It was a packed house at St. Edward Church and School for the 100th anniversary of the Catholic school in New Iberia’s West End.

“The celebration started Friday night with our ‘Panda 300,’ a dance and social with about 450 people attending,” St. Edward School Principal Karen Bonin said. “Today, we had the Centennial Mass and our boosters are serving barbecued chicken dinners, then after a second-line around the campus, we will have a dessert reception.”

The century-old school began with 386 students in 1918. St. Katharine Drexel started the school in the same building as St. Edward Church a year after the church’s founding.

The school was originally slated to open in September of that year, but an outbreak of influenza pushed the date back to Nov. 18.

The original building was demolished and a new church rebuilt on the site in the 1960s. The school moved across the street to a larger tract of land, where it has operated ever since.

“We have been planning this for a year,” SES Development Director Melissa Dworaczyk said. “We have students who have returned from across the country for this event.”

The sanctuary of the church was filled for the ceremonial Mass, with parishioners standing in the side aisles as the service were held. Diocese of Lafayette Vicar General Msgr. Curtis Mallet attended the Mass, as well as former clergy from the church. Members of the Knights of Peter Claver led the processional into the church, adding a touch of color, pomp and pageantry to the event.

While the Mass was ongoing, school boosters worked diligently to prepare hundreds of plates for a picnic lunch in the school’s courtyard. Members of the Bunk Johnson Brazz Band added a solid musical soundtrack to the festivities as parishioners filled the waiting tables and perused an illustrated timeline of the school that lined the hallways.

“Look! I found me!” one former student exclaimed as she looked through binders of school photos set out for the occasion.

Aside from its historical significance, the fete will also help to secure the future of Drexel’s legacy in New Iberia.

“All of the funds left over after the celebration will be put toward the renovation of the convent,” Bonin said. 

The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament convent occupies the corner of the school’s lot at the corner of Ambassador W. Lemell and Providence streets. Built in the early 1920s, it now houses a museum dedicated to Drexel’s history.

“There is a museum, a small chapel and the residence for the sisters,” Bonin said.

The school remained a black-only school until it was integrated in 1974. The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament led the school until 2004, when lay educators were installed.

Drexel, who died in 1955, was the second canonized saint to have been born in the United States and the first to have been born a U.S. citizen. She founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament order in Bensalem, Pennsylvania.