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realized that even though they had received class rings, they would not be graduating from St. Joseph’s the following year. One parishioner who was a junior at the time remembers that she and many of her classmates had mothers and grandmothers who attended the academy their entire school lives. Their daughters could hardly believe they would be graduating from a new and strange school the next year.
Alter leaving Our Lady of the Gulf, Monsignor Hannon became pastor of Our Lady of Victories Parish in Pascagoula. During the 1970s he was appointed and reappointed Dean of the East Coast Deanery. In 1980 he was assigned as pastor of St. Alphonsus Parish in Ocean Springs.
Retired since 1989, Monsignor Hannon remains active in Habitat for Humanity, in his woodworking hobby donating toys he creates to needy children, and helping St. Thomas Parish in Long Beach. He offers daily Mass at the Samaritan House retirement home in Ocean Springs.
Monsignor Gregory Johnson’s first assignment was to Nativity Parish in Biloxi where witnessing the aftermath of the 1947 hurricane gave him valuable insight into the ordeal he would face in 1969 when Camille, the most devastating of hurricanes, struck the coast. From Nativity Parish Monsignor Johnson went to Our Lady of Victories in Pascagoula, laboring for five years not only in the mother parish but also in the missions of Lucedale, Hurley and Gautier. During these years he brought forty-five converts into the faith.
Study at Catholic University enabled Monsignor Johnson to earn a master’s degree in history to satisfy Mississippi requirements for teaching.
As an assistant at Sacred Heart in Hattiesburg, Monsignor Johnson ministered to the students at the University of Southern Mississippi where he established the university’s first Newman Center. Later, in Jackson, he became principal of the interparochial St. Joseph’s
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High School and also assisted Monsignor Chatham at St. Richard’s Parish in northeast Jackson.
Before coming to Our Lady of the Gulf in 1969, Monsignor Johnson had also served in Yazoo City, Lizana and Moss Point, working in missions as well as the mother parishes.
Monsignor Johnson had barely settled in at Bay St. Louis when tragedy struck on August 17, 1969 as the winds and waters of hurricane Camille swept the coast wreaking havoc on every city and town along the Mississippi shores and even for miles inland The elementary school on the parish grounds had its own generator making it possible to maintain freezers of food. Blossman Gas Company provided tanks of propane for cooking. The Navy had sent a Search and Rescue team to aid victims of the storm. Monsignor Johnson worked closely with these men and recalls feeding as many as 3,800 people. Church, school, rectory and St. Joseph’s Chapel suffered some damage, but the parish was blessed that not one of the buildings was completely destroyed as were many of the surrounding homes and businesses.
Seeing the need in the parish for a girls’ Catholic high school, soon after the storm Monsignor Johnson laid plans for the opening of Our Lady Academy. In 1971 the academy opened with grades seven through nine in the St. Joseph Academy gymnasium complex and annex (St. Joseph Hall) and in a new brick structure, Johnson Hall. Monsignor Johnson served as first principal. A grade was added each year and in 1975 Our Lady Academy graduated its first senior class.
In the same year the academy opened, the present rectory was built, replacing the wooden structure located at the rear of the church property.
In 1976, the Sisters of St. Joseph, who had continued to staff the elementary school and aid the academy, withdrew. At that time, Our Lady of the Gulf’s elementary school merged with St. Rose Elementary School to form an integrated Catholic school with classes
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