Our Journey So Far
Image by Sarah Fortes from Pixabay
At the first-ever CASPN Graduation celebration, Board Chairman Ollie Bockwinkel reflected on the long journey that led to this amazing, miraculous moment…
Our goal is to form joyful, generous, faithful, and confident Catholic leaders, prepared for community life and mission in the modern world. I’d say we’re on track!
“The truth is that when people are in exceptionally high spirits, really wild with freedom and invention, they always must, and they always do, create institutions.”
August 3rd, 2019
On that warm Saturday around 2:30 in the afternoon, despite being holed up in some box-shaped conference room at the Sheraton Overland Park Hotel, a few people must have been in exceptionally high spirits! You see, the Society of G.K. Chesterton hosted their annual conference in Kansas City that year, that weekend. The theme of the conference as a whole is worth noting: The Future of the Family.
And in the final workshop of the final day, Emily de Rotstein led a breakout session entitled “Start a
Chesterton Academy in Your Community.” I think you can piece together what happened next, but let me share some highlights: Our founders, including Bill & Elizabeth Kirk, Matt Kutz and Lisa Corley were in that room, at that conference. Another of our founders, Charlotte Ostermann, had just led a session that same morning on “The Poet as Troublemaker” – five years later, perhaps we could make a follow-on session on Chesterton Students: “The Troublemakers as Poets”!
For the next several months, our founders, led by the Kirks, surveyed friends and acquaintances to explore the possibility of opening a Chesterton Academy in Kansas City and determined there was sufficient interest to proceed.
September 2020
More than a year later, delayed by COVID and the Kirks’ departure to another city–thankfully, they passed the baton to Devin & Sarah Winter before they left– our founders rejoiced to receive a copy of Bishop Johnston’s letter indicating his support for the initiative. Acknowledged by the Bishop and accepted by the Chesterton Schools Network, the board of trustees met, prayed, and identified St. Philip Neri as our patron.
Word began to spread like wildfire, especially thanks to a Zoom call led by Devin Winter, and in-person events organized by Eugene Diamond at the homes of Mark and Mary Basola, and Lisa and John Corley. Awareness-raising was the name of the game at this point, along with fundraising and student recruiting.
2021
In this pivotal year, after some initial fundraising success, our founders hired our inaugural headmaster, Dr. Luke Murray, and Our Lady of Good Counsel acquired our beloved Faustina Building. Despite these heartening steps forward, in that same spring the original goal of opening in the fall of 2021 was deemed too short a runway. In lieu of a high school, we offered an Enrichment Program introducing interested students, parents, and supporters to the key elements of our educational approach. We prayed the Memorare daily for nine months straight, entrusting ourselves and our school to Our Lady’s care.
Inspired by the transcendental glory of even just these fragments of the Chesterton model [and despite the doors being pastel green and the walls stencilled with circles of a garish variety of colors], families who had been on the fence began flocking to the school by the spring semester, 2022.
Fall, 2022
Combine that with the unflagging fundraising efforts of trustees and headmaster alike, a growing base of volunteers and advocates all along the way (some of whom painted, sparing us and all posterity from those garish circles on the walls!), and a spectacular inaugural gala, our first Revel, at Drexel Hall… and praise God, we opened our doors in the Fall of 2022 to twenty students!
Today
From that point on, many (perhaps most) of you here know the story as well as I do – and at some point along the way, you became part of the story. Here we are, at our first-ever graduation!
Image by Jim Champion, Flickr
The whole thing has me thinking about sourdough starters. One of the marvelous things about sourdough starters is that you can make loaves of bread by just taking a chunk and mixing in more flour and water – no need for a direct addition of yeast – and the rest will continue to live and grow as long as you feed it. The longer your sourdough starter lives, the more complex and healthy it–and by extension, every loaf of bread you make–becomes.
Just so, our Chesterton Academy of St. Philip Neri was actually a sort of transplant from the original Chesterton Academy, founded in the Twin Cities in 2008. It was because that original academy’s founders were willing to share their recipe, while keeping it alive themselves, that we are here today. But further – our own Chesterton Academy is itself now a sourdough starter. We must continually feed it, (especially the junior boys!), but new loaves will continually be rising up as our students, having thrived here, graduate and spread their vivacity wherever they go next.
Every day there is more and more evidence of the goodness of our Academy’s existence, of the joy and wonder bouncing around this building, and each of us has one person to thank for bringing us into this community. I doubt that that “one person” is the same for each of us, but I’d like you to take a moment and consider who the first person to introduce you to the Chesterton Academy of St. Philip Neri was. Give thanks to God for that person, and the next time you get the chance, thank them personally. I’ll do that now so I don’t forget.
Devin Winter, more than four years ago you mentioned Chesterton Academy to me for the first time. Over the next few months I think you might have mentioned it a couple… dozen more times… And three years and 7 days ago, you invited me to consider joining the board. I do not have words to express how grateful I am for that life-changing invitation, but even more so, for your bold “yes” to leading the charge to make this school a reality before it had a home, before it had students, faculty, or donors, and before it even had a name.
Friends, there is so much more to be said; I wish I could rattle off a whole genealogy of gratitude but time prevents me.
Gratitude, amazement, joy, triumph, and excitement made this first-ever Graduation an unforgettable memory for all who came…and cheered, and laughed, and sang, and broke bread, and wept together!