By Reagan Scott
for the Register
Rooted in the Catholic faith and committed to academic excellence, the Diocese of Lincoln’s Catholic schools have made an impact on countless students and families across the state in their decades of operation, leaving a legacy that can be felt, and seen.
This legacy is apparent at Aquinas Catholic Schools in David City, where almost 56 percent of the current students across elementary, middle and high school have one or two parents who graduated from Aquinas Catholic High School.
This year, 16 of the senior class’s 29 students will join their parents as fellow alumni, including five students whose mom and dad both graduated from the school. That number is similar for the incoming kindergarten class of 2038.
With 26 students in their class, 16 of this year’s kindergarteners have parents who are alumni of Aquinas Catholic Schools, and five of them had both parents attend. What makes this class extra special is the fact that seven of these students have parents who were all members of the class of 2007, including one whose parents both graduated from the high school that year.
Sara Miriovsky, the guidance counselor for Aquinas Catholic Middle and High School, is married to Jake Miriovsky, who was a member of the class of 2007. Their son Colson celebrated his first day of kindergarten Aug. 13.
Sara recalled attending a class reunion with her husband where the moms were all pregnant at the same time.
“We said, ‘This is going to be so neat, all of these kids coming back,’” she said.
After graduating from high school, Jake moved away for college, but as he and Sara were starting their family, he said having their children attend smaller Catholic schools was always part of their discussion.
Sara attended Catholic school growing up in Norfolk, but has family in the David City area, so the couple felt that all things pointed to establishing roots there. The two also have a daughter in third grade, and another in daycare at the Holy Family Early Learning Center across the street from the elementary school.
“In this community, it’s a very strong, rich tradition of having families come back and send their kids through the system. It’s just this culture that you want to be a part of,” Sara said.
In fact, the Miriovskys’ children are third-generation Aquinas students, following in the footsteps of both their father and grandfather. Jake said his dad graduated from Aquinas High School in 1974.
“It’s pretty amazing that the school has maintained a strong community culture for that long and continues to draw families back,” he said. “There’s a lot of hard work, a lot of dedication from all of the staff and community members who work to keep the school going, so that’s pretty incredible to be a part of.”
Ross Janak’s son Liam will also be a kindergartener with his classmates’ children. While Janak left David City after high school to attend college in Lincoln, he returned to help on the family farm after working for a few years.
Looking back, he remembers his time in school with the class of 2007 fondly.
“It’s very rare in today’s world, that you can have such a close bond with an entire class. Everybody talked to everybody, there was never really anybody on the outside,” he said.
Janak hopes for the same for his son, as the boy grows up with the other members of his class.
“I’m hoping he gets the same experience that I did,” Janak said, “that he can get to know everybody and they can all grow together and make him a well-rounded person the same way we did.”
The fact that so many of the schools’ students are the children of alumni just drives home how strong a legacy the school has left on those who attended.
“To me,” Janak said, “it just reiterates the fact that the school impacted us so much, in a good way, that we all wanted to send our kids back there, and it shows that this system is working, that Catholic school brings about Catholic life, and that we want our families to be raised in the same way.”
This year will be Teresa Pokorny’s 36th teaching English at Aquinas High School. After so many years, she enjoys staying in touch with the school’s alumni and seeing children of the students that she taught begin their own journeys there.
Pokorny isn’t originally from David City, but she would pass by Aquinas on her way between her hometown and Concordia University in Seward, where she was attending college. When a teaching position opened up at the school, she took it, not knowing if it would work out.
After a couple years at the school, Pokorny met her husband, and their daughter would go through the Aquinas school system herself, graduating from high school in 2016. She’s loved having the opportunity to live out her faith in her work every day.
Pokorny said, “Monsignor [Adrian] Herbek offered me a job, and I’m very, very happy to be able to say that I’ve been here all these years. I think it’s awesome having that longevity and having taught the students whose kids are now starting at the school.”
While the years and the students blend together, Pokorny finds enjoyment in holding parent-teacher conferences with her former students, where she gets to share how much their own children resemble them. It’s these connections that make the school community so special to her.
“I just really enjoy the Aquinas family, the longevity of the teachers,” Pokorny said. “There’s many who have been here as long or longer than I have, and now we have some alumni who have come back to teach at Aquinas, so it’s fun to see some of those things come full circle… it’s fun to interact with them as colleagues now rather than just student and teacher.”
One of these students, Katie Smith, is beginning her first year as principal at Aquinas Elementary School after teaching there the past 11 years. Smith is also a member of the class of 2007, along with her husband Brandon. Their daughter Leah began kindergarten with the other six children of the couples’ classmates Aug. 13.
Having returned to David City with her husband after college, Smith said getting back together with classmates has always been fun, and their class reunions have good turnout. It’s her hope that her daughter’s class has the same family feel that’s remained among the class of 2007.
“Being principal for the first year, we really have a focus on keeping that positive school culture going within Aquinas Elementary and Aquinas Catholic Schools in general,” she said. “I hope the pride of our school gets carried through like it was when we were there. I think that’s why we are all so willing to come back to this community, because we’re proud of where we came from and we had success.”
Smith described David City as a family-based town, where there is a strong sense of community and everyone supports each other, no matter where they attend school.
“In our world today I think sometimes we do kind of hop from place to place, and it’s kind of nice that we have a lot of people coming back to their roots and really focusing on family,” Smith said. “I know so many small towns and communities are like that, so I love that about Nebraska in general.”
