PROVIDENCE — Long before he became accomplished trial attorney Robert J. Quigley Jr., Esq., his surname among those appearing on the shingle hanging outside his downtown law firm, he was just Bob, an altar boy at St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church on Oxford Street and a student at its namesake elementary school next door.
“Just to put it in perspective, I left St. Michael’s 60 years ago this spring. I was there second grade through eighth grade, from the fall of 1959 through spring of ’66,” Quigley recalled recently, on the occasion of the school’s 100th anniversary celebration. “There were three classrooms for every grade level—except the ninth, which had two—and each classroom had at least 40 students. So, there were over a hundred first graders, second graders, all the way up.”
On Sundays, while parents and other adults attended Mass inside the enormous church (erected shortly before the Civil War), students would head downstairs for their own separate services. “There were pews, an organist, obviously an altar,” Quigley continued, “and it would be packed. The nuns would be downstairs as well with the kids.”
At that time, parish finances supported the school’s expenses, in large part because all its teachers were nuns from the order of the Sisters of Mercy. Consequently, tuition was free, and by 1950, just a quarter-century after first opening its doors, St. Michael’s had grown into the Diocese of Providence’s largest parochial school, with more than 1,300 students.
Much has changed during the intervening years, including the school’s name. Within a decade of Quigley’s leaving to enter La Salle Academy, cultural and societal shifts contributed to plummeting enrollments at St. Michael’s and other nearby Catholic schools.
“When I first was an altar boy,” added Quigley, “it was the Latin Mass. The priest would celebrate Mass with his back to the congregation. By the time I stopped being an altar boy five years later, they turned the altar around, Mass was in English, and it seemed like the Mass was changing, like, every six months. The number of nuns also dropped precipitously in the mid-60s.”
Compelled to combine forces to continue providing quality Catholic education to South Providence students, St. Michael’s absorbed the parochial schools formerly associated with Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Charles Borromeo, and the Cathedral of Saints Peter & Paul. Housed in the original St. Michael’s schoolhouse, the merged schools became known in 1973 as Bishop McVinney School, a tribute to Most Rev. Russell J. McVinney, the fifth bishop of Providence who had died two years prior.
Other surrounding buildings that once served St. Michael’s School have since been leveled, while the demographics of Quigley’s boyhood neighborhoods of South Providence, once largely Irish Catholic and Jewish, have evolved into more diverse populations. Masses at St. Michael’s, for instance, are today offered in English, Spanish, and French Creole.
Bishop McVinney School has undergone more recent changes as well. After 35 years as a teacher and principal, Louis Hebert retired prior to the start of the 2025-26 academic year, meaning the school would commemorate its first 100 years with a new leader at the helm. As the search for Hebert’s permanent replacement continues, Mallory Dunphy now serves as interim principal, overseeing the dawn of the school’s second century. The versatile Dunphy has worked at Bishop McVinney in a variety of roles over the past seven years.
In her message to those attending the school’s 100th anniversary Mass at St. Michael’s Parish on January 18, Dunphy reflected, “The moment I walked into Bishop McVinney School, I knew it was a special place. The heart and mission of the school were immediately clear … We are peacemakers. I quickly realized that I had found a new family.
“One of my favorite Bible verses comes from Proverbs 22:6. ‘Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.’ This verse beautifully reflects the mission we live out each day here at Bishop McVinney School. With God’s guidance, we remain committed to continuing this legacy by providing high-quality Catholic education for many years to come.”
A more secular proverb reminds us that the more things change, the more they stay the same. As evidence, Dunphy’s school has now been known as Bishop McVinney longer than it was called St. Michael’s. Quigley, meantime, remains equally optimistic about his alma mater’s future because he’s seen the demand for it first-hand, having returned the past two years to serve on its advisory board. In that role, he frequently interacts with today’s students face-to-face and understands how their families are investing heavily in the children’s faith-centric education.
“Kids are kids,” he observed. “Not a great deal different than we were in seventh and eighth grade, except they have cell phones, computers, that type of thing. But the school is reflective of the neighborhood, just as it was when I was there. Families are making a sacrifice, quite frankly, to send their children there because they want a good education based on values, on faith. The parents deserve a tremendous amount of credit. I wish there were a way to make it more affordable, but I think there’s a need for a school like this. It would be a shame to lose any of the Catholic schools.”
