St. John's School for the Deaf

On 10 May 1876, Theodore Bruener, Rector of the Catholic Normal School and Pio Nono College, a music-oriented teaching institution in St. Francis, established the Catholic Deaf and Dumb Asylum. It served 17 pupils in its first school year, with classes being held in the second floor of the Pio Nono gymnasium.[1][2] Seeing remarkable growth, Bruener set out fundraising in order to construct a separate building for the school.[1] Construction of the new structure was completed in the summer of 1879 and dedicated in December of that year. The finished building was a three-story, cream brick Italianate structure, surrounded by acres of forest, farmland and ornamental gardens.[2] It could accommodate 60 students.[2]

On 29 December 1879, Bruener was assigned elsewhere, and John Fiedl succeeded him for roughly a year.[2] He was replaced by Charles Fessler, who led the school for nine years during a difficult period of financial stress and seemingly inevitable closure.[2] On 15 August 1889, Matthias M. Gerend became St. John's fourth Director, and immediately set out to stabilize the school's finances.[2] He changed the name to St. John's Institute for Deaf Mutes,[1] and requested from Archbishop Michael Heiss permission and funding to construct workshops adjacent to the school in which students could produce altars, confessionals, baptismal fonts, statues, pulpits, cabinets and carvings.[2] The archbishop approved this, and the workshops were finished in February 1890.[2] The production of church furnishings soon proved hugely profitable, earning over $20,000 in the first year[2] ($509,630 in 2015 dollars[3]). The Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi, who staffed St. John's throughout its operation, still hold pews from the workshops in the chapel of their motherhouse in St. Francis.[4] During that time, St. John's had three departments: School, Industrial and Domestic. The School Department taught students in the classics. The boys were taught by a lay teacher, Professor L.W. Mihm, and the girls taught by the Franciscan Sisters.[2] The Industrial Department included all sorts of trades, most famous for its church furnishings. The department included only boys and was taught by E. Brielmaier, an architect and altar-builder who was famous in the region at the time.[2] The Domestic Department was for girls only. The Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi taught them cooking, sewing and other housekeeping skills.[2]

The Old Gym in the 1910s. The building was demolished in 1967.

In 1893, Gerend had a chapel constructed dedicated to Archbishop Heiss, who had left his entire estate to St. John's. Also constructed in the late 19th century was a Tudor-style gymnasium, later known as the Old Gym.[5] Gerend, who was Swiss, had the building constructed using student labor to resemble the architecture of his home country, according to alumni.[5] The gym was an early home to the school's basketball teams, held a classroom in its basement, and hosted movie showings on Saturday nights, according to alumni.[5]

In 1895, St. John's Institute for Deaf Mutes became a fully independent school, and was no longer an entity within Pio Nono College.[1]

Fire damage of the main building in 1907.

On 31 July 1907, the original St. John's Institute building was partially destroyed by a fire that broke out in the roof of the building.[6] The fire was caused by a gas chandelier in the chapel.[5] Luckily, only two Sisters and ten female students were in the building at the time, and were able to easily exit the building before the flames reached the lower floors. By the time the Milwaukee Fire Department put out the fire, the entire south wing of the building was destroyed, and the west wing was damaged, causing $35,000 in damage.[6] As recorded in a Racine Daily Journal article from a day after the fire, Steven Klopper, the Assistant Director, commented on the lack of casualties of the fire:

"We were lucky in having the fire occur as it did. Usually there are about seventy-five children in the institute. During the summer, most of them are away on vacations, and there are only about twenty boys and ten girls here now. The younger children had been dismissed for the day. Only a few of the larger girls were in the building when the fire started. Had it originated during school hours or at night, when the dormitories are filled, there might have been a serious loss of life."[6]

The insurance covered all but $10,000 of the damage, and donations from charities and members of the public covered the rest of the loss, allowing St. John's to speedily erect a replacement school building.[1][4]

A girls' catechism class in 1920, originally published in Our Young People, a magazine for deaf youth published at St. John's.

In 1938, Gerend, by then raised to the rank of monsignor, died, leaving St. John's with a new chapel, workshops, stable finances, and a faculty of eleven Sisters, multiple lay teachers and two Assistant Directors, Steven Klopper and Eugene J. Gelh.[1] Gelh was promoted to Director following Gerend's death, and renamed the school St. John School for the Deaf. He continued the publication of Our Young People for a few years, but he became known mostly for his organization of retreats and missions.[1] He also continued Gerend's work of stabilizing school finances.[1] On 10 May 1963, after 54 years of service (including his entire priesthood) to St. John's and 27 years as Director, Gehl died.[1]

Following Gehl's death, Lawrence C. Murphy was appointed Director, after serving 13 years as Assistant Director and the Director of Athletics.[1][7] Murphy addressed in his tenure St. John's two pressing issues: the aging facilities and deaf education technology and the lack of a high school. He felt that he could address both issues at the same time by demolishing the old buildings and constructing new, larger ones that would have sufficient facilities to serve high school students.[1]

Murphy commissioned plans for a new high school department that would contain a classroom and dormitory block and an adjacent athletic center containing a gym, swimming pool, theater, teen center and playroom.[1] He presented them to Archbishop William Edward Cousins, who endorsed Murphy's efforts and provided archdiocesan funding for the project. That money as well as funding from the Knights of Columbus and the Christ Child Society provided all the school needed to proceed with construction.[1] The new classroom building, built of red brick in a modern design, was completed just in time for the 1967–1968 school year. The old buildings, including the Old Gym, were demolished in June 1967. The athletic facilities were completed in 1973.[1] The entire seven-year project cost $3 million.[4]

In 1974, Murphy resigned because of "ill health," according to the Archdiocese of Milwaukee at the time.[1] In reality, after years of sexual abuse of possibly near 200 pupils of St. John's, former victims had begun to step forward and report Murphy to Milwaukee and St. Francis police, the Milwaukee District Attorney and the Archdiocese. He was sent to live in his mother's house in the Diocese of Superior, and was never held accountable for his crimes, despite an ecclesiastical trial that was ended due to Murphy's poor health later in life.[1][8][9]

After Murphy's resignation, the school switched to a dual-leadership system. The position of principal was created to oversee academic affairs, and the director position was now controlled the facilities, finances and other nonacademic affairs.[1][4] Donald Zerkel, who had been the Assistant Director, became the director, and Sr. Roberta Le Pine, OSF, a faculty member, became the school's first principal.[1][4] By 1976, St. John's had 113 students ranging in grade from preschool to twelfth grade, down from 158 in 1971. There were 22 faculty members, including nine Franciscan Sisters, 12 laypersons and Zerkel.[4]

On 10 February 1982, Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland announced St. John School for the Deaf would close in May 1983 in a letter to parents of students.[10] He cited the "ever-increasing expenses of the program" as the deciding factor in the decision. That year alone, the school was operating on a $300,000+ deficit, and would require more than $1 million to remain open for the next two years.[10] In the 1980-1981 school year, the archdiocese contributed $250,000 to the school, compared to $450,000 for the 1982–1983 school year.[11] In his letter, Archbishop Weakland wrote:

"The excellence of the program at St. John's is unquestioned. However, the burden of continuing to support the program can no longer be borne by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee through the resources available to it."[10]

The archbishop wrote that a decline in enrollment had taken a severe toll on the school's ability to pay its bills. He noted that medical advances and decreasing American birthrates had caused a decrease in the deaf and hearing-impaired population, as well as growing popularity among parents in mainstreaming deaf children.[10]

For the last school year, there were 100 students in a school built to accommodate 225, 80 of them boarders.[10]

Following its closure, the former school facilities became the St. John Center, a multi-use Roman Catholic center and home to the Archdiocese of Milwaukee's deaf ministry, which was led by William Key, a sign language-fluent priest.[12]