ST. MARY PARISH — Hanson Memorial High School in Franklin is celebrating a century of shaping students and strengthening its community. Faculty and alumni say the milestone highlights both resilience and deep family ties.
“All of our alumni are just so very passionate we have generations of people who come through these doors and who graduate from Hanson,” said Development Director Anna St. Blanc.
The Catholic school opened in 1925 after Minnie Hanson Conolly donated the land and building in memory of her father, Albert Hanson, and her brother, Eddie Hanson. Today, Hanson remains closely connected to the Church of the Assumption.
On Friday, a special Mass will be followed by a community breakfast with the mayor and local officials joining alumni and families in the celebration.
St. Blanc said the school’s history is easy to see inside its halls. “These are all of the composites of our graduating classes for the past I guess 96 years, we were an all boys school up until 1968 and here is our first graduating boys and girls class,” she said. She also noted that the auditorium still holds its original seating and wood floors.
Teacher, football coach, and campus minister John Higdon Jr. said Hanson’s strength lies in the people who never let it fail. “Both my parents are Hanson alumni, high school sweethearts, my dad’s mother actually taught here in the 80s and then my mom’s siblings all came here, a lot of their children and first cousins did as well... I go back to the people, the people who have made this place what it is there's always been a few loyal Hanson Memorial folks that would never let this place fail.”
That community spirit is also part of the school’s Catholic identity, said Father Joel Faulk, pastor of the Church of the Assumption and headmaster of Hanson Memorial. “It’s a school of the parish, it’s community trying to rear or educate and form its children and so that sense of family certainly strongly plays into the identity and mission of what we’re about,” he said.
Looking ahead, Faulk said the mission feels just as vital today. “If we’re gonna make this world a better place, it’s gotta start with the formation of the person in virtue in that beauty of character so that we can better be able to serve and love another.”
As Hanson marks its centennial, staff, alumni, and parish leaders say the goal is not only to honor the past, but to carry its tradition forward for future generations of Franklin families.
