PHILADELPHIA - The steeple is still a prominent fixture in West Philadelphia where the Catholic church was once well known for its prestigious 50/50 drawings of big cash pay outs. The connecting school was a privilege to attend but most of the students walked through neighborhood housing projects to get there.
"I walked four blocks through some of the roughest streets in West Philly during the 70s to get to Our Lady of Victory School to see my friends," said Janice Robinson-Celeste. "This school was more than just a school to us and that's why we still long to see each other more than 30 years later."
Most reunions are for higher education but this is a grade school reunion for a school where the class size rarely exceeded 30 students. "This is the first time we will all see each other in a very long time and it's important to me that I get all of my classmates there," said Robinson-Celeste!
The former Our Lady of Victory School located at 54th and Vine Streets is now a baptist church, a casualty of the Philadelphia Archdiocese's school closings a few years ago. "This school is very special because we were more like family than classmates,"
Although the school officially closed its doors in the early 2000's, it has been in existence since the early 1900's and many of the former students from Robinson-Celeste's era are now difficult to locate. She started a Facebook Group hoping to find long lost classmates and within a few months hundreds of alumni joined the group -- all for the same reasons, the love for the school, faculty and their old friends. "I can't believe it! I really didn't know if it would work but I started the Facebook group hoping my classmates would find me and many did. Some of their family members who also attended the school years later also joined the group and told some of my classmates about it. Now we have almost 300 members and growing."
Robinson-Celeste promised that once the group reached 100 members, she would personally host a red-carpet style reunion for the entire school, which would be a first ever for an institution that meant so much to its students. "This is a school where the teachers truly cared about us. You weren't allowed to just slip through the cracks because there weren't any cracks," said Robinson-Celeste. "So I want to have a reunion to show our thanks to the faculty and to see our old classmates. There will be lots of joyful tears that night I promise you."
This special reunion is open to all former students of Our Lady of Victory School and will be held Thanksgiving weekend 2010 at the Warwick Hotel in downtown Philadelphia. Robinson-Celeste is desperately searching for remaining classmates. "I've located about 70 percent of my class. It just won't be the same without everyone. I hope to get the word out and find them all. I can still name every single person."
For more information on the Our Lady of Victory Reunion, go to their website at http://www.eventbrite.com/
