Blessed Sacrament alumni share their thoughts

Alumni of Blessed Sacrament School in Valley Stream share their memories and thoughts about the school's impending closing in June.

Camille Braccia
Graduated: 1991
She and her two sisters attended Blessed Sacrament from pre-K through eighth grade. They lived a block away and could see the school from their front door. She said the school had the best teachers a child could ask for. “I’m real sad to hear that Blessed Sacrament is closing. Just like the school song goes, it was ‘our home away from home.’ I’ll always have fond memories of that school.”

Nancy Scala Rocklage
Graduated: 1965
Now living in Columbus, Ga., she was the youngest of four children and the only one to attend Blessed Sacrament, as it opened after they were already enrolled in public school. She remembers there being 65 students in her first-grade class.

Angela Locascio
Graduated: 1975
“I remember the secretary in the office copying dittos on a ‘mimeograph’ machine by hand. We used to put the paper up to our faces and smell the ink.” She also remembers the eighth-grade dance in the cafeteria, the smell of incense throughout the school whenever there was a funeral, practicing in the church for Confirmation, and being the last on line to receive her first Holy Communion.

Kelly Carey
Graduated: 1991
Two brothers and one sister attended as well, with at least one Carey child in the school for 20 years. Everyone there became a family, she said, stuck together through the good times and the bad, and always felt cared for and safe. “As a current Catholic school teacher in Long Beach, I can say that the moments that first made me want to be a teacher happened in that building. I know that this is true of so many graduates who have gone on to become teachers.”

Marie Falanga
Graduated: 1997
Attended the school from kindergarten through eighth grade. Now teaches at Our Lady of Lourdes School in West Islip. “As a Catholic school teacher now, I just hope that I can make a difference in the lives of my students the way that the teachers from Blessed Sacrament have made in mine.”