Seattle Archdiocese

Brittany Brown, Kristen Towbin and Rachel Boswell were the liturgical dancers at the Mass celebrating the 25th anniversary of Eastside Catholic High School.

Enjoying a break between classes are Tony Garcia, Spencer Moritz, Stephanie Lucas and Ally Lange.

BELLEVUE
By Christine Dubois

Students were dressed in their “Sunday best” as Auxiliary Bishop Joseph J. Tyson celebrated a Mass of Thanksgiving at Eastside Catholic High School in Bellevue. The Nov. 3 Mass was one of a series of events celebrating the school’s 25th anniversary this year.

The school grew out of the determination of a small group of parents who banded together in
1974 to bring co-ed Catholic secondary education to the east side of Lake Washington.

“We were parents looking at the practicality of taking children into Seattle to have them in a Catholic high school,” says Kitty Domres, then a carpooling Issaquah mom with three kids at St. Louise School in Bellevue. “We felt it would be so much better for the Eastside community to have a high school that was part of the faith community where we lived.”

They soon learned that the archdiocese had no plans to build a school in their area.

“We realized that if we really did want a traditional, co-ed Catholic school, that would be something we’d have to provide ourselves,” says Domres. “We said, ‘All right, let’s give it a shot, let’s do it.’ ”

They did surveys, scouted sites, made speeches, developed a mission statement, filed incorporation papers, recruited families, and raised money. What they hoped would be a two-year project stretched into six.

In the beginning, the parents operated out of their own homes. Mary Lee McDougall, who was handling publicity, put her home phone number on the first brochure. She told her children to answer the phone, “Eastside Catholic High School.”

Bob Becker, an architect who joined the group in 1978, was soon pressed into fund raising with little but a dream to offer. He vividly recalls his first home visit, to a couple with grandchildren in Catholic schools. “Tell us about your school,” they said.

“We don’t really have a school yet,” Becker admitted.

“Tell us about your principal.”

“We don’t have a principal yet.”

They proceeded to ask about the vice-principals, faculty, and mascot -- only to learn that none of those existed either.

“Well, you must have the support of the archdiocese,” they said.

“Not exactly,” said Becker. “But this is going to be the finest Catholic school on the Eastside, if not in the Northwest, and you can be sure the people responsible will provide good quality Catholic education.”

He left, he says, with a check for $500 and tears in his eyes.

Realizing that they didn’t have the funds to put up their own building, the group entered into negotiations with the Bellevue School District to lease the former Bellevue Junior High near Bellevue Square. But they weren’t the only group interested, and negotiations stalled.
Domres remembers that time as the low point of the effort.

“We reached a point where it felt like we had failed,” she recalls. “It was bitterly disappointing. We did the same thing we did every step of the way. We came together as a group and prayed and said, ‘Lord, we’ve done everything we can do. If you want this, it’s yours.’ ”

Within a week, the negotiations were reopened, and the two sides were able to come to terms. Eastside Catholic High School opened its doors in the fall of 1980 with 167 freshmen and 88 sophomores.

That building was eventually torn down to make room for a city park. In 1988, the school moved to its current location in a leased school building in Newport Hills. Today, about 500 students attend.

Helene Johnson, a member of the school’s third graduating class (1985), has fond memories of the school’s early days. She recalls painting the “senior pit” in the basement of the old brick building and hanging out across the street at Bellevue Square on early-release days.
“It was kind of weird because we were creating a school, we were creating the traditions,” Johnson says. “We had to create homecoming.”

Today she’s back at Eastside Catholic, working as admissions director. “I got a fabulous education,” she says. “And I had these values that allowed me to think things through in the world. And a lot of that had to do with teachers who connected with me at Eastside Catholic.”

Families who send their children to the school today are attracted to that same combination of academic excellence and Christian values, she notes.

The school also is known for its innovative Options program, which provides academic instruction for students with developmental disabilities and includes them in the life of the school.

“It’s one of the most Catholic things we do,” says Father Bill Heric, the school’s chaplain. “Their presence is a service for the rest of the community and teaches the importance of inclusion and building a community where people with many capacities belong.”

School officials hope to break ground next spring on a permanent site on the Sammamish Plateau. Plans call for a campus that will serve 1,200 students, including 350 middle-school students.

“As we prepare to build our own school for the first time, we are carrying on that same spirit and commitment demonstrated by our founders, ” says principal Greg Marsh. “We all owe much gratitude to those 13 original board members who had the vision to start a new Catholic high school on the Eastside, and the perseverance to see it through.”

For her part, Kitty Domres, whose three children graduated from the school she helped found, is slightly amused at all the attention.

“They ascribe words to us like ‘brave’ and ‘foresighted,’ ” she notes. “We didn’t think we were particularly brave. . . . We were ordinary parents doing what we thought was best for our children.”