‘DID YOU GO TO CATHOLIC HIGH?’

BACK TO SCHOOL: A look back at the school that was an essential part of the community

Students dance to music at Catholic Central’s 24-hour dance marathon held on January 17, 1993. Over a hundred students participated.

Judy Smith, a longtime resident of Troy, was volunteering at Troy City Music Hall in the early spring when two women stopped to talk with her.

“Which is kind of the funny thing that happens when you go to a local school and you’re in the area,” Smith said. “(People) will say, ‘Hey, you look familiar.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah, where do I know you from?’ ”

After a little bit of talking, it hit her: “Did you go to Catholic High?” Smith asked. 

It’s a common question for residents of the Troy and Lansingburgh area. A pinnacle school in the upstate area for over 100 years, Catholic Central High School was, and still is, a foundational part of the local community for so many former students, staff and families. 

 Juggling four phone calls at once kept Tom Lumley, business manager at Catholic Central High in Troy, busy. In this file photo from 1989, Lumley, class of ‘64, is among alumni of the school who participated in the annual phonathon to raise funds for CCHS. 

Catholic Central has seen its fair share of changes in the past few years. The school’s Lansingburgh building closed in 2021 and merged with St. Ambrose School in Latham to form Catholic Central School. That will continue to operate this year but without the high school program, a hard but necessary decision in order to continue any operations with the Catholic Central name. Through it all, that love and fondness for being a Crusader is continuing to carry on to the next generation. 

“Our class is celebrating our 55th (reunion) in the fall, so we’re far removed, but at the same time, it was such an important piece for so many of us, our high school experience,” said Smith, Class of 1971.

In 1923, Bishop Edmund F. Gibbons founded Catholic Central High School at the request of local parish priests in the Troy and Lansingburgh area. The school first operated out of the old Troy Hospital (on the East side of Eighth Street), erected in 1868, and operated by the Sisters of Charity. In 1922, the building was sold to the Diocese of Albany and converted into the school Bishop Gibbons launched. 

In 1953, the school moved again to 116th Street and Seventh Avenue in Lansingburgh into the old Cluett Peabody & Company building, which was used to manufacture shirts, detachable shirt cuffs and collars. The school operated there until 2021.

 Lisa Klimewicz, a senior at CCHS, crowns the Blessed Virgin during a ceremony at CCHS in May 1992. 

Judy Brady, Class of 1967, and a resident of Troy, said the community is what made Catholic High so special.

“If you grew up in Troy in those years, although there were 60,000 people, everybody knew somebody that you knew,” she said. “If you didn’t know them, they knew your parents, or they knew your grandparents. It was more like a village, in a way.”

Brady participated in the high school plays and recalled the popular Friday night school dances. After football or baseball games, everyone would go out for pizza at one of the local shops. Not many students had cars and transport to and from the school was by city bus. 

“It was just camaraderie,” Brady said. “We were like, we’re in this together.”

“There was something about the spirit, maybe because we were a big school, there was a lot of good energy,” Smith said. “There was that sense of family and rootedness too, I think, that was there for us.”

 Judy Smith (third from l., in white jacket) joins her fellow CCHS classmates at the Red Front in Troy this year. 

Decades later, those bonds haven’t changed. Smith’s graduating class still holds gatherings at The Red Front Restaurant in South Troy. And Brady has brought her husband, a graduate of La Salle Institute in Troy, to reunions for years.

“We have been getting together a lot over all these 55 years,” Smith said. “Not always the same folks, which is fine. It’s nice that different people join us for different years.”

Because the spirit of the school was so strong, Smith said, the community endures. 

“Our mascot, we were Crusaders, so that Crusader spirit,” she said. “I don’t know other high schools, I only have this one experience of my high school, but over the years, if we meet each other on the street or if we’re at a gathering, our alma mater will come up, and we’ll sing the alma mater together. To me, that kind of makes me feel connected again.”

More Back to School: 

‘A GREAT FIT’: http://evangelist.www.clients.ellingtoncms.com/news/2026/sep/23/a-great-fit/ 

MAKING HISTORY: http://evangelist.www.clients.ellingtoncms.com/news/2026/sep/23/making-history/ 

NEW YEAR, NEW SCHOOL: http://evangelist.www.clients.ellingtoncms.com/news/2026/sep/23/new-year-new-school/ 

THE SISTERS ARE BACK: http://evangelist.www.clients.ellingtoncms.com/news/2026/sep/23/the-sisters-are-back/ 

AN ANCHOR IN LIFE: http://evangelist.www.clients.ellingtoncms.com/news/2026/sep/23/back-to-school-an-anchor-in-my-life-and-for-many-others/ 

A VALUED PROCESS: http://evangelist.www.clients.ellingtoncms.com/news/2026/sep/23/a-valued-process/