From the outset, the parish’s first two priorities were to open a school and provide the congregation with its own place to worship. In February 1954, using the remaining 7 acres of property facing Monroe Street and Harvest Lane, ground was broken for a school building that would also serve as a temporary church. (Apparently, from the original purchase of 12 acres, four acres was sold or transferred to another owner—presumably Willis Nursery—and one acre was, as expected, ceded to the city to build Harvest Lane.)

The groundbreaking ceremony was a lowkey affair, attended by three members of the first Parish Council (Frank Gentner, Joe McCarthy, and Virg Grosjean) along with Father Goes and officials from the Entenman Construction Company. By May of the year, registrations were being taken for next school year, and the parish had obtained a used school bus “to assist in the transportation of the grade school children who would have to walk a good distance on streets carrying a heavy traffic load.” Father Goes hired Mr. Rupley as the first bus driver, and, when school began in the fall, Elaine Kehn from Secor Road was the first passenger.

As work was beginning on the school building, men from the parish erected a 30’x50’ concrete-block garage on the property. The two-bay garage was designed by Mr. James Morris, who had a hand in 11 of the 13 building projects undertaken by the parish over the next 50 years. Stories are told that Father Goes recruited his volunteer masons for the garage by offering to supply them with all the beer they needed to get the job done, complaining for years afterward that he had naively miscalculated how much brew would be consumed. Once the garage was completed, in anticipation of the school opening, parishioners hauled in second-hand school desks that they had acquired from Blessed Sacrament, St. James, and St. Stanislaus Schools and from the public-school system. Parish women removed the old finish from the desks, stripping the desks to the bare wood, and then the men and the parish janitor did the refinishing work.

Hopes had been high in February that the school could be completed by the opening of the academic year in September, but construction went slower than anticipated. After considering a couple other locations in which to hold classes temporarily, it was decided to use the basement of St. Pius X School. The first principal, Sister Mary Immaculee, SND, recalls that “at this point Father donned his khakis and went to work.” He commandeered an old truck and with the help of a “screaming, screeching” load of Blessed Sacrament eighth-grade boys, moved stockpiles of books and paper into storage. Then Father Goes turned carpenter; in the basement at St. Pius he nailed posts together from which were hung dark red curtains and bedsheets to create “individual classrooms.” Wearing cassock, surplice, and stole, Father Goes laid the cornerstone for the original school (and church) building.

When the school year began on September 27, classes for 134 first- through seventh-graders were held halfdays, while eighth-graders remained at Blessed Sacrament through the entire school year. The newly organized school was placed in the charge of the Sisters of Notre Dame, with a faculty of four sisters and one lay woman: Sister Immaculee was principal, assisted by Sister M. Pierre, Sister M. Teresilla, and Miss Helen Clark. The three sisters “commuted” to school from the nearby Provincial House of the Notre Dame community; when Miss Clark became ill later in the school year, Mrs. Mildred Humphreys became the first long-term substitute.

Christ the King’s own school was ready for occupancy on Tuesday, November 2. The historic day got off to rough start. Excited teachers and school children woke to the first snowfall of the season, and no bus appeared to pick students up for the school. At 7:45, the pastor learned that the old bus’s ancient battery needed recharging in the cold, but by 8:00 the bus had been sufficiently charged to turn over the engine and begin making its rounds, picking some cold and patient students, while parents and Father Goes hauled other shivering students to school by car. “Despite the difficulty,” Sister Immaculee remembers, “everybody showed up.”

The classrooms were not completely ready for use until Tuesday, November 23, and full-day classes did not begin until the following week. With a parking lot under development and the site still a construction zone, the grounds were something of a challenge to arriving students. The November 21 parish bulletin contained this notice: “All children walking to Christ the King School tomorrow from either Monroe Street or Sylvania Avenue should walk along the unplowed ground next to the Willis Nursery fence until they reach the south side of the garage and then cross to the school by means of a board plank walk to the south side of the school. The mud in front of the building is impassable now. Children crossing Monroe Street should cross as usual at Harvest Lane and then walk along the south side of Monroe to the Willis fence.”

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