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Rapid City Catholic School System

Rapid City Catholic School System1 day ago

2022 RCCSS Hall of Fame Inductee- 2022 RCCSS Hall of Fame Inductee- ST. MARTIN MONASTERY & ACADEMY Join us at The Cavalier when the St. Martin Monastery & Academy are inducted into the RCCSS Hall of Fame. Buy your tickets at thecavalier.org
2022 RCCSS Hall of Fame Inductee- Crossing the Swiss Alps destined for the Black Hills required a breathtaking leap of faith for the women who would go on to pioneer Catholic education in western South Dakota. Nevertheless, Mother Angela Arnet, OSB and the four Sisters accompanying her made that journey from the small Benedictine Convent of St. Nicholas de Flue in Melchtal, Switzerland to Sturgis, Dakota Territory in 1889.
Benedictine monasteries are founded by members of an established monastery responding to the needs of a region not yet adequately served by the Church. The nucleus of a new community is called a daughter house. This was the case in the late 1880’s when the people of Sturgis asked Bishop Martin Marty, the first Abbot of St. Meinrad’s Abbey in Indiana as well as Vicar Apostolic of the Dakota Territory, to find Sisters to staff a school for their children. Bishop Marty was a Swiss-born Benedictine monk, so he approached the convent in Melchtal with this request for Sisters.

After spending a few months learning English from the Benedictine Sisters at Sacred Heart Convent in Yankton, Mother Angela and her underlings boarded a train bound for the Black Hills that arrived in Sturgis on April 28, 1889. Although the townspeople had requested the Sisters to come, no provision
for their housing had been made, so the Sisters were moved into an abandoned tavern that had fallen into disrepair. It became their home for almost eight months, and later the source of fond memories as the Sisters often laughingly remembered having to use umbrellas indoors because the roof leaked
so badly. The Sisters grew in strength and fondness for their new Black Hills home as they fended for themselves in the Wild Wild West. Even money for food was scarce, but their trust in God proved well-founded when a ten-dollar bill marked “from a friend” was left at their door.

Despite a somewhat less than warm welcome and extreme poverty, the Sisters immediately began the work for which their daughter house was established. Within ten days of their arrival, they opened a summer school. An excerpt from a local newspaper announced the opening on May 6, 1889.

ST. MARTIN’S ACADEMY
Vocal and Instrumental Music
Conducted by the Sisters of St. Benedict, Sturgis, Meade Co.
Terms invariably paid in advance:
Board and tuition per month $15.00
Piano and use of instrument – one hour daily 5.00
Organ and use of instrument – one hour daily 5.00
Zither per lesson .50
Drawing, painting, in watercolors, in oil and
extra fancy work per lesson .50
Thirty-one students enrolled that first summer, and the school was deemed a resounding success. Thereafter, the local community began planning for a permanent school building. Land and stone from
a nearby quarry were donated, and most of the construction costs were paid by Bishop Marty and the monastery in Melchtal. The new two-story school/dormitory was formally dedicated on January 6,1890.

Even with the success of the new buildings, the financial situation for the Sisters and their school remained tenuous to the point they were sometimes forced to beg from Fort Meade and nearby towns in order to provide food and other necessities for the children under their care.

Besides teaching, the duties of the Sisters included maintenance, cooking, laundry, gardening, care of cows and milking. This was on top of the round-the-clock care of boarding students, including some orphans and motherless children who were left in the care of the Sisters while their fathers sought
their livelihood at various jobs.
At the same time, the Benedictine Sisters, accustomed to the orderly monastic life from which they came, observed times for community and personal prayer and Mass as best they could. Often feeling overwhelmed by their responsibilities, the five nuns happily welcomed new members from Switzerland
and from various areas of the United States. By 1900 Monastery membership had increased to 41. At its peak in the 1960’s, St. Martin Monastery was home to 120 Benedictine women.
The St. Martin’s Academy campus grew. By 1901 the construction of a convent, a dormitory building and the installation of a steam heating system provided additional and more comfortable space for
Sisters and students.
A separate chapel was dedicated in 1912. Today the other buildings are long gone, but the chapel, located at 1440 Sherman Street, is being restored and is used on special occasions by St Francis Parish.
Besides the elementary and high school in Sturgis, the Benedictine Sisters also staffed elementary parochial schools in Deadwood, Lead, Gregory, Bonesteel, Lemmon and Rapid City, South Dakota; and Baraboo, Wisconsin, Casper, Wyoming and Laguna Beach, California.
In summer months Sisters taught religious vacation schools in parishes throughout the Diocese of Rapid City as well as several places in Wyoming and Montana.
In pioneer settlements there was also an urgent need for health care services. The Sisters’ response to a typhoid epidemic in 1897 resulted in the founding of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Deadwood. In 1902
they opened Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Hot Springs, and in 1927 they founded St. John McNamara Hospital in Rapid City. Each of these hospitals also began schools of nursing – the first in western South Dakota.
By the mid-1950’s, Sisters and students had outgrown convent and high school facilities in Sturgis.
With another leap of faith and little money, the Monastery community launched plans for a new campus on the outskirts of Rapid City. They had purchased the land years earlier with a dream of one day starting a college, but it was an ideal setting for their immediate needs – a new complex that included a high school, residence halls and larger convent. As a private school, it would have to be
paid for by savings and donations rather than diocesan funds. It is interesting to note that through the hundred years the St. Martin’s Academy operated in Sturgis and Rapid City, the Sisters never drew a salary; in fact, the convent regularly subsidized the school.
The new facility, which would operate as a girls’ school, was ready for occupancy in 1962. As the only Catholic high school in the diocese that was not on an Indian reservation, St. Martin’s offered an opportunity for students to live in the dormitory and receive a Catholic education. The school drew
dorm residents from rural areas of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana as well as day students from Rapid City. Room, board, and tuition fees were kept as low as possible to accommodate families of modest means.
At its founding in Sturgis, St. Martin’s Academy had educated both girls and boys. In the 1970’s the Academy transitioned back to its coeducational roots. It was also during this era that the boarding school attracted dozens of Mexican girls who came to immerse themselves in American culture and
the English language, often as preparatory work leading to attending a university in the United States.
As public education improved in small towns in the area, interest in boarding schools waned. At the same time, the number of Sisters available to teach in the Academy began a decline, which resulted in increases in operating costs. Faced with these circumstances, the Benedictine Sisters closed the residence hall in 1981. The high school was closed in 1991.
Closing St. Martin’s Academy did not diminish the Sisters’ passion for Catholic education. In fact, it was a principal objective of their discernment in 2007 to sell their property to the Diocese of Rapid City and its Catholic School System. By doing so, the Sisters’ ensured their legacy as the founders of
Catholic education in western South Dakota would live on through the good work of the Rapid City Catholic School System.

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