Preserving The History of Metro Detroit's Catholic Schools

Dominican High School - 1962

Mike Butler, a 1971 graduate of all-boys Detroit Catholic Central, is an attorney is real life, and an archivist in his down time. In exploring the artifacts from his own family's past, he discovered the genesis of a project to preserve Detroit-area Catholic school history. Butler, 60, of Livonia, founded the Detroit Catholic School Heritage Project in late 2011 and its website, www.bishopgallagher.org. The website has historical information and some 300 photos from long-gone, as well as still-thriving, Detroit-area Catholic schools. 

Mike is accumulating photos, scanning yearbooks and compiling history. With other volunteers and Catholic school alums, Butler is planning to establish a nonprofit and find a site to display the artifacts from an era when the six-county Archdiocese of Detroit boasted 360 Catholic schools, compared with 95 now. The website’s name honors Detroit Bishop Michael Gallagher, who presided over a Catholic school building boom in the 1920s and was the namesake for a high school in Harper Woods, which is now closed.

READ MORE in The Detroit Free Press

Metro Detroit Catholic schools, past and present