St. Virgil School Since 1910

This photo shows the St.Virgil School students of 1916 on the steps of the old school with Pastor Fr. Michael Glennon and Sisters M. Clementine, M. Celeste and M Dolores. Photo courtesy of the Morris Plains Museum and historian Daniel Myers. Visit the museum, housed in the borough library, for more Morris Plains area history.

The people of St. Virgilius had completed their eight year trek down the avenue -- from the original Mass in Willisonville, to the old school at Irondale Avenue, to the tent and then building at 48 West Hanover -- and found their home at five corners. The church was moved to its present site in 1888 and a Parish Hall added in 1895.

Fr. Francis O’Neill found a growing and flourishing parish when he came to the Plains in 1891, peopled primarily by recent immigrants and laborers and their growing families. Fr. O’Neill saw his major pastoral challenge in those young faces in the pews and around the parish hall: the education and faith formation of these Catholic boys and girls.

Fr. O’Neill went in search of help to deal with his educational challenge. The Sisters of the Convent of St. Dominic of Jersey City, then staffing 17 schools including nearby Boonton and Wharton, agreed to staff the parish school for the pastor.

Fr. O’Neill converted the Parish Hall into a three classroom school, with large sliding doors separating the classrooms. One room contained the first, second and third grades; another the fourth and fifth; and the third room held the sixth, seventh and eighth grades.

Fr. O’Neil also purchased the Beddow home, across Hanover Avenue from the church for the sisters. The arrival of the sisters of St. Dominic to Morris Plains is remembered by Margaret Coffey: that was a big day, the day the nuns came. The women of the parish cooked and served dinner for the sisters and they scrubbed and cleaned the whole house through.

In September, 1910, Sr. M. Clementine became the first principal of St. Virgil School. Sisters Baptista, Pauline, Severine and Celeste joined her as the first staff of St. Virgil School. The school opened with fewer than 100 students.

The convent property included a small summer house which was used for kindergarten classes until a kindergarten room could be added to the main school building. Sr. Pauline also held sewing classes for parish youngsters in the summer house.

It was the coming of the nuns and Sr. Clementine’s musical talent that prompted Fr. O’Neill to install a pipe organ in the choir loft. This organ, installed in 1910, filled the wooden church with music until the building was torn down in 1956.

St. Virgil School grew slowly. In 1912 the new pastor, Fr. Michael Glennon, declared a school holiday when the enrollment topped 100.


Fr. Glennon had one of the first cars in Morris Plains. A member of the 1914 St. Virgil School graduating class recalls a class trip in Father’s car: ·Fr. Glennon decided to take the eighth grade pupils for rides to Boonton. He would take about three at a time with Sr. Pauline to visit the sisters there and back home again. One day we got as far as where Warner Lambert is now and there were two men leaning on a fence. All of a sudden there was a terrible sound like a shot, but it was probably a pebble or something because the roads were very bad. But Fr. Glennon thought the men had shot at us so he turned around and went back home again.

It was during Fr. Glennon’s time that the statue of Mary that stands near the side door of the church was purchased. The statue faced Hanover Avenue next to the school and May processions and crownings were held there.

In 1929 Dr. Thomas A. Burke, Xth pastor, completely renovated the convent and added a chapel. The diocese had imposed a moratorium on building in the parishes, so Dr. Burke did not tear down the old convent. Instead he had new walls erected around the old, eliminating the wide, spacious porches in the original building and completely reconstructing the interior. While the convent was being re-built, the nuns lived across the street in a rented house.

St. Virgil celebrated it’s 50th anniversary in 1931 and the school had an enrollment of 161.

The four room schoolhouse still had small classes. Only 10 students made up the graduating class of 1934. but just four years later the graduating class numbered 24.

Rev. John A. Tracy was appointed pastor of St. Virgil in 1939, one year after the three north western counties of the Newark Archdiocese were formed as the Diocese of Paterson.

At the beginning of the Second World War, St. Virgil School still had the same four classrooms and students were taught entirely by the sisters of St. Dominic. Although class sizes increased slowly, the major school expansion was still a decade in the future.

St. Virgil and the Morris area were effected by the post war boom. But the parish facility – especially the school – could not keep pace with the needs and the expectations of the growing community. Fr. John White, a curate during this period, remembers St. Virgil as a little wooden church on the corner horse barn which served as a garage four room school house with a basement hall and a little outhouse.

This outhouse embodied the physical needs of St. Virgil School. Parents would not send their children for a Catholic education because they objected to the bathroom – a small out building heated by a small furnace. Despite these physical restrictions, the 1949 graduating class of St. Virgil School numbered 27, the largest in the school’s history.

With this growth in enrollment and the impending baby boom of the post war era, Fr. Tracy made a decision which demonstrates the importance which St. Virgil has always placed on Catholic education. Despite the desperate need for a new church, Fr. Tracy decided to launch a school building project first.

The number of children registered in St. Virgil paralleled the post was baby boom: 314 in 1938, 476 in 1948 to 14,50 in 1958. Although Fr. Tracy could not have anticipated this growth, he began planning for a new school in 1949. He asked each parish family to donate $250 to a school building fund. The pastor planned a modern, up-to-the-minute, single story building with an exit for each classroom. The building was to contain eight classrooms, a kindergarten, and a large modern gymnasium-auditorium. There was some discussion at the time about adding a basement, bur Fr. Tracy felt that the auditorium was sufficient for parish activities. Besides, the slab construction kept the cost of the building down to $250,000.

Ground was broken in 1949 on the corner of Speedwell and Fairchild Avenues – the land that had been acquired by Fr. Culliney 23 years earlier. A year later the school opened. All eight grades were taught by the sisters of St. Dominic and Mrs. Josephine Strongman was hired as the first lay teacher at St. Virgil School to teach kindergarten.

Sr. Barbera’s class of 1951, numbering 19, was the first to graduate from the new school. Sr. Barbara was the first principal of the new school.

Fr. Tracy filled the classrooms with every student who wanted to attend St. Virgil, fulfilling his longtime dream of providing a Catholic education to as many youngsters as possible. Enrollment increased dramatically. The class of 1953 was the first to graduate more than 30. By the mid-fifties, some graduating classes numbered 40 students or more.

St. Virgil enrollment gradually stabilized at a better educational level with class sizes dropping into the 30s. The average class size during the 1990s has been 26.

St. Virgil School auditorium became the worship center for the parish when the old church was leveled and ground broken for the new building in 1955. All Masses were celebrated in the auditorium for nearly two years until the new church was completed on February 9, 1957.

The most rapid growth period for St. Virgil School was in the late 1950s and early 1960s when the Butterworth and Holiday Ridge developments were completed. By this time, there was barely room in any of the eight grades, with class sizes of 30 common, and then burgeoning to 40 and nearly 50 on occasion. Fr. Tracy was a man who could not say no to the education of his parishioners.

Shortly after the new school opened, bingo games were revived at St. Virgil. While Bingo had been a staple at the early church carnivals, the new auditorium and cafeteria provided the space form larger games; and the new school building provided the need for additional fund raising. Bingo continued as a major school fund raiser from the early 1950s until 1988, when it was replaced with the store script program. Bingo was run for years by the men of the Holy Name society and Knights of Columbus before it was taken over by school parents.

When Fr. Tracy passed away, Fr. James Fallon reported to St. Virgil in January 1968. Fr. Fallon stepped right into Fr. Tracy’s shoes as a patron of Catholic education and a strong supporter of St. Virgil School.

There were some major changes in St. Virgil School in the early years of Fr. Fallon’s pastorate. The kindergarten classes had been abandoned and the original kindergarten room turned into to a storeroom. This was later converted into a library with expanded reading programs for all classes.

St. Virgil School was very active in the Parish Centennial year of 1981, when St. Virgil’s and the Sisters of St. Dominic of Caldwell concelebrated their 100th birthdays.

This loss of a kindergarten was an ongoing concern of both the St. Virgil School principals, and the pastor. The school found limited space to grow in the mid-1980s when the church acquired the house next to the school on Fairchild Avenue. A two-room addition was added to the school in 1887 providing library space and room for a pre-kindergarten program. A kindergarten program was revived and returned to the room it had left nearly 30 years earlier.

St. Virgil School added pre-k programs for three and four year olds. The new kindergarten and pre-k programs have been a very successful addition to the St. Virgil School program.

The hiring of the first lay teacher for kindergarten in 1950 was the beginning of a national trend which impacted St. Virgil School. Gradually, St. Virgil added more lay teachers until by the late 1970s more classes were taught by lay teachers than sisters. This trend continued until all classes were taught by lay teachers during most of the 1990s, with a Sister of St. Dominic of Caldwell as principal until 2002.

Mrs. Joyce Middleton became the first lay principal of St. Virgil School on July 1, 2002, as the school began a new period in its long history.

Most of this history was drawn verbatim from the Story of a People: St. Virgil Parish Centennial. Research courtesy of Daniel Myers, Morris Plains historian. Visit the Morris Plains Museum housed in the borough library for more on the history of the Morris Plains area. Return to the Parish history main page for:
The full history of the parish in two parts;
The Biography of James Fallon;
The Story of St. Virgil and the St. Virgil relic;
The Story of the St. Patrick Bell; and
The Parish Honor Roll.