By Christina Leslie | Staff Writer

The St. Catharine, Spring Lake, parish and school communities bade retiring elementary school principal, Mercy Sister Margo Kavanaugh, a fond farewell during an emotional June 18 surprise celebration. Students, teachers, parents, parishioners and clergy filled the school’s auditorium to celebrate Sister Margo’s two decades of leadership in the Catholic school with song, dance, skits and a video montage of her career.

PTA president Jane Schneider joined her predecessors from the past 20 years in donating a bench in Sister Margo’s honor; the bench, which bears the inscription echoing the school’s motto “Faith, Knowledge and Service,” will be placed in the school playground. Monmouth County Freeholder Thomas Arnone presented the religious with a special proclamation designating June 18 as Sister Margo Kavanaugh Day and commending her “for her tireless efforts in promoting education, understanding and respect among all people.”

Sister Margo, an educator for 58 years, earned an undergraduate degree from Georgian Court College, Lakewood; a master’s degree from Notre Dame University, South Bend, Ind.; and completed her doctoral studies in Catholic school leadership at the University of San Francisco. In addition to her two decades at the helm of St. Catharine, she served as principal for 10 years in St. Matthias School, Somerset; and as a teacher in Catholic schools in Metuchen, Atlantic City and Lambertville.

“I always requested teaching in parish schools,” the religious admitted. “Being in a parish does something for me. If we don’t give service to a parish, I don’t understand how kids can grow up knowing what it is to believe and to belong.”

Catholic education is integral in the lives of both students and their parents, Sister Margo continued. “Parents who come in to enroll their children in a Catholic school want us to teach their children who they are and that they belong to God,” she asserted. “We have the ability, the freedom to say that to their children.”