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Land donated by the sisters, 36-plus acres on Logan Street at Dragoon Trail; cornerstone blessed 9 August 1964; opened September 1964; first class graduated 1968
The gift: Marian High School stands where it stands because of the motherhouse. When Bishop Leo A. Pursley built his diocese's second high school in Mishawaka, the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration donated the ground: thirty-six acres and more adjoining Logan Street and Dragoon Trail, directly across from the convent entrance, with the sisters' province lying directly south of the campus. The sisters staffed the school's girls' department; Salvatorian priests and brothers took the boys' department and the administration. The school's patroness is Our Lady of Lourdes, a patronage Bishop Kevin Rhoades formally entrusted to the school in 2014.
The opening: The cornerstone was blessed on 9 August 1964, and the school opened that September to its first freshman class only, growing a class a year to the first graduation in 1968. Two conflicts stand in the school's own published record and are printed whole. The opening day: the school's handbook and strategic plan, and the bishop's fiftieth-anniversary account, give 4 September 1964; the school's 2027 advancement prospectus gives 8 September. The first class's size: the diocesan newspaper's fiftieth-anniversary account counts 230 freshmen; the handbook and prospectus count 239 — 131 boys and 108 girls. The campus has grown to 72 acres. The school today counts more than 800 students and more than 9,000 served across sixty years, is operated by the diocese, and describes itself — in its own words, which the record prints as the school's — as inspired by the witness of the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration. The full course of the school's athletics, buildings and classes stands in the schools leg; here it is entered as what it was at its founding: the motherhouse's gift, staffed by the motherhouse's sisters, facing the motherhouse across Dragoon Trail.
Sources:
- Marian High School's published handbook, strategic plan, and 2027 advancement prospectus (the opening-date and first-class conflicts stand between these documents).
- Today's Catholic, fiftieth-anniversary coverage, 2014 (230 freshmen; the land gift; the staffing division).
- Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, on the school's patroness, 2014.