The heritage of St. Scholastica Academy will be hard to follow — the nuns’ tiny feet managed to leave some big shoes to fill.

Ask any of the women who passed through the hallways of the Catholic boarding and day school and they all tell the same story, one of educational progress, a loving family atmosphere, and a close-knit community that will survive the ages.

“To this day, I keep in contact with the girls in my class,” said Connie Chavez of Cañon City, graduate of the Class of 1944. “I was a boarder there, and the girls just became my sisters because I didn’t have any of my own.”

Not that it would have mattered. Other graduates from different years throughout the school’s history ech-oed her feelings.

Kristi Barragree of Cañon City was honored to be a member of the last graduating class of St. Scholastica Academy when she received her diploma in May 2001.

“There is something to be appreciated about the relationships you develop in a school like this,” Barragree said. “Although I was a day student, I spent a lot of time at the school, and I still stay in contact with the friends I made there.”

Sister Kathleen McNamara spent more than 40 years at the school in various capacities – piano tutor, relig-ion teacher, director of admissions and summer program director. She also remembers St. Scholastica primarily focusing on academics but also concentrating on the development of the individual as a whole.

“It was a very caring school,” McNamara said. “We were like home with open arms; that was the whole Benedictine atmosphere. We offered that loving-family atmosphere.”

That environment was the direct opposite of the intended use of the first school building at 615 Pike Ave. The building originally was constructed as the Colorado Collegiate and Military Institute in 1881 and pro-vided education for boys and girls six years and up. The Institute ran into financial trouble and closed just five short years later.

The Benedictine Sisters of Chicago had worked to establish a school in Breckenridge but were facing declining enrollment as the mining industry in that town dwindled. They found the solution to the crisis in the Institute building in Cañon City and arrived in June 1890, opening Mount St. Scholastica Academy in September of that year.

Three nuns arrived to an atmosphere that was less than welcoming. They were not served in local stores and survived by milking a stray cow that had wandered onto their new property. They were verbally as-saulted and physically attacked when they walked the streets of their new hometown.

The school slowly became an accepted thread in the fabric of Cañon City, and the academy began to grow. A series of construction projects turned the campus into its current incarnation — a residence hall complete with state-of-the-art kitchen and dining facilities, chapel/library, learning center/theater, faculty residence, gymnasium and natatorium with Olympic-size swimming pool.

In addition to the physical campus, the makeup of the student body changed over the years. Local day students attended the school with boarders from across the country and around the world. Many foreign students enjoyed special English as a Second Language classes.

The focus of education evolved through the years at St. Scholastica. Although the school always centered on its mission as a college-preparatory school, it modified its methods in the 1970s and became one of the first schools nationwide to institute a successful intensive-study program. Students would study only one subject at a time, all day every day for a period of three weeks before moving on to the next subject.

“The girls would take one subject, complete the course, get credit for it and then go on to the next,” McNamara said. “It was an extremely exciting time because we were one of the first schools in the country to use the intensive system.”

The retired nun also believes the tradition of single-sex education contributed to the success of academy students. Not having boys around to distract girls from the process of learning made education that much easier.

“It eliminated the competition between the girls, and they were allowed to be serious about learning,” McNamara said. “My belief is that girls move faster in education and develop faster socially, and we al-lowed them to do that.”

Barragree agreed.

“It brought a whole new aspect,” Barragree said. “We didn’t have the petty complications of having the other sex there to distract us. It just allowed people to become more real and develop closer relationships and to learn on a deeper level.”

Regardless of the methods used in the classroom, St. Scholastica was successful in providing its graduates with the tools needed to continue in higher education.

“Almost 100 percent of our graduates went on to college every year,” McNamara said. “We had wonderful teachers who were constantly encouraging students.”

She said in the early years, all teachers were nuns, but, as time progressed, fewer sisters were available to teach so the academy looked to lay teachers.

Chavez agreed St. Scholastica helped her to college to earn a bachelor’s degree in math, an unusual accom-plishment for a woman in 1940s America. She so appreciated her education at the school that she later sent her three daughters there as well.

“I’m so sorry the school had to close,” Chavez said. “I guess that’s just a sign of the times.”