The Process

I have a master’s degree in history from the University of Denver and spent 44 years in the newspaper business, the last 35 at The Salt Lake Tribune, so I was predisposed to think of my product as being a coffee-table book along traditional lines, recounting our school’s academic and athletic prowess through the years. That was the plan as I began doing research in the Judge Archives, a small room down the hall from the Main Office that is jam-packed with blue and black binders containing highlights from each year, more binders with minutes from trustee meetings, yearbooks, school newspapers, books about Judge and the Salt Lake Diocese and Catholics in Utah, VCR tapes and boxes with this and that, some valuable, some not. Materials on the lower shelves were hidden behind four-deep stacks of oversized class pictures.

The unwelcome arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, of all things, changed my thinking. By delaying our Centennial Celebration, the virus gave me more time to explore research materials in depth. The more I researched the more I came to the conclusion that a different approach was needed. Looking over the first quarter century of Judge’s existence, I could tell that athletic achievements were virtually non-existent. Those would come later. The emphasis on academic excellence was there from the start, often reflected in the activities that Judge students were consistently pursuing – performing in plays, singing in the Glee Club, organizing dances and talent shows, doing good in the community.

Year after year, Judge students were active on many fronts. That understanding coalesced with my personal belief, based on my time at Judge and that of my two sons (classes of 2010 and 2015), that no other school around is quite like Judge in creating camaraderie among grads, and that these feelings are a byproduct of all the things we did together.

What we did is what made us who we are. I also concluded that one of the weaknesses of high school is that students get compartmentalized, depending on what math class or foreign language they take or whatever sports or extra-curricular activities they’re involved in. Consequently, we all had classmates we just never got to know – but might have become friends with otherwise – if only we were thrown together.

So, I went back to the beginning of my research and started to document everything I could find on what Judge students did and with whom. The goal was to help people recall their own connections, but also to illuminate all of the things their other classmates were up to. In addition, I concluded the best way to disseminate this information would be to put it on the Internet where it would be available for any and all Judge graduates to see, wherever they may be.

I started with the blue binders, which contained newspaper clippings and playbills collected down through the years by volunteer archivists. Those binders provided highlights. For the nuts-and-bolts stuff of everyday school life, I then turned to yearbooks. The first did not come out until 1949, but from those I was able to gather voluminous information about the clubs, teams, activities and events that involved the bulk of the student body. I supplemented those findings with the content of stories from school newspapers, both the Judgeonian and the Bulldog Press. To buttress my knowledge of various athletic teams, I also looked through the online records of the Utah High School Activities Association.

Between all of these sources, I was able to pull together information about each Judge class since the first graduating class in 1925, along with the seven years in the 1960s when Judge was actually two schools in one, with the girls attending St. Mary’s of the Wasatch while the boys stayed at 1100 East. All in all, if printed out, the collected materials would amount to about 900 pages, singled-spaced, on 8.5x11 paper.

But this is not to say the project is done. It’s a living work in progress. More years will be added as they pass into history. As much material as I uncovered, there are still gaps in the research.

Not all of the Archive binders were of equal value; my observation is that each time Judge changed principals, it took a couple of years for the new boss to recognize the need to document everything. Some yearbooks were sorely lacking. They had group photographs but did not identify the people in the pictures, providing no help.

The advent of the digital age also meant there were fewer newspaper articles that could be clipped and preserved; online verbiage is far more fleeting. As a result, this history has holes. Some I have pointed out with an xxx, for instance, in years in which I could find no information about class officers or year-end academic awards or even the number of graduates in a class. For a number of sports teams, as well as competitive groups such as mock trial or debate, information also was lacking about how their events or seasons turned out.

On behalf of the Alumni Committee, we hope this digital history will resurrect memories of the invaluable education and good times that accompanied your years at Judge Memorial Catholic High School. Enjoy.