This is the third in a series of Hawaii Catholic Herald columns leading up to the canonization of Blessed Damien de Veuster, which is expected later this year.
Damien High School, La Verne, California
This column will occasionally report on the influence of Blessed Damien in other parts of the world. Here is a story about a school named for him that’s not in Kalihi.
By Anna Weaver | Hawaii Catholic Herald
Considering how far Blessed Damien de Veuster’s reputation has spread around the world, it’s not surprising to learn that Damien Memorial School in Kalihi is not the only all-boys school in the universe named after the famed missionary to Molokai. There’s one in La Verne, Calif.
The school was founded in 1959 as the Pomona Catholic Boys High School and renamed Damien High School in 1967 after the Fathers of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, who operate the school, petitioned to rename it after the famous member of their order.
The 1,100 students who attend the school 30 miles east of Los Angeles all learn about its namesake as part of their freshman religion curriculum, says Damien’s principal Sacred Hearts Father Patrick Travers.
The students also strive to imitate Damien through the 100-hours of community service that each must complete during a school year.
“That’s the spirit that we try to live out in what we do, and that’s reaching out to the unfortunate,” Father Travers said. “That’s why we’re reaching out to the poorest of the poor in Tijuana.”
He is referring to the Tijuana Mission Club, which he started almost 20 years ago on the suggestion of a parent who had connections with an orphanage in Mexico.
Since then, the club has moved into construction, building 42 homes, five churches, five sets of classrooms, and two community centers in Tijuana and nearby areas during father-son building trips one week each summer.
Father Travers also takes groups of boys on day-trips to Mexico twice a month and on five larger service trips a year to bring staples like rice and beans, toiletries and blankets to 200 Mexican families.
“It’s kind of, ‘Have van will travel,’” Father Travers said. “The demand is there for the kids to go down.”
More than 200 boys now participate in the club, which they’ve nicknamed “TJ Mission,” and its yearly budget exceeds $200,000, all raised from student-run fundraisers and outside donations.
“It’s no longer a club. It’s a business,” said Father Travers, of the amount of time and money that goes into the service trip. “It was just an answer to a call to help and certainly I didn’t see it coming to what it is.”
He still oversees the service club and goes on all the trips. “That is kind of what keeps me going,” he said.
The Sacred Hearts Father said that if you ask a senior what they’ll most take away from their time at Damien, he’ll tell you the weeklong Kairos student retreat and the Tijuana Mission Club.
Damien is located in suburban La Verne and is known for being competitive in scholastics and athletics, though Father Travers said they had a rough football season this year.
The school is in a middle class neighborhood and according to the priest is made up of students that are 50 percent Caucasian, 30 percent Hispanic, 10 percent African American, and five percent Asian American and other backgrounds.
Father Travers visited Hawaii’s Damien High School back in 1989. Like the island school, the La Verne campus holds a Mass in honor of Blessed Damien’s feast day on May 10. The boys also get a day off.
Father Travers says he hopes a group from the high school will be able to make a pilgrimage to Rome for Damien’s canonization. At the least, the priest hopes a special Mass with the local bishop will be celebrated to honor the school’s patron when he is named a saint.