CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS
Upcycling Dad Former Fathers’ Club President Contributes to Magnificat through Passion for Historical Restoration & Motorcycles
W
hen Megan Kelly ’13 —daughter of board member Linda Loesch Kelly ’77 and John Kelly—was a freshman at Magnificat, John was recruited to run bingo at Night in Blue. “Because of that, I was deemed a lifesaver by Sr. Carol Anne Smith,” says John, who later became the chair of Night in Blue and eventually president of the Fathers’ Club.
While driving Megan to and from school each day during her freshman year, John recalled noticing that the "Magnificat" signs on Hilliard Boulevard and Wagar Road were weathered and difficult to read. With a background in architecture and commercial real estate, John says he has “spent hours, days, weeks, months, years sitting in meetings talking about signage.” And so, the next time he saw Sr. Carol Anne Smith, he suggested that school leadership consider sprucing up these important Magnificat identifiers, which he volunteered to facilitate. Before the new signs were to be mounted on the Hillard and Wagar stone structure (installed in 1968), John took it upon himself to drive up to campus to remove the old letters so they would not be thrown away. As a child of parents who had lived through the Depression, John understood the value of holding onto and restoring items others may just throw away. The handmade stainless steel letters were put in a box that sat untouched in John’s garage for the next five years until he shared that he still had the letters with Vice President of Enrollment Julie Sims Gibbons ’80. Together, they hatched a plan to restore one set of the letters to the finish of the original sign and mount it on a
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blue aluminum panel. John then facilitated the creation of the cool new shiny sign that has brightened Magnificat’s main entryway since 2017. Then, in January of 2022, John had the second set of old letters restored, painted navy blue as they had been for many years, and mounted on white acrylic. This sign is now hanging in a prominent spot on the north wall of the HM Center.
MAGNIFICAT MAGAZINE | A MAGAZINE FOR ALUMNAE AND FRIENDS OF MAGNIFICAT HIGH SCHOOL | SPRING 2022
