Fighting to save North and Dougherty

AT HIS HOME in Port Richmond, John Conway - a student who helped organize emotional rallies against the Archdiocese of Philadelphia's plan to shut down Northeast Catholic High School for Boys - was talking about one of his favorite teachers.

"His name is Father Kilty," the 15-year-old sophomore said. "He's the wisest man I know."

Conway said Kilty teaches Latin and French during the school year and Greek over the summer.

But John Conway isn't the only one in his family who knows Father Kilty, a longtime teacher at North Catholic, as the school is known.

John's father, Michael Conway, graduated from North in 1991; his uncle, Ray Pazdunkiewicz 3rd, in 1996; his maternal grandfather, Ray Pazdunkiewicz, in 1969; and his father's stepdad, Joe Christensen, is Class of 1974.

"I remember Father Kilty," Christensen, 53, chimed in as the family gathered at the Conway home on Edgemont Street near Ontario. "He used to live down on Agate Street."

It is this kind of legacy - with North Catholic, having educated generations of the same families in the "river wards" of Port Richmond, Frankford, Kensington and Fishtown since it was founded in 1926 - that explains why so many students and alumni say, no matter what, they will fight to save their schools.

"It's heartbreaking," Frank Dougherty, a North Catholic, alumnus, Class of '59, said of the Oct. 8 announcement that both North, on Torresdale Avenue, near Erie in Frankford, and Cardinal Dougherty, on Second Street near Chelten in Olney, will close next June, due to sharply declining enrollments.

"It's not just a sadness at the closing of a Catholic high school, but for the city of Philadelphia," said Dougherty, a former Daily News reporter.

"We've got this mosaic, or quilt, called the city of neighborhoods, and this is just another rip in the fabric of the city," said Dougherty. Over the years, North Catholic has "taken in many river-ward kids and turned them into gentlemen."

John Conway, who was seated in a living room that just happens to be decorated in the red-and-white of North Catholic, put it this way: "I heard stories about some of my teachers from my dad long before I got to North."

"I expected to grow up and graduate and one day see my own kids go there," said John. "North Catholic is a great school."

The archdiocese said many Catholic families have moved out of the city and with an average high school tuition of $5,100 a year, it is tough to compete with free, public charter schools.