Cardinal Mooney presents awards to alumni

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The Alumni Relations Committee of Cardinal Mooney High School, 2545 Erie St., will recognize four alumni with a Distinguished Alumni award and a prayer service at 11 a.m. Wednesday in the school auditorium. A private luncheon will follow.

This is the 20th year the school has presented these awards to four alumni, two female and two male recipients. Honorees are chosen as examples of those who are dedicated to the school’s pillars of “Sanctity, Scholarship and Discipline.”

This year’s recipients are Sister Margaret Scheetz, class of 1963; Dr. Patricia Cipriano Prelock, class of 1972; Michael C. Kilanowski Jr., class of 1966; and John Zajac, class of 1974.

Scheetz, a graduate of Youngstown State University, Kent State and Purdue University, joined the Ursuline sisterhood in 1964 and took her final vows in 1971. She taught for 12 years, eight of which were at Cardinal Mooney, and served as the school’s assistant principal.

She founded the Beatitude House in 1988, an organization that has provided support for more than 3,000 homeless women and children. She was presented with an outstanding achievement award by the Austintown Women’s League in 1988, and the YWCA’s Woman of the Year award in 1995. She died in 2001.

Dr. Prelock is dean of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, a professor of communication sciences and disorders, and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Vermont. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from KSU and her doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh.

She coordinates training programs for caregivers of children with autism disorders. She has been awarded more than $11 million through university, state and federal funding to develop training and to support children with neurodevelopmental disabilities and their families.

Dr. Prelock has more than 155 publications and has been named a Distinguished Alumna of University of Pittsburgh in 2015, and last year was awarded the Honors of the Association, the highest honor given by American Speech-Language Hearing Association.

Kilanowski was a four-year member of the Cardinal Mooney football team and was named team captain his senior year. He earned a bachelor’s degree from KSU and a juris doctorate from the University of Akron. He also graduated with a master’s degree in business administration from Ohio University.

He began his legal career as a contract reviewer for Babcock & Wilcox, and retired as senior vice president of Freeport-McMoRan in 2000. Kilanowski and his wife, Mary Ellen, have endowed a scholarship for Mooney students.

Zajac graduated from St. Elizabeth Hospital School of Nursing, and earned a secondary degree as a nurse anesthesist. He also graduated from Stephens College with a bachelor’s degree in health care and management.

He is a nurse anesthetist with Bel Park Anesthesia Associates at the Orthopedic Surgery Center in Boardman. Zajac established and coached a seventh- and eighth-grade cross-country program for 12 years. He also founded the Parochial Cross Country Racing Series for kindergarten through sixth-grade students, and hosted the Mooney seventh- and eighth-grade track invitational. He has been involved with the Dorothy Day House and the Marian Living Center in North Lima.