These remarks were shared at the 2025 Alumni Weekend Memorial Chapel Service on June 1.
On June 2, 1869, Bishop Benjamin Wistar Morris, the second Bishop of Oregon, founded St. Helen’s Hall. His sister-in-law, Mary Rodney, was appointed the first principal. Her sisters, Louisa and Clementine, were some of the first employees. This Monday, June 2, we will commemorate Founder’s Day by visiting the graves of Bishop Morris, Mary Rodney, and her sisters here in Portland. This is a new tradition we started last year. We will place beautiful wreaths, made from flowers and greens gathered here at the school. It is very humbling to visit those graves and reflect back on what it must have been like to found a boarding and day school for girls in 1869, only ten years after Oregon was admitted as the 33rd state.
Bishop Morris was a “frontier bishop” from Philadelphia. He founded many churches here in Oregon, but for him the founding of St. Helen’s Hall was personal. His wife, Helen, was deeply committed to education and she believed firmly that a school for girls should be established which would not serve as a finishing school, like many girls’ schools on the east coast, but as a school where girls would be educated and prepared to help build society. That was open-minded and forward thinking. Mary Rodney had previously taught at St. Mary’s Hall in Burlington, NJ, founded in 1836 by Bishop Doane to “provide an education on equal footing with the best of boys’ schools.” That inspired Mary Rodney and Bishop Morris to found St. Helen’s hall to “uplift the sacred potential of girls” which had been given short shrift and was bound to continue in the barely established city of Portland. The rigorous education of girls would be central to the experience. They would not be finished for society, but rather they would be equipped to transform it. Bishop Morris chose as his motto, the verse from Psalm 144 “That our sons may grow up as the young plants, and that our daughters may be as the polished corners of the temple (144:12). The polished corners are the foundation stones, and St. Helen’s Hall is the foundation of what we know as the Oregon Episcopal School of today.
We honor the threads woven 156 years ago and we preserve relics of time in this chapel: the lamps that hang above that altar and this window right here are from the first chapel at St. Helen’s Hall. The large painting in the entrance area depicts moments in the life of the girls at the school many years ago, the sculptures on the wall were inspired by an OES teacher, and some of the original pipes from the first organ hang in this sacred space. We also have an archive that preserves the history of St. Helen’s Hall, Bishop Dagwell Hall, and the early OES.
Today in this alumni service, we honor not only Bishop Morris and Mary Rodney and her sisters, but also all those students and teachers and friends of the school who have added to the tapestry over our history. We honor you. The tapestry was strengthened by the growth and expansion of the school. It was strengthened by the merger with Bishop Dagwell Hall in 1972. It was strengthened by the generations of alumni who have added to it– day students from the greater Portland area and boarding students from around Oregon and across the world, today representing 12 countries. And we have continuously been strengthened through our connection with the Episcopal Diocese of Oregon, standing as the oldest Episcopal School west of the Rocky Mountains, the one and only Episcopal School in this state, one of only three boarding schools in Oregon, and one of eight in the Pacific Northwest.
The School looks different now than it did 30, 50, 100, and 156 years ago AND, our core commitments remain the same. Today we offer a broad range of educational opportunities for a diverse and talented group of students, educating them, as our mission states, to realize their power for good as engaged citizens of the world. The phrase at the heart of that mission, is the north star for our work. It informs our current strategic plan: Leading with Purpose. It grounds our reason for being, and is drawn from that quote I read at the beginning of today’s service (taken from Bishop Morris himself). Our mission as a school is as relevant today as it was in 1869. Today we continue to be open-minded and forward thinking.
As we move through this alumni weekend, we honor those who helped to bring this school to where it is today, often through times that were joyful and times that were deeply challenging. The generations of students and teachers have built memories here, grown up in this place, learned how to learn, had some good fun, and launched into the word to realize their power for good. We remember our experience and honor their memory in the fabric of time. Bishop Morris, Mary Rodney, those alums who are not with us today and are no longer with us, and all of you, are weavers of time. Your memories inform our past, sustain our present, and guide our future so that other weavers may add their memories to the tapestry of Oregon Episcopal School. As I finish my second year as Head of School I appreciate that it is a beautiful tapestry, it a well-worn tapestry, it has weathered the wear of 156 years, and it will continue to be woven into the future, thanks to all of us. Amen.