URSULINE Families revel in 100-year legacy

Hundreds of people came to the school, including a longtime basketball coach.
By SEAN BARRON
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Kathy Wolsonovich remembers when she was allowed to wear only a specific blouse to school and how her skirt had to touch the floor when she kneeled on the ground.
Other facets of Ursuline High School's dress code were a bit more lax in the 1960s, however.
"You could wear any knee socks or shoes," said Wolsonovich, a 1966 Ursuline graduate.
Wolsonovich and her husband, Dr. Nicholas Wolsonovich, a former Ursuline principal and later Catholic Diocese of Youngstown schools superintendent, traveled from their Chicago home to attend Sunday's centennial celebration.
Kathy Wolsonovich, a registered nurse, said she was a member of the school's Future Teachers of America club and a homeroom monitor. Before moving to Chicago, she worked at St. Elizabeth Health Center and at Assumption Village as a unit manager for patients who suffered from Alzheimer's disease.
The celebration
Some 600 to 700 alumni, students, faculty and parents attended the event to celebrate the parochial school's 100th anniversary. The three-hour program, sponsored by the Ursuline High School Home and School Association, included a Mass of Thanksgiving in St. Columba Cathedral as well as an open house and reception at the school, 750 Wick Ave., on the city's North Side.
At the open house were 26 panels on three sides of the cafeteria that traced the school's history from 1905 to the present. Among the photographs and exhibits displayed were a grainy picture of four class officers during the 1925-26 school year; members of the 1929 Glee Club; scores from all nine games the 1946 football team played (they were 9-0); the 1955 girls bowling team (the sport had just been introduced at the school); and a 1948 photograph of Tom Carey, Ursuline's new basketball coach.
Reminiscing
Carey was also among those who attended the open house. He went on to become the school's head football and basketball coach before retiring in 1985.
Carey said he was proud of the 1956 football team, which was undefeated. In those days, he said, Ursuline played the seven teams that made up the Youngstown City League, and games were usually played two nights a week. Sometimes as many as 10,000 fans attended.
Much of Sunday's celebration resembled a high school reunion, with people reconnecting and sharing school memories as well as a few hugs and handshakes. The event also included refreshments, tours of the facility and a table selling caps, pullovers, sweat shirts and mugs bearing the school's logo and colors.
Principal Patty Fleming outlined several ways Ursuline has changed since she began there in the early 1980s. The school's curriculum incorporates more integrated technology; 11 advanced placement programs are available for students who can earn up to nine college credit hours, and four theater productions are staged each year, compared with two when she started, Fleming noted. One includes a show that students write and act in, she said.
The band has grown from 12 to 13 members when she started to more than 80 today, Fleming continued.
Family tradition
Fleming also lauded the school's strong tradition as well as alumni who stay in touch with Ursuline.
"The tradition is the most wonderful, as are the legendary people who kept it going for a century for this Valley," she said.
Tradition is a large component tying people like John Ulicney and Vinetta Metzinger to the school. Ulicney, a 1954 Ursuline graduate and chairman of the school's science department, said his wife, Judy, their four children and several cousins also graduated from the high school.
Ulicney added that he's proud of the school's "tremendous family tradition" and said he's taught science to several generations of students since beginning his career in the early 1960s.
"I'm close to teaching the grandchildren of the first kids I taught," he said.
For her part, Metzinger, who graduated in 1979, serves on the school's advisory board. She fondly recalled the school's decorations and how the seniors dressed differently each day during Mooney Week, a tradition that's still precedes each Ursuline-Cardinal Mooney football game.
It's also where Metzinger met her husband, Tom.
"We have a love for this school," she said. "We try to help where we can."