Pride in Flaget High School still survives

Members of the Flaget Alumni Association, from left to right, are Bob Ullrich, Mike Hasken, Tom Becker, and Cindy Chipps, who is librarian of the Flaget High museum housed at St. Xavier High School. The alumni association hopes to have raised $1 million for its scholarship endowment fund by the end of the year. (Record Photo by Glenn Rutherford)
Members of the Flaget Alumni Association, from left to right, are Bob Ullrich, Mike Hasken, Tom Becker, and Cindy Chipps, who is librarian of the Flaget High museum housed at St. Xavier High School. The alumni association hopes to have raised $1 million for its scholarship endowment fund by the end of the year. (Record Photo by Glenn Rutherford)

By Glenn Rutherford, Record Editor

Last week while the city recalled the nearly-incomprehensible destruction of the April 3, 1974, tornado, another group in the Archdiocese of Louisville was recalling a second significant event that occurred that same spring.

Members of the Flaget Alumni Association met with a reporter to discuss the closing of their beloved West End school in 1974.

As difficult as it is to think that four decades have passed since the storm struck, it also boggles the mind a bit to think of that beloved school’s passing, necessary though it was.

The fact that its alumni association remains so viable and active is a testimony to the lasting impact of the school on River Park Drive.

Consider this:

There are 1,100 dues paying members in the alumni association — 40 years after the school closed. And the school, which was born in the midst of national adversity in 1942, still has about 2,800 living graduates.

A contingent of those graduates — Bob Ullrich (class of ’65), Tom Becker (class of ’53) and Mike Hasken (class of ’67), president of the alumni association (Becker is president-to-be) visited The Record offices last week. They talked about their pride in their old high school, and the pride that lingers in all of those who matriculated there during its history of just more than 30 years. (The trio was accompanied by Cindy Chipps, the librarian and curator of the Flaget High School museum located in Xaverian Hall on the campus of St. Xavier High School — an old rival.)

But the important thing about the alumni association, and the significance of this 40-year anniversary, is the good the association is doing for Catholic education.

Each year the association awards a $1,500 scholarship to a student from each of the nine Catholic high schools in the archdiocese, and they provide another $1,500 scholarship for students at Providence High School in Clarksville, Ind.

“That money comes directly from our dues,” Becker explained.

Now the association is close to expanding its gifts to local high schools.

Mike Hasken noted that 10 years ago the association launched its endowment drive.

“We wanted to created an endowment fund, something that would last long after we were all gone, and something that would continue the legacy of Flaget,” he said.

That drive had the ambitious goal of raising $1 million, and back in 2004 when it began, it was given a significant starting push with a single anonymous contribution of $120,000.

“And that came from someone who we never thought would be able to make that kind of contribution,” Becker said.

Ten years later, what looked to be a significant, perhaps pie-in-the-sky target is imminently reachable.

“Our endowment is up to $947,000, and that doesn’t include the last quarterly statement,” Hasken noted. “So, before this year is over, I have — we all have — the feeling that at this year’s Christmas party, we’ll be celebrating the fact that we’ve reached our $1 million goal.”

That accomplishment will allow the alumni association to make significant annual contributions to area Catholic high schools in the form of scholarship grants.

The way Bob Ullrich explained it, the association will use “just the interest from the endowment to give $5,000 to each of the schools.”

“The schools will decide who gets the money,” he noted. “Our only stipulation is that it must be used for scholarships.”

Ullrich also noted that the alumni association doesn’t put a limit on who can contribute to their fund.

“We’ll take money from anyone; they don’t have to be Flaget grads,” he said.

The association is also encouraging people to consider the school’s impact on their lives when they write their wills, and to allow others to contribute, for instance, in lieu of flowers, to the association’s endowment fund.

“Any Flaget alum who dies, Art Potter, one of our grads and a member of the association, goes to the funeral home,” Becker noted. “He does a great job of that.”
And that provides another example of the closeness of the Flaget community.

“We were a bunch of blue-collar kids from blue collar families,” Ullrich said. Everybody else agreed.

“One of the reasons we were so good in athletics (Flaget won numerous city football championships and won the state basketball title in 1960) was that we had a kind of ‘us against everybody else’ mentality,” Becker said.

Now Flaget graduates are getting up in years, Hasken said.

“Our youngest grads are in their late ‘50s now, and we all realize we’re not going to be here forever,” he added. “That’s why the endowment is so significant to us.

With the help of Dennis Riggs of the Community Foundation of Louisville — that’s where our endowment is — we were able to get this going.”

It was Riggs who told them to aim high, Ullrich added. “At first we thought a quarter-million dollars would be a good goal and he said, ‘No; aim for a million. That will give you a legacy.’ ”

And that’s what they’ve done. They began with a campaign slogan that said “Make the Legend a Legacy,” and that’s what they’ve accomplished.

Although its history stretched just more than three decades, and its doors have been closed for 40 years, in many ways — certainly in the hearts and minds of its 2,800 living graduates and the 1,100 members of the alumni association — Flaget High School lives on.

Those wanting to contribute to the endowment fund can send their contributions to the following address: Flaget Endowment for Catholic Education, P.O. Box 36558, Louisville, Ky., 40233-6558.

*This story was edited April 16, 2014, to include the address of the endowment fund.

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