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Carolyn Lutticken, a Mountain View resident and 1967 graduate of Holy Cross High School, walked slowly along the sidewalk on Miramonte Avenue and watched three large bulldozers tear down the last remaining walls of what once was her high school.
“It’s so sad,” she said.
She had hung a bouquet of yellow flowers the day before on the fence surrounding the construction site with a note that read: “Thanks for the memories. We will miss you.”
Mother Hilary, the founder, built the all-girls Catholic high school in 1959. She ushered in hundreds of teenage girls from around the South Bay to the new campus, which was flush with thousands of books, instruments and artwork. The school continued for several decades with the dream of instilling young women with knowledge and religion.
Holy Cross closed its doors in 1972 after it merged with Saint Francis, a neighboring all-boys school.
The building Holy Cross left behind went through several tenants, including a day care center, an Asian church, and lastly the South Bay Christian Center.
Mozart Investments, parent company to Classic Communities, a home developer, purchased the property in late 2006 and began tearing down the old church building earlier this year. The developer plans to build 58 high-end single-family homes on the site.
When the alumnae of Holy Cross heard the building was being torn down, they rallied together to save mementos from the rubble.
“People just started saying, ‘Well if they’re tearing it down, I want a brick,'” said Rose Healy, Class of 1965.
Lutticken came to pick up a few remaining bricks for her classmates to keep as remembrances of the time they shared together at the former school.
“This high school meant so much to us,” she said.
As Lutticken reminisced, Cecil Hodges, Class of 1972 graduate, and her Holy Cross best friend Cynthia Miller, pulled up in a car.
Hodges and Miller laughed as they recalled their high school “shenanigans.”
“We’d tell our parents that it was for educational purposes,” when the two would socialize at the nearby Saint Francis, Hodges said.
“It’s a symbol of very, very happy years in my life,” Healy said. The girlhood bonds she formed while at the school created a community for her over the years. “People have lost children, marriages and divorces. We just are there for each other,” she said.
Holy Cross graduates grew up in an era when miniskirts were popular. But Holy Cross girls had to wear the uniform: blue and grey plaid knee-length skirts, white button-down shirts and white oxford shoes. Nuns often made the girls kneel on the floor to check whether their skirts hung at the proper length. Chewing gum warranted a demerit.
In spite of the austere educational atmosphere, alumnae say they have fond memories of the sisters who taught them, especially Sister Mercedes, the school’s first principal. She died in 2000 from cancer.
“You could never forget her for the rest of your life. You’ll probably be going, ‘OK sister, I’ll do that. I’m sorry,'” said Carolyn Meehan, Class of 1965.
“She was just somebody that knew everything about you. Anything you needed you could come to her and talk,” Meehan said. “She was just everything and anything,” she added.
At an alumnae reunion in 1985, Sister Mercedes came out dressed in a skewed girl’s uniform and chewing gum. Another nun pretended to give her demerits and sent her to detention.
“The whole place was just cracking up and rolling in the aisles,” Healy said.
Earlier this week, graduates saved the bronze cornerstone from the rubble, and two 70-pound sand-colored icons, one with a cross, which stood above the front door, Healy said. They plan to build a prayer garden at Saint Francis with the mementos this fall.
Healy wants to create a pathway in the new garden with one brick from the torn-down building representing each graduating class. The icons may be used as stepping stones, she said.
Saint Francis will dedicate a glass case for Holy Cross in the school’s new building.
“The fact that this building is going down — it made me cry,” Healy said. “But I also know that what we have left is really important. It’s emotional, but we all know that that’s where our friendship started,” she said.
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