ever-smiling, baby-faced freshman, he was shot dead on the day he completed our summer bridge program. Drug dealers mistook him for a rival, and in an instant, a promising life was callously snuffed out at 14.
Thankfully, Jerome and Antonio were outliers. Most of our boys survive the streets. And that’s why our families are so unashamedly joyful at graduation. No virus is going to deny them their moment.
Right now, we’re on for Sunday, August 2. We announced the date in the hope that COVID-19 restrictions will be eliminated, or at least reduced by then, and our college-bound graduates should still be around to take part.
But if stay-at-home orders remain in place, we will adjust and stage a virtual celebration online, or graduate via Zoom, or find another way to fete the Class of 2020 that fits within the guidelines.
Ideally, the ornate old church at St. Margaret of Scotland will be the setting for a typically joyous Leo ceremony, a deservedly memorable final act for the Class of 2020.
Wherever it’s held, it will feel like a triumph, a ceremony unlike any other. And regardless of the weather, it will be a beautiful day.
