Lorene Swim retiring from St. Francis Xavier School

Friday, May. 27, 2016

KEARNS — For 27 years, Lorene Swim has greeted parents and children and visitors to Saint Francis Xavier School with a smile. She has seen the school expand from six grades to nine, helped organize the first 8th-grade graduation ceremony, and watched as a new addition was built. She worked for four principals, and estimates that she’s pulled teeth, provided Band-Aids, and overseen the records of 5,400 children during her almost three decades in the school’s front office.

“She has so much institutional knowledge of this place … of who we are, of where we’re heading as a school,” said Principal Patrick Reeder, who has worked with Swim for the past seven years and says “there’s a lot” that she does for the school.

“First and foremost, she’s that smiling face in the front office when parents walk in or students walk in,” Reeder said. “She’s the one who’s greeting visitors and answering the phone and talking about how much she loves this school and what a great place it is to send children. She’s really vested in our mission. Hospitality in the front office is essential for any organization.”

He also appreciates her organizational skills, he said. “She keeps me on track … and she does it in a way that’s not invasive.” 

In addition, she is able to greet the alumni by name, which “is so priceless,” he said. “She’s here to build up the community of St. Francis; that’s really what she has done for the last 27 years, she has helped build our community to what it is today.”

Swim started on the first day of the 1989 school year; the previous secretary had already left, so there was no one to train her, she said. She remembers the day as “very chaotic. It was very challenging, but I enjoyed it.” 

Although her official job is to oversee the school records, “I’ve done everything over the years, from making coffee to cleaning floors, because when we first started we didn’t have a lot of people on board,” she said. “We’ve come a long way from when we first started.”

One of the changes she regrets the most is that, as students do more and more of their work on the computers, they do less with paper and pencil, and “I miss those handwritten notes that they used to write: ‘Ms. Swim, thank you for the Band-Aid’ or ‘Thank you for giving me an ice pack when I was hurt’ or ‘thank you for the hug,’” she said. “They’re sweet kids.” 

On the other hand, one of the highlights for her is when parents who are graduates from the school “come in with their own children and say ‘We want them to come here because we came here, and it was so great,’” she said.

Working at the school has “made me stronger in my faith because I realize that God brought me here for a reason, and all of these children are proof of that. They have enriched my life so much,” she said. “I love my life. I love how everything has unfolded in these 27 years.” 

With retirement, she will miss everyone and everything at St. Francis; she thinks of them as a family, she said.

“Community is a lot of people that know each other and care about each other, but family is people that you take care of, that take care of you, that care about your needs and wants,” she said. “I think we are more family than community here at Saint Francis. … I think I’m going to miss the kids more than anything, because they’re so sweet. They give you hugs, they give you kisses, they give you little notes – all that little stuff means a lot.”