By STEPHEN BEALE
Union Leader Correspondent
 

GOFFSTOWN - The oldest living alum of the Villa Augustina School is keeping a watchful eye on her changing alma mater.

Marie Cecilia Gaudette was the first student at the Villa Augustina when it was founded by the Religious of Jesus and Mary as an all-girls boarding school in 1918. She would later become a teacher at the school, eventually entering the religious order.

Now 106 years old and a resident of Rome since 1959, Gaudette is far removed from the co-ed Villa school of today, yet she has been closely following the latest developments there.

"I received from my cousin who lives in Manchester some newspaper clippings about the situation of the Villa," Gaudette wrote in a letter. "I had not realized that it was really critical -- personnel and money are both lacking -- I have neither one nor the other but I only have my idea."

In the letter, which she dictated to one of her fellow sisters in Rome last December, she noted that the numbers of the Religious of Jesus and Mary on campus have dwindled. When she was a student there were 30 sisters. Today, there are only three. Gaudette suggests that the order transfer members from elsewhere in the United States.

"Please excuse my intruding, but I love the Province so much and the Villa since I was the first boarder in 1918," Gaudette says in the letter. "I hope my idea is suggestive and may help in some way. To all this, I add my renewed greetings for the New Year, may each day dawn with choicest blessings."

Gaudette, who turned 106 this month, has become an inspiration for a school that is trying to hold on to its Catholic heritage with the Religious of Jesus and Mary even as it considers a future under lay leadership.

At the end of 2007, closure seemed likely. Since then, the school community has raised $500,000 for repairs, but parents still need about another $300,000 to buy it from the religious order.

Gaudette was there for some of the hard times the school had to endure at its beginning. In the fall of its first year, the school had to shut down for more than a month because of the Spanish flu. It reopened in November 1918, when World War I ended.

In a recent meeting with Sister Janet Stolba, the U.S. Provincial Superior for the order, Gaudette provided a detail-rich account of her days at the school, naming all of her teachers and revealing that the construction of the Villa was never finished.

"All my memories are very happy ones," Gaudette said, according to Stolba's notes from the interview. "My wish for the present students is that they be as happy as I was then. Our class was very close knit. We were always together, and at recreation we loved to play games and sing. We loved to go sliding in the snow. There were no outings off the school premises."

Kristen McLane, a parent who is leading an outreach effort, said the current transition period for the school is an opportunity to reach out to alums like Gaudette. McLane thanked her for her prayers and devotion to the Villa Augustina.

"Renewal of our relationship with Mother Marie is a precious gift," McLane said. "If we can find our oldest alumna, imagine the possibilities."

Reproduced by the Goffstown Residents Association.