100 Years for Judge Memorial Catholic High School

Diocese of Salt Lake City file photo

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The Class of 1925 were the first graduates of Cathedral High School, which later became Judge Memorial Catholic High School.

SALT LAKE CITY – This year Judge Memorial Catholic High School celebrates 100 years of its tradition of offering quality Catholic education to students in Salt Lake City.

Judge began in 1920 as a grammar school in the former Judge Mercy Home, a hospital established for Catholic coal miners working in Park City who suffered from Black Lung. The school, run by the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, offered eight grades for boys and girls. In 1923 the Holy Cross Sisters started Cathedral High School which operated at the cathedral until 1926. The school then moved to the Judge Mercy site and, in 1929, was renamed Judge Memorial Grammar and High School.

It was restructured in 1949 and its name was changed to Judge Memorial Catholic High School. In 1960 a new school was constructed next to the old building which was then torn down. In 1961 Bishop Joseph L. Federal invited the Oblates of Saint Francis de Sales to take over the school. They operated a co-educational school there until 1964 when Judge became an all-boys school. The school resumed co-education in 1970 with a final name change to Judge Memorial Catholic High School. Since that time, the Judge has continued its tradition of offering a strong Catholic education to the thousands of students that have passed through its doors.

“An institution that makes it to 100 years has certainly adapted and utilized best practices through the years,” said Patrick Lambert, the school’s principal, himself a 1997 Judge graduate. “I think one of those examples that throughout a 100-year history we are in the middle of experiencing  is a real need to look at best practices to continue a strong education and we’re doing that right now. We’ve got a motivated faculty and staff that are continuously adapting their classrooms and making it really inclusive during a very challenging time. I think it’s something that we can all be really proud of right now, that in our 100^th year we’re stepping up to some really important challenges and facing them really well.”

The ties that bind Judge alumni stretch across the miles and the generations, holding them fast to the memories of their time there, the relationships they made and the things they learned. The Intermountain Catholic recently talked to six Judge graduates from different eras about their memories of the school.

Bill Manca, a 1951 graduate who attended Judge from grades second through 12th, remembers that there was strict discipline at the school, something he felt that he needed, especially in his younger years.

Manca who had a long and successful career in computer sales, was helped by the Holy Cross sisters he met at Judge and when he worked at Holy Cross Hospital to complete his education at Notre Dame University.

Maureen Baker Gallegos, Judge Class of 1961, began attending the school in second grade. The oldest of a family of 10, Gallegos saw several of her younger siblings subsequently graduate from Judge. Although the family was not poor, tuition for 10 children was outside their means. Still, Bishop Duane G. Hunt allowed the children to attend Judge without such payment. (A subsequent change regarding tuition meant the three youngest children were unable to go to the school). Gallegos remembers the family paid back where they could, including taking on the responsibility of watering the football field in the summer.

“I’m just so thankful I had that opportunity,” said Gallegos, now a retired nurse. “There’s hardly words to describe the chances you got, and I feel like I’m trying to pay back, to pay it forward.”

Steve Floor, a 1973 graduate who grew up in the Greek Orthodox faith, came to Catholic education after his mother pulled him and his brother out of public schools when they experienced disciplinary problems there. They attended Kearns-St. Ann Catholic School, which offers grades pre-K through eight, before they went to Judge. It was a very different experience than public school something that he can now joke about.

“When in sixth grade I went into the classroom and they had that guy nailed up on the wall to that plus sign, my math grades improved tremendously,” he said with a laugh.

He particularly appreciates the diversity of his experience at Judge.

 “We received a much broader education – the teachers there had no fear of teaching or talking about whatever they wanted so long as it was acceptable,” he said. “What was acceptable at Judge was a much broader range of topics and issues than what would be acceptable at a public school. We came out of there with a much more diverse education.”

Floor, who now works as a bookkeeper, was exposed to people from all walks of life at Judge.

“We had Hispanic kids, Black kids, we had west-side kids, we had ghetto kids, we had upper class East Bench kids, we had everything at Judge that you didn’t get elsewhere,” he said. “I learned how to socialize with Mexican kids on the west side, whereas my friends who went to Olympus, they never saw Mexican kids, they never saw kids who were lower income. That was a really big and important thing[MM1] .”

Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Matthew Jimenez, Class of 1979, said his parents scrimped and saved just to pay tuition for him and his four siblings.

“They knew that was going to be the lynchpin in creating a future for us, that tradition that served them so well,” he said.

Having a Catholic education helped mold him and his siblings into the people they are today, Jimenez said.

“Through that process of understanding our heritage, our profound important heritage of academia and Catholicism, the principles of come early, stay late, work hard, be humble, be kind, be considerate – that all comes through our religious education,” he said. “I owe a debt of gratitude to Catholic education in Utah and my parents for embracing it full force.”

Melanie Houston, a Ft. Worth, Texas municipal court judge and her husband Brandon Amaral, an air traffic controller, both graduated from Judge in 2001. Even more than the superior academic education she received at Judge, it’s the people at the school who helped form her, Houston said.

“Everybody in the school and the organization worked hard to mold the students into people of quality character, upstanding morals, kindness, all-around good people and to prepare them for the world, not just for academics but actual human nature and making sure that who they are raising isn’t just somebody who is smart, it’s somebody who is smart and a good person,” she said. “That’s what makes Judge unique. It’s that compassion, kindness, grace, integrity – things outside academics – that go with me every day.”

The school’s impact on Rachel Huley, a 2013 graduate, has been profound. She moved to Utah from New Jersey in April of her junior year and graduated from Judge the following year.

“The entire experience for me was a culture shock because I didn’t know it was possible for people to be so nice, for there to be so much kindness and empathy in one place,” she said. “I felt home when I was there. It’s made me so much closer with my family just because a lot of us have gone there.”

Huley’s mother, Virginia “Gini” Bazz, graduated from Judge in 1976 and her grandmother Dorothy Maher was a 1936 graduate. Although she now lives in Atlanta, Ga. working in advertising, Huley said she still talks to some of her friends from Judge.

“I’m just really thankful for my experience there because I didn’t know that kindness could build that big of a community and that it could grow so far and that it would hold steady for so long,” she said.