8/23/24 - Friday Forget-Me-Nots by Jim Silcott

Photo Caption: First Day of Kindergarten

Dear Our Lady of Peace Family,

My affiliation with Our Lady of Peace Parish began in 1986 when I bought the house at 47 E. Beaumont Road for our growing family. Msgr. Ken Grimes was the pastor, and I knew him from working at Bishop Watterson High School where he had served as principal for a time.

In the fall of 1987 my oldest daughter, Lauren enrolled in first grade. There was no Kindergarten at the time. Mrs. Peggy Pinckney was her first-grade teacher. Fortunately, she was still there when I became principal in 2017. Sister Mary Catharine Keppner, a Dominican Sister of Peace, was the principal.

We were thrilled with both the parish and the school, and my three children all graduated from OLP and later from Bishop Watterson. It was both our neighborhood school and our parish. The kids walked when they were able. They received their sacraments of First Penance, First Holy Communion and Confirmation here. We would go to Mass on Sundays and then head to Tee Jaye’s (the old one on the site of Chick Fil a) for breakfast. They were altar servers and played sports and did Miss Burn’s opera and the spring musical when they were old enough.

That first fall, I attended a meeting of the pizza committee at the Logsdon’s house and quickly got immersed in the major fund raiser for the school. Back then there was both a fall and spring sale and it went for two days. I worked myself up to the esteemed job of saucer and somehow became the pizza mascot, Guido, which I can’t seem to shake despite my bad imitation of an Italian accent.

Although we had no Ed Choice, tuition was much cheaper then. We had a system called Fair Share where you would indicate how much you thought you could pay, and if you didn’t hear back from Msgr. Grimes, you would start paying it. At some point during the year he would say, “Whatever you are paying this year, we would like you to raise by 3%.” No fuss, no bother.

Like today, Our Lady of Peace was not a perfect place but it had fabulous teachers such as Mrs. Pickney, Miss Durbin and Miss Burns, Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Laurent, Mrs. Adams, and Mr. Clark to name a few. My kids claimed that math did not have a strong program in middle school, but I suspect that their struggles were inherited in the gene pool from me. For a couple of years, Lauren’s class had five girls and 15 boys. Girls tend to pair off so life was good when she was one of the two pairs and miserable when she was the odd girl out.

In 1992 Mrs. Carol Folian became the first lay principal as well as the longest serving, retiring in 2014. She was wonderful but she had a complicated shoe rule, so complicated that I used to bring my kids’ shoes in for her to inspect before I put them on her feet in case we had to take them back. But she. Along with their teachers, took wonderful care of my children for which I am eternally grateful.

My son, Braden, now has three of my grandchildren here at the school. As I see them in the classrooms, halls and cafeteria it takes me back to when he was little, getting in trouble for roughnecking on the field. Once I wouldn’t let him play in his basketball game because he didn’t turn in his homework. He does not let me forget that.



Our family is not alone in being multi-generational, some are on their third generation in our parish and school. With Jesus Christ as our center, and the Church at it’s core, Our Lady of Peace continues to strive to educate our minds and nourish our souls. May it continue for many years to come as we near our 80th year!

Jim Silcott