Maryknoll School just celebrated its 90th year in Hawaii. Its story began Sept. 2, 1927, when six young and adventurous Maryknoll Sisters and a young priest from New York stepped off the liner City of Honolulu onto tropical soil for the first time.

They were answering Catholic Bishop Stephen Alencastre’s call to open a new missionary school in Hawaii. This school would be different from the traditional European-modeled schools already established in Hawaii.

It was envisioned as a school that would welcome not only Catholic students, but all young men and women regardless of ethnicity, creed or socioeconomic background. Back then most Catholic schools were not coed, making Maryknoll unusual.

The sisters opened Maryknoll School just four days after their arrival, spokeswoman Liane Hu Okumura told me. It was part of the Sacred Heart Church on Wilder Avenue.

“In fact, they lived on campus in Bachelot Hall (now used as a performance and meeting space) until 1930, sleeping on cots on the stage and cooking their meals in a little kitchenette.

“The student body was comprised of 93 boys and 77 girls on opening day. In 1933 the Dowsett family property on Dole Street was purchased to accommodate a convent for the sisters. This property would later become the site of the Maryknoll Community Center and Clarence T.C. Ching Gymnasium in 2009.”

The Maryknoll Sisters were founded in 1912 as the first group of Catholic sisters in the U.S. for overseas missions.

The name Maryknoll comes from a home on a hill in Westchester County, N.Y., where the group was founded. “Mary” refers to Jesus’ mother, whose name in biblical times was actually Miriam.

The first Catholic Girl Scout troop in Hawaii was started in 1934 by the Maryknoll Sisters, who went camping and hiking on Tantalus wearing full habits. Since the young ladies of Troop 38 were not allowed to wear shorts, the girls sewed their own bloomers — loose-fitting, knee-length pants.

1940s-1970s

After the U.S. entered World War II, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers took over five classrooms at Maryknoll for its use, and the school operated on double shift for the rest of the 1941-1942 school year.

There were trenches dug on campus, and every student had a gas mask. If they came to school without a mask, they were sent home. The students also planted victory gardens on campus to grow their own vegetables.

The school was able to expand during the 1940s-1950s with the acquisition of the McDonald Hotel property on Punahou Street. In 1947 Father George C. Powers learned that the 4-acre property was for sale and bought it.

The property had first been developed in the 1880s by Col. Charles H. Judd, chamberlain to King Kalakaua, who had built his residence there.

In 1948, 300 Maryknoll high school students moved from Dole Street to their new campus on Punahou Street. The campus at the time extended to Shriners Hospital.

In March 1952, one month after celebrating the school’s silver anniversary, the territorial government appropriated more than half of the high school property for a new cross-town artery which became the H-1 Lunalilo Freeway. The high school was rebuilt in just one year, from 1952 to 1953.

The mission of the Mary­knoll Sisters was always to establish new endeavors, train others and move on. The transition from the sisters to lay leadership began in 1977, 50 years after the school’s founding, when Jared Kaufmann (class of ’58) became the high school’s first lay principal.

Maryknoll has many legacy families who have been part of the school’s ohana for generations. Vice President of Academic Affairs Shana Tong (’83) is part of a three-generation alumni family. Her grandmother was the cook for the Mary­knoll priests.

Her grandfather built the pews at Sacred Hearts Church. Her mother, Shirley Campos, served 33 years as secretary to the grade school principal. Shana became a second-grade teacher at Maryknoll in 1988 and has advanced in her career, becoming grade school principal in 2008 and eventually vice president in 2016.

One of the founders, Mother Mary Joseph Rogers, taught the students that “whatever the gift and talent that you have, you share it with other people. If much is given to you, much is expected of you.”

This means community service has been part of Maryknoll’s well-rounded education for 90 years now. Students must give over 100 hours to the community before graduating.

Did any of my readers go to Maryknoll and have interesting stories to tell about their time there?

Bob Sigall’s “The Companies We Keep 5” book has arrived, with stories from the last three years of Rearview Mirror. “The Companies We Keep 1 and 2” are also back in print. Email Sigall at Sigall@yahoo.com.