Bishop Brady, much like Saturday Night Live’s Sally O’Malley, is 50. And it’s going to kick, stretch and kick off a year-long celebration with a homecoming weekend blowout beginning Sept. 27.
Live from Concord, it’s Friday and Saturday night (and Sunday morning).
The weekend will feature the return of a homecoming parade from the school to Memorial Field, a dance for current students and any alumni interested in making an appearance (call it a place for both networking and not twerking) and a Hall of Fame induction ceremony, among a host of other activities.
“It’s a real homecoming weekend. There should be something for everybody,” Bishop Brady’s Maureen Kimball said. “This year is a year-long celebration with all kinds of little events and big events to keep the alumni engaged with the school and to celebrate the 50th anniversary, and one of the first major events is this homecoming weekend.”
It’s an opportunity for current students to cross paths with the first students to ever roam the halls at Bishop Brady in 1963, when those who had attended St. John’s moved into the new digs, and several members of the initial graduating class will be on hand. John Donovan, who is a member of that first class that graduated in 1964, recently took a stroll through the school and is looking forward to the celebration.
“Where did the time go?” Donovan said in describing his thoughts following the tour. “I had a chance to go in and look at the school, and I’m really impressed with how great it looks. I was walking in the old wing, which was there when we were there, and the floor looks better now than it did then.”
If others have similar experiences to Donovan’s, the weekend will stir plenty of fond memories. Donovan can recall the weeks before the school opened, when football players – including himself – were enlisted to “haul boxes of books and different materials up to the school” in their cars. The school officially opened in the fall of 1963, with students from St. John’s moving over to finish up there high school years.
Donovan also recalls taping a gold stripe on the green football helmets to represent the new school.
“That was the first time we had suspension helmets, because up until then at St. John’s, we only had the old leather helmets.”
Rewards for good behavior haven’t necessarily changed much in 50 years, as Donovan recalls a pizza party his class earned that first year, but the source of the pizza certainly has – his class ate pies from Garbo’s, which he said stood where Siam Orchid resides.
The weekend celebration is more than a pizza party, though. It kicks off Friday morning with the annual BBHS Golf Classic at 8:30 a.m. at Canterbury Woods Country Club, and includes a Friday evening Concord Catholic High School Hall of Fame induction dinner at the high school at 6 p.m., during which six new inductees will be honored. One of those inductees will be Steve DeStefano, a graduate of the class of 1974 who played four years of varsity baseball, three years of varsity football and two years of varsity basketball at Brady. He remembers fondly competitive football scrimmages against powers like Pinkerton and the larger Concord High School, and said that being from Concord and attending Bishop Brady allowed him to have circles of friends at both schools, which added juice to sporting events between the rivals.
Hockey games, in particular, used to be a major draw.
“The hockey games were unbelievable,” DeStefano said. “When Concord and Brady used to play, Everett Arena used to be rocking. The place would be jammed because both schools always had good teams. It was a lot of fun. I just think Brady is a great alternative school for people in the city of Concord. It’s a gem, a hidden gem.”
Saturday includes the resurrection of a dormant tradition with a parade from Bishop Brady to Memorial Field at 4:45 p.m. The parade will include floats, student marchers and Mr. Brady – not Tom, but the winner of the Mr. Brady talent show competition at the school. Kimball said she expects the parade to be “a hoot.”
Following the parade there will be a tailgate sponsored by the Friends of Bishop Brady Football, starting at around 5:15, ahead of the kickoff of that night’s football showdown between Brady and Winnisquam.
The evening’s festivities conclude with the aforementioned dance in the high school gym from 8:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m.
“It’s kind of like a wedding; it’ll be a generational dance,” Kimball said. “We’ll have music from all those decades, and the kids are so excited about the older alumni coming.”
The weekend wraps up Sunday morning with a Mass at Bishop Brady, celebrated by Father Dennis Gingras, who graduated from Bishop Brady in 1972. Coffee and donuts will be available after the mass.
It’s a lot to digest – depending on how many after-mass donuts and tailgate burgers you eat, we guess – and has been more than nine months in the works. There are other celebrations planned throughout the rest of the year, too, including a reunion of the first graduating class. But the hard work and planning is already worth it, Kimball said, because the current students have bought into the excitement.
“Bishop Brady survived over the years like any other institution, with ebbs and flows and different times, and it’s going to be a very eclectic group of people,” Kimball said. “But it’s instilling with the current students that sense of pride in the school and school spirit, so regardless of whether we get mobbed with tons of alumni, the current students and families will definitely be there in high spirits, putting together a great weekend.”
