Pacific NW 11/18/2007 | The Angels at Bat

Now & Then Paul Dorpat

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The Angels at Bat

COURTESY OF ST. ALPHONSUS SCHOOL

THEN: Unidentified members of Holy Angels softball team wait and take their turns at bat in this 1937 playground scene at Ballard's St. Alphonsus Parish. Perhaps a reader will recognize one or more of these players.

PAUL DORPAT

NOW: Members of the contemporary St. Alphonsus community pose in the "now" scene.

Thankfully, centennials will often stimulate an archival rigor in whatever is celebrating its first 100 years. Gloria Kruzner, designated historian for Ballard's St. Alphonsus Parish School, collected boxes and sacks filled with school ephemera, including what she describes as "wonderful and historically significant photos" while she was preparing the school history.

Dominican Sisters first opened the school as Holy Angels Academy in 1907, the year Ballard was annexed into Seattle. To make room for more students, a new three-story brick schoolhouse was opened in 1923, the grade school on the first two floors, the high school on the third.

This snapshot of 11 members of the 1936-37 Holy Angels softball team is, we agree, a wonderful example. But who are the players, and might a reader know?

Class of 1937 graduate Elizabeth Crisman Morrow holds the bat in the contemporary "repeat" photograph. She played shortstop on the '37 team, but doubts she is included in these out-of-uniform players.

Behind the players both views show the same schoolhouse that was the largest Catholic school in the state in 1923, with 600-plus students. From the late 1920s on, only girls were admitted to Holy Angels, which survived until 1972 when it was closed for want of both funds and students. The coed St. Alphonsus School carried on with lay instructors and, since 2004, new sisters from the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity.

In the "now" re-enactment, Sister Miriam James plays catcher. Other members of the Alphonsus community include, left to right: Kathi Abendroth, Maggie Kruzner (the school historian's daughter), Joseph Chamberlin, Megan Chamberlin, Joseph Bentley and Emmiline Nordale (half hidden beyond the batter). Principal Bob Rutledge is on the right, and the "Holy Angel" peering over the fence is Hanna Nordale.

"Washington Then and Now," the new book by Paul Dorpat and Jean Sherrard, can be purchased through Tartu Publications at P.O. Box 85208, Seattle, WA 98145.

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