Santa Rosa de Lima remembers school with fondness

This year’s 23rd annual Santa Rosa de Lima Festival honored its parish Catholic School established in 1951 and closed in 1967. Bishop Michael Mulvey joined parishioners in the observance with an opening Mass on Aug. 20. Many young people presently living in Benavides are not aware that the Catholic Church had a school, said a Festival Committee organizer, which is why the 2016 festival committee decided to shine recognize it.
 
Santa Rosa de Lima School served students from kindergarten through the eighth grade. The school was under the direction of parish priests, who served as superintendent and the Sisters of Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament from Corpus Christi, as well as lay teachers.
 
The Spanish Dominican priests assigned to the parish at the time the school opened its doors were Father Alvaro Rodriguez, Father Fernando Iglesias, Primitivo Santa Maria and Antonio Arguelles. The nuns were Sisters Emmanuel, Sister Margaret Rose, Sister Charles Marie, Sister Maria Goretti, Sister Bernadette Marie, Sister Stanislaus, Sister Auxiliadora, Sister Rita and Sister Monica. Lay teachers included Maria Farias, Clara Utley, Bertha Corkill, Eloy Carrillo, Mrs. Eligio “Meme” Saenz,
Guadalupe Soliz and Irma Sendejar.
 
As in all schools, mothers volunteered as room mothers and fathers served as coaches or wherever needed. A mothers’ club was organized. It was through the efforts of these women that the parochial school was able to function and operate.
 
The Benavides Independent School District was always very generous to the parochial school, offering its school auditorium for musical recitals and other activities. The school district also encouraged the Santa Rosa de Lima music students to participate in the Eagle Band.
 
The people of Benavides were very proud to have a Catholic school in the community where students were involved in athletics, the fine arts, outstanding general education, and above all, religious education.
 
Maria Farias, who taught at the school beginning in 1951 through May of 1955, when she resigned, said Father Alvaro Rodriguez, OP, hired her. The principal was
Sister Emmanuel, who was Farias' Spanish teacher in high school.
 
“I was the first lay teacher when the school opened,” Farias said.
 
According to archival records at the Diocese of Corpus Christi, the school buildings that comprise the Santa Rosa de Lima School were completed in 1950. Then known as St. Rose, records suggest that the first classes were begun in September 1951, a year after the school’s completion, as Father Rodriguez had trouble locating sisters to staff the newly constructed school.
 
According to the records, the school first shows up in the Official Catholic Directory in 1952. The directory shows that IWBS sisters and one to three lay people always staffed the school. In 1955, the school was enlarged to accommodate more students and teachers.
 
In the early 1960s, the parish came upon hard economic times as residents left town, the average income was low, and the largest employers all closed down their businesses and left. In July of 1965, a new pastor, Father Antonio Arguelles, OP wrote to Auxiliary Bishop Adolf Marx recommending that the school be closed.
 
Tuition payments did not cover the school expenses. Instead, the parish relied on Bingo proceeds and assistance from the local public school to make ends meet. Father Arguelles believed that it would be best to close down the parish school and devote more resources to the CCD program. Bishop Marx and the diocesan consultors agreed.
 
While no documentation indicating the exact date the school closed is available, it is believed it did not reopen again for the 1965-1966 academic year.