Catholic Schools Week Supplement

Scecina High School’s capital campaign succeeds despite challenges of pandemic and economic crisis

An artistic rendering portrays the new chapel to be constructed at Father Thomas Scecina Memorial High School in Indianapolis. The archdiocesan high school for the Indianapolis East Deanery is completing a $6.6 million capital campaign to fund various projects, including the chapel construction. (Submitted photo)

By Sean Gallagher

Bringing a $6 million capital campaign to a positive conclusion in the middle of a worldwide pandemic with a related economic downturn is usually not a recipe for success.

But Father Thomas Scecina Memorial High School not only met the ambitious goal amid the coronavirus pandemic, the school added another $600,000 to the campaign’s goal.

Facing and overcoming challenges is not new to the archdiocesan high school for the Indianapolis East Deanery since it was founded more than 60 years ago.

Scecina president Joseph Therber has seen many of these challenges. He served as a teacher and assistant football coach there from 1986-98 before returning as its president in 2009.

He credits the campaign’s success to the “base of people that are extremely generous with their time and resources and who believe in the mission of the school.”

“We have alumni from all decades of the school’s history who believe the same and want to help in ways large and small to make it happen,” Therber said.

One of those alumni is George Newhart, a 1960 Scecina graduate. When he grew up on Indianapolis’ eastside, it was, as he remembered it, “a center of industrial activity for the Midwest.” Factories for Chrysler, Ford, Western Electric and RCA dotted the corridors along Shadeland and Sherman avenues and other locations.

“In my day, most of the kids were from blue-collar families,” Newhart recalled. “Our parents worked in the factories. My dad worked at Chrysler. A lot of kids had parents who worked in the fire department and police department. It was a much different world.”

In the decades that followed, most of the factories on the eastside closed. But while many employers disappeared from the eastside, Scecina remained, serving as an anchor for the community.

“All those companies went away,” Newhart said. “But the amazing thing is, Scecina has been able to stay where it’s always been and still contribute to the academic and personal development of the eastside kids. And they’ve expanded [the student body] well beyond the eastside.”

An added recent challenge to the eastside is that many who live there now have jobs in the service industry that has been severely affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

Newhart, who serves as the chair of Scecina’s board of directors and on the campaign’s executive committee, was at first anxious about the pandemic’s effect on the school’s fundraising efforts.

“In any kind of economic downturn—and this was more of an economic disaster—you fear for those kinds of things,” he said. “Bills can’t be paid as quickly or as efficiently as before. But we have done very well. Our families and the Scecina community are so loyal and dedicated.”

Therber said that, for many in the Scecina community, getting behind the effort to provide a positive future for the school has been a source of relief during the present time with its many challenges.

“Hope is energizing,” Therber said. “It’s brought optimism, purpose and a vision for the future at a time when we could have shrunk or turned inside of ourselves.”

The campaign, which is the first in Scecina’s history to have such an ambitious goal, has already funded the construction of a new weight room in the main building of the school. It is hoped that a new chapel in the main building will be completed in time for the start of the 2021-22 school year.

Other projects to be funded by the campaign include reworking its main entrance, construction of new athletic and activity fields, and endowments to ensure future academic excellence at the school, tuition assistance and the maintenance and improvement of facilities.

“We tried to do something extraordinary, and we have,” Therber said. “That should give us confidence for even more in the future.”
 

(To learn more about Father Thomas Scecina Memorial High School, visit scecina.org.) †

 

See more from our 2021 Catholic Schools Week Supplement