Notre Dame Catholic School

Reverend Henry Michael Kemper established Notre Dame Institute, Kerrville's first parochial school, soon after he arrived here in 1911 to lead the Catholic parish. Father Kemper, a young theologian just out of college in Rome, assumed his pastoral duties in Kerrville and funds for the founding of the school were made available by his father, Willia... m Francis Kemper, a wealthy Chicago businessman. From its beginning, Notre Dame Institute held its own quota in the twelve grades to secure greater efficiency. Its avowed purpose was to teach the four basic academic subjects of reading writing, arithmetic, and religion and to train scholastic beginners in character, culture and citizenship. In Father Kemper's efforts to strengthen the diverse and dispersed Catholic community, the school opened with three Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word of San Antonio serving as the first faculty and was dedicated on the feast of Our Lady's Nativity on September 8, 1912. Notre Dame was originally established with twelve grades and a student body of twenty-seven pupils. By the end of the first year enrollment grew to over eighty-seven students, in which about one-third were non-Catholics. In the 1930's, the worst years of the Great Depression, Notre Dame School triumphantly remained open and completed its twenty-fourth year of operation. A LEGACY OF FAITHRead More