Comedy and Cuisine

The Cathedral, parish and school community continue to grow, and their campus expands with them. The convent is completed in 1928. As moving day nears, the children lobby for the sisters to move from the school on a weekday. It seems the students desire a day off. They get their wish. The sisters move into the convent on a weekday. A large number of older children help.

In 1928, Msgr. Joseph Rummel is chosen to succeed the late Archbishop Harty as bishop of Omaha.

A PTA is formed in April 1929. By fall, it has raised enough money to improve the school auditorium.

The grade school boys are running wild over their Catholic competitors. In 1929, for the fifth year in a row, they win the championship cup in track at the annual Knights of Columbus Field Day.
Religious Vacation School for non-St. Cecilia students begins in summer 1930. It attracts 19
children to the faith - and the school. They enroll at St. Cecilia in the fall.

School is dismissed for a week in September 1930 as the National Eucharistic Congress is held in Omaha, with many events at the Cathedral. Many students participate.

Another religious milestone for the school arrives in 1934. Two Jesuit priests, Fr. Kruger and Fr. McAuliffe, say their first Masses at the Cathedral. Both are graduates of St. Cecilia Elementary. Fr. Kruger is the first St. Cecilia’s graduate to be ordained a priest.

The school would go on, in its first 100 years, to produce 150 people with religious vocations, including many Dominican sisters. School records note numerous instances of alumnae “receiving the habit at Saint Clara.”

Another trend that would continue into the next millennium begins in this era. St. Cecilia students earn competitive scholarships to such Catholic high schools as Creighton Prep and Duchesne Academy, and to Catholic colleges.

In 1936, St. Cecilia becomes the largest parish in the Omaha diocese, with 1,000 families.

The city is growing rapidly, and so too St. Cecilia’s parish and school. The Cathedral is completed enough that it can be used, although work on the interior and later, the bell towers, would continue into the 1950s. For the first time, in 1918, St. Cecilia eighth-graders celebrate their commencement in the grand edifice. Another first occurs the following September: St. Cecilia High School opens, for freshmen only, in 1919. It proves to be an eventful year, and not only because St. Cecilia freshmen win four of the 20 prizes given in an archdiocesan essay contest. The topic: “Why I Should Like to Become a Priest (Or Nun.)”

A state law passes in 1919 regulating the qualifications of all Nebraska teachers, including those in private and parochial schools. This sends sisters from throughout Nebraska scurrying to Creighton University, where enrollment hits 600 in the summer of 1919. Fall brings the nuns some extra study time. A coal strike shuts down all Omaha schools after Thanksgiving. They remain closed for six weeks.

By spring 1920, when the new certification law takes effect, St. Cecilia’s teachers all have obtained state teaching certificates – good for life.

Besides academic rigor, another tradition has been set in motion: the operetta. The sisters’ annals note that the 1920 school year closes “with an exceptionally good entertainment in the Brandeis Theatre. An Indian Operetta, ‘The Feast of the Red Corn,’ was presented. It was well-liked by everyone, especially His Grace (the archbishop).”

The 1922 graduating eight-graders’ dramatic performance sets a bar that may never be cleared again. A larger-than-ever crowd gathers for graduation exercises at the Brandeis Theatre. The students perform a musical drama, “The Heart of France.” The audience is so bowled over that some non-Catholics decide to join the Church! “One gentleman with his entire family was converted to the faith as a result of witnessing this exhibition of Catholic School training,” the sisters noted.

Later in 1922, Sister Delphine Whelan, principal and prioress, writes state educational authorities in Lincoln. She is hoping to have the school accredited to the state university. An inspector from Lincoln makes a surprise visit a week before Christmas. Some pupils had left the day before to seek holiday employment. Sr. Delphine assures the inspector he still has a fair representation of St. Cecilia’s students, and invites him to examine students in any way he likes. He visits all grades. He examines the students for several hours, then promises to accredit the school.
The high school graduates its first class in 1923. It has six girls and one boy, just like the grade school’s first class had.

Further future chapters begin taking shape in 1927. Father James Aherne, then St. Cecilia’s pastor, calls together the men of the parish and lays before them a plan for relieving the crowded school. Build a convent for the sisters, and move them out of the school. This would create more classroom space, and as a bonus, room for the parish ladies to conduct card parties and bake sales. Also in 1927, the recently ordained Father Ernest G. Graham begins a long and beneficial relationship with the parish and school when he is assigned to St. Cecilia as an assistant pastor.