OLPH Celebrates National Catholic Schools Week

Our Lady of Perpetual Help (OLPH) School has been a pillar of the community in East Ridge since its founding on Moore Road in 1937. This past week the Catholic Pre-K through 8th grade school celebrated National Catholic Schools Week along with their younger sister-school, St. Jude in Hixson, and Notre Dame High in Glenwood, which began Catholic education in downtown Chattanooga in 1876.

OLPH Church helped families to kick off the week on Sunday, Jan. 26, with a a special Mass including students as readers, gift bearers, music leaders and choir members.

Throughout the week students heard guest speakers, kicked up their heels at an all-school sock hop, and participated in several service activities. Among the activities was raising money for the American Heart Association, making beaded friendship bracelets for patients at T.C. Thompson’s Children’s Hospital, Valentine cards for the sisters of Charity, BVM, in Dubuque, Iowa (the first teachers at the school), and a competitive volleyball match between faculty and students.

The sisters of Charity, BVM in Dubuque Iowa, who were the first teachers and served in the classroom until 2003, will receive Valentines made by the students this week.

East Ridge Animal Shelter will be the recipients of 35 fleece dog toys and 50 fleece blankets that the younger students made along with their older student buddies.

Patients at T.C. Thompson’s Children’s Hospital will receive beaded friendship bracelets made by 1st & 2nd-grade students.

Students raised $4,000 for the American Heart Association while participating in some heart-healthy challenges.

8th Grade students beat the faculty by a slim margin in the traditional CCSW volleyball game.

Students and teachers joined in the fun of an all-school sock hop!

About Dick Cook

Dick Cook has lived in East Ridge since the Kennedy Administration when his parents bought a house on Marietta Street. Dick graduated from ERHS in 1976 before going on to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he studied Political Science. Dick worked for the Chattanooga Free-Press and the Chattanooga Times Free Press for 22 years. Free-Press Sports Editor Roy Exum plucked him out of production in 1989 and gave him a job as a sports reporter. Dick covered everything from prep sports to the whitewater events on the Ocoee River for the 1996 Olympics. When Chattanooga's two paper's merged, he became the Crime Reporter covering both the Chattanooga Police and Fire Departments. He was among reporters who were honored by the Associated Press for the TFP's coverage of the 2002 fog-shrouded crash on I-75 in Catoosa County, Dick and his wife, Cathy, live on Marlboro Avenue where they are seen frequently chasing around their three grandsons.

About Dick Cook

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