Q: What is the history of The Marist School in Brookhaven?
A: The private, college prep academy for grades seven through 12 opened in downtown Atlanta in 1901. The Marist School was founded by the Society of Mary, a congregation within the Roman Catholic Church that strives to live by the principles of Mary, the mother of Jesus.
Marists, the name for the society’s members, formed their congregation in Lyon, France, in 1816. The group spread to the United States during the Civil War, and by 1897, they had made their way to Atlanta, where they built a church and began developing a new parish of Georgian followers.
Father John E. Gunn, the church’s pastor, wanted to create an academy for the city’s Catholic residents, so in the summer of 1901 he purchased the lot next to his church. By the fall, the Marist School, then called Marist Academy, opened on Ivy Street, near where Peachtree Street crosses over I-85.
The school had 32 students its first year, all male, but Marist was technically a military academy those years, committed to both its junior ROTC program and the Society of Mary’s teachings.
Over the next six decades, the student body began to outgrow its campus. The academy moved in 1962 to the Ashford-Dunwoody Road location.
Father William Rowland, the school’s current president, told the AJC the move was much needed. The building lacked the resources to accommodate its 350-plus students and the football team was forced to practice on a clay field.
Marist’s location wasn’t the only thing that changed that year. In 1962, Atlanta’s Catholic schools began to desegregate, and Marist began accepting African-American students. The academy’s current student body is 7 percent African-American, 7 percent Hispanic/Latino, 3 percent Asian and 3 percent multiracial, which are figures that Rowland said he would like to see increase.
It wasn’t until 1976, when the ROTC program was discontinued, that the school began to admit female students. Marist now has approximately 1,100 total students, about half of whom are female.
“Our legacy is found in the students who graduate from Marist, and the kind of person they become,” Rowland said.
Alumni have become entrepreneurs, broadcasters and professional athletes, including NBA announcer Ernie Johnson Jr., HowStuffWorks founder Marshall Brain and Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay. Rowland confirmed that actor David Hasselhoff even attended the academy for a few years during the '60s, although he graduated from a different high school.
Rowland said along with academic, athletic and art accomplishments, its faculty and alumni have made contributions to the Church, to Atlanta and to the nation.
“When our students leave here, they’re certainly well-prepared for college, but we also want them to leave with a strong sense of their faith, a strong commitment to justice and a sense of mission — that there’s more to life than only making money, it’s also about changing the world as God intended,” he said.
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