By A.M. Kelley
Superior Catholic Herald
Award winner works hard to ensure school's success
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SUPERIOR -- Mari Zarcone Patterson doesn't want any more Catholic elementary schools in the Superior Diocese to close and from her that's not just idle talk.
She is the principal of St. Mary School in New Richmond and the recipient of the 2007 Bishop George A. Hammes award for outstanding service to Catholic schools.
"It's my ministry to carry on the tradition (of Catholic education) at St. Mary's," she said. "Not just to carry on, but to keep it growing."
The school has 178 students in pre-school to eighth grade classrooms with 11 full-time teachers and four part-timers who cover art, music, physical education and Spanish. This year St. Mary formed a partnership with the public school district in order to expand its early childhood education program.
Patterson is a New Yorker by birth. Raised in west Rochester in what she called "a very Italian neighborhood," she and her younger brother Jimmy attended St. Anthony of Padua Catholic School, a family tradition. Their father, his siblings and their cousins attended the same school.
Patterson's father owned a neighborhood hardware store and "strongly believed in the benefits of a Catholic education." To pay tuition for his children, he bartered plumbing, electrical and paint supplies with the nuns and parish priests.
Patterson grew up feeling nurtured, loved and cared for by the nuns and priests at St. Anthony. As early as kindergarten she wanted to become a teacher and it was her father's "non-negotiable" wish that she should teach in a Catholic school. A wish "which I've honored since 1979," Patterson said.
That's when a Sister of St. Joseph, Sr. Agatha, hired her for her first teaching job in New Richmond.
"I began my ministry at the school where I intend to end it," she said.
She had become acquainted with Wisconsin after two girlfriends from her days as a student moved to the state.
"I came to visit (them) and I liked it so much that I moved here in 1978," she said.
She taught at St. Mary until 1981 when she moved back to Rochester. There she taught middle school. But all the while she continued to spend summers and holidays in New Richmond and eventually moved back in 1994.
St. Mary's did not have a middle school at the time and Patterson was hired to get one up and running. Her school in Rochester donated textbooks for the venture and also its curriculum.
For the past seven years she has been its principal and Fr. Jim Brinkman, pastor of Immaculate Conception, said Patterson deserves the Hammes award not just for the improvements she's made in the parish's school--ensuring its accreditation through Wisconsin Religious and Independent School Accreditation and overseeing a $2 million renovation and addition--"but also for the energy she brings to her job and for who she is spiritually."
Her education includes a bachelor's degree from the State University of New York (SUNY) in Brockport and graduate work in special needs, and school and mental health counseling. She has also received a master's degree in administration from the University of St. Thomas.
Patterson is 59 and has been married to Bruce Patterson, a clockmaker and a native of St. Paul, Minn., since 1993.
The Hammes award is given out each year at the gathering of the diocese's educators at the fall conference in Rice Lake. Since 1988 several other diocesan principals have received the Hammes award. Other recipients have included pastors, teachers, superintendents, secretaries and one janitor, all, like Patterson who "serve students and their families in the diocese."
She said the best part of her job is ensuring St. Mary's continuity and success.
"(St. Mary's) has been here for more than 110 years," Patterson said. "And I want to see it move forward not backwards."
© Superior Catholic Herald, 2007