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1957–present · the suburban parish school
The founding: Queen of Peace parish was established by Bishop Pursley in 1957, on the city's growing south side, and its first chapter is a fact of the web's weave: the parish's first Masses were celebrated at Twin Branch School — a public school, lent to a Catholic parish for its first worship — for a founding congregation of forty families. Its own school opened in 1958, taught by the Franciscan Sisters of Mishawaka, the motherhouse congregation; the classrooms doubled as worship space in the parish's first years, and mobile classrooms followed as the suburb grew.
The closing: In 1970 the parish dedicated its new church and gymnasium — and closed its school the same year, because the sisters could no longer staff it. The Queen of Peace closing is the parish-web's clearest statement of this section's governing thread: the school did not die of empty desks but of an empty convent, when the supply of sister-teachers that had built Catholic schooling in Mishawaka for a century ran out at this parish. The Religion section carries the congregation's own course; the school's record is the consequence.
The reopening: Fr. Elden J. Miller, pastor from 1988, reopened the school in 1998 — as a preschool only. Kindergarten through second grade followed in 1999, and then a grade a year, rebuilding the school upward cohort by cohort. Miller died in 2008 and left half his estate to the parish, mainly for scholarships — the reopened school's endowment of access from its own pastor's estate. The diocesan profile of 2 May 2017 counts about 250 students, preschool through grade 8, and the school was named an Indiana Four Star School in 2015. Queen of Peace stands in November 2026 as its own school, separate from Mishawaka Catholic School — the one parish in the city whose school kept its single-parish course, because a pastor chose to rebuild it.
Sources:
- Today's Catholic, Queen of Peace School profile, 2 May 2017, and diocesan reporting on the parish and school.
- Queen of Peace parish and school, institutional history as published.