ORCHARD LAKE SCHOOLS

The Orchard Lake Schools is the general name for a complex of schools, centers, archives, museums and an art gallery located in Orchard Lake, Michigan, 35 miles northwest of downtown Detroit. The schools are: SS. Cyril and Methodius Seminary, Saint Mary's College of Ave Maria University and Saint Mary's Preparatory High School. Each school has its own Board of Trustees and its own head. The overall administration of buildings and grounds and the centers, archives, museums and art gallery as well as the coordination of the work of the three schools is vested in a Chancellor and a Board of Regents.

The Orchard Lake Schools were founded in 1885 by Father Jozef Dabrowski in Detroit in the center of the first Polish immigrant settlement. Father Dabrowski was born in Russian Poland in 1842. While a university student he became involved in revolutionary activity and was forced to flee abroad after the failure of the 1863–64 uprising. Ordained a priest in Rome in 1869, he took an assignment to serve Polish immigrants in rural Wisconsin. In 1874 he brought the Sisters of the Congregation of St. Felix of Cantilice to his parish, thus becoming their founder in the United States. He served as their chaplain until his death in 1903. The Felician Sisters moved their headquarters to Detroit in 1882. He transferred with them to the city and there began the Polish Seminary.

The Polish Seminary was born of the realization in the late 1870s that the growing Polish settlements in the United States were not attracting enough priests and educated laity from Europe to serve their needs. Father Leopold Moczygemba, a priest who had been serving Polish immigrants for more than two decades, went to Rome to petition the Pope for permission to raise funds for a school and seminary to educate immigrants and their sons for service to their community. His petition to Pope Leo XIII was approved on Jan. 14, 1879. The Pope wrote at the bottom of his letter: "Annuimus in omnibus juxta petita. Leo P.M. XIII," (We agree to everything according to your petition. Pope Leo XIII). Unable to implement the plan himself, the aged Father Moczygemba turned the papal permission over to Father Dabrowski. Father Dabrowski, who had been one of the leading proponents of the idea of the new educational institution, had already established a reputation in the new Polish community as a leading supporter of education at all levels. He is regarded as the Father of the Polish American parochial school system.

When Father Dabrowski chose Detroit as a suitable central location for the institution, the original idea of a site in rural Nebraska was abandoned. It was clear by the 1880s that the Poles would not follow the Germans and Czechs into prairie farming, but they would become workers in the new industrial heartland. The school, after beginning with three students in 1885, rapidly developed into a five-year classics program and a five-year seminary curriculum. From the outset, instruction was in Polish, English and Latin. It ordained its first priests on March 9, 1890. By the early 20th century it had over 300 students.

Administratively the school and its property were under the jurisdiction of the Ordinary of Detroit. In practice, the Bishops of Detroit allowed the school's administration wide latitude in managing its own affairs. In turn, the administration and clerical faculty strongly supported the authority of the hierarchy in its struggles with independentist tendencies in Polish American parishes before 1914. The schools were, from the beginning, also staffed by lay faculty including several distinguished scholars such as Professor Thomas Siemiradzki, the translator of Kant into Polish. Although begun for Polish immigrants, Father Dabrowski also opened the programs to students from other ethnic groups including Lithuanians, Ruthenians, Ukrainians, Czech and Slovaks. The school had a Lithuanian department and had plans for a "Bohemian" department at the time of Father Dabrowski's death. After World War I, when the lines of national identity were drawn more sharply, the number of non-Poles dwindled and the schools became more exclusively Polish American.

The growth in all the Seminary departments coincided with the growth of the Polish immigrant community in Detroit. By 1909, Father Witold Buchaczkowski, the second rector, unable to find property for expansion, purchased the campus of the recently closed Michigan Military Academy on the northeastern shore of Orchard Lake. The hundred-acre site, expanded to 120 acres by a later purchase, has remained the home of the schools since 1909.

Between 1927 and 1929, the Polish Seminary was reorganized into three schools on the basis of American models: a major theological seminary, now designated clearly as SS. Cyril and Methodius Seminary, a four-year college seminary named Saint Mary's and a four-year residential high school also called Saint Mary's. When the institution was founded it was dedicated to SS. Cyril and Methodius (1885 marked the millennial anniversary of their mission to the Slavs) and simultaneously to the Immaculate Conception. The reform divided these patrons, leaving the high school and college dedicated to the Virgin and the seminary to the Apostles to the Slavs. The college and high school in 1929 were incorporated together in the State of Michigan and received a charter to offer secondary and collegiate level courses without restriction. The seminary was added to the college and high school charter in 1941.

In 1941, the Archbishop of Detroit transferred the ownership of the Orchard Lake Schools to an independent lay and clerical Board of Trustees to avoid seizure of the property by creditors. The Archdiocese, as a result of the Depression, was on the verge of bankruptcy. In 1977, each of the schools received a separate administrative head and in 1983 the structure was reorganized to give each school a separate Board of Trustees. The Archbishop of Detroit was designated as the Chair of Seminary Board of Trustees.

For the half century after the reorganization, Saint Mary's High School prepared a significant percentage of the lay leaders of the Polish American community in Detroit and in the United States. Its graduates went on to major universities and professional schools, especially medical, dental and law schools. With the decline in interest in residential high schools and the wider opportunities available for third and later generations of Polish Americans, the enrollment showed a marked decline. A reform begun in 1989 ended mandatory residency, widened the academic curriculum and introduced a vigorous new sports program. It revitalized the high school as a major regional Catholic boys preparatory school serving the northwestern suburbs of Detroit. Its academic ratings and the success of its graduates have given it standing as one of the best preparatory schools in the Detroit area. Twenty percent of its students, including many from abroad, primarily the Far East, continue to reside on campus. In the 2000/2001 school year it enrolled 425 students, the highest total in its history.

Saint Mary's College remained largely a college seminary until 1965, although the majority of its students did not go on to a major seminary. It admitted laymen in 1965 and women in 1970 and broadened its educational program. By 1980 it had evolved into a regular Catholic liberal arts college. During the 1970s and early '80s, the college became a resource to third and fourth generation Polish Americans seeking to understand their Polish Catholic experience in America and the homeland of their ancestors. It also hosted the Polish-Jewish dialogue in the United States and the Black Polish Alliance of Detroit.

After the fall of the Soviet bloc, Saint Mary's College returned with renewed interest to its mission to serve as a bridge between Poland and east-central Europe and the United States. It sponsors biannual conferences on Polish affairs, publishes an annual Periphery, devoted to political and cultural topics, and recruits students from the region in large numbers. It has established ties with four Polish universities and has its own program in Kraków. In addition, faculty members with an academic specialty in Polish studies grew to ten. In 2000 there were more than 170 international students at the college with more than half from Poland. The expansion of Polish studies coincided with a similar effort in Polish American studies, as the college became the home of the Polish American Historical Association.

The end of the century also saw a concerted effort to reassert a strong Catholic identity. This thrust, as well as the new effort in Polish studies, was aided by an affiliation that brought new resources to the school. In 2000, the Orchard Lake Schools created Ave Maria University under its charter and made Saint Mary's College its first campus. The Board of Ave Maria College in Ypsilanti, Michigan then joined the new corporation of the Orchard Lake Schools as a second sponsor of the university. As of June 2000 Saint Mary's College is governed by a new Board chosen by the two affiliating sponsors: Ave Maria College and the Orchard Lake Schools. The enrollment of Saint Mary's College for 2000 was 492 students, the highest total in its history.

SS. Cyril and Methodius Seminary remains an interdiocesan seminary staffed by a faculty clergy from several United States dioceses and from Poland, as well as religious and laity. Most of its seminarians are recruited from minor seminaries in Poland. After a two-year course in English language and American culture, the seminarians embark on a four-year program of priestly formation and theological studies. During their seminary training they affiliate with a United States diocese and upon completion they are ordained for that diocese. The seminary offers masters degrees in divinity, theology and pastoral Ministry. In addition to the Priestly Formation program the seminary enrolls laymen and women seeking graduate training. At the fall 2000 registration the seminary enrolled 28 seminarians and 55 lay students. Over the course of its history the Orchard Lake Schools have educated 18,000 students and ordained over 2,600 priests for the American church. The seminary includes John Cardinal Król and Adam Cardinal Maida among its former students.

The Orchard Lake Schools are known widely for the Central Archive of Polonia which houses one of the largest collections of materials on the Polish Catholic experience in the United States and archival materials on the Polish Army in World War II. The College and Seminary Library has a valuable collection of Polish books including rare imprints published in the United States. A complex of museums documents the Polish World War II experience on all fronts. The Polish American Liturgical Center publishes a Polish-language missalette used in celebrating mass in Polish in North America and several other countries. The Art Gallery has the largest collection of Polish art in the United States in addition to fine examples of religious and secular paintings from elsewhere in Europe.

For its entire 116-year history, the Orchard Lake Schools have been supported by contributions primarily from Polish Americans throughout the United States.

Bibliography: j. swastek, "The Formative Years of the Polish Seminary in the United States," in Sacrum Poloniae Millenium 6 (1959), 39–149, reprinted by the Center for Polish Studies and Culture of the Orchard Lake Schools in 1985. f. mocha, ed., "Polish American Institutions of Higher Learning," in Poles in America: Bicentennial Essays (Stevens Point, Wis. 1978), 461–496.

[t. radzilowski]