Ruth Meche’s students will always be her ‘kids’

By PETER FINNEY JR.
Clarion Herald

A former Catholic high school principal – he shall remain mercifully unnamed – once jokingly confided about what he considered the most challenging part of his job.

“You know, when I come back in another life (OK, so that’s not great Catholic theology), I’m going to come back as principal of an orphanage,” he said.

Dealing successfully with parents who believe their children helped Moses chisel the Ten Commandments and simultaneously have the ability to walk across Lake Pontchartrain in uniform shoes from Schiro’s without getting their khakis wet is one of the hidden and absolutely essential qualifications of any successful Catholic school principal.

Ruth Meche, who has served as assistant principal and principal of St. Christopher the Martyr School in Metairie for the last 44 years, has her own story about a parent and a shoe.

She was a relatively new principal – she took over in 1982 – when a father marched into her tiny cubicle of an office, the one with one door in and one door out.

“I’ll never forget – he came in with a pair of shoes and he threw the shoes on my desk,” Meche said. “I didn’t have any way to get out. But he was furious that I had told his child that she was not in the correct uniform shoes. I was like, ‘Holy cow, I’m dead.’”

Meche, who is retiring in June after serving as a lead administrator at St. Christopher since 1977, said successfully dealing with daily challenges that crop up without warning, like a south Louisiana thunderstorm in August, is a testament to the Holy Spirit.

“I can’t take credit for it,” she says. “It’s just the Holy Spirit that comes down upon you and allows you to remain calm. I think God gifts us with the talent of multi-tasking. I think you have to bring a deep spirituality. Anybody can have the academic knowledge of what you should be doing, but without the faith, it would be very challenging and overwhelming.”

In her decades serving at one school, Meche is now overseeing the grandchildren of the students she first encountered back in the late 1970s.

“That’s the biggest gift of all that this place has given me,” Meche said. “Seeing my former students get married and then bring their children back here. I got an email out of the blue this past year just saying, ‘I’m so-and-so, and I went to school there and you were my principal and I’m so glad you’re still there. I just wanted to give you a shout out.’”

Meche has been duly decorated for the job she has done. Former Catholic school superintendent Howard Jenkins nominated her in 1993 for a national principal’s award bestowed by the U.S. Department of Education, which went to only 12 private school principals across the country.

She also won the Distinguished Principal’s Award from the National Catholic Educational Association, and, in 1994, St. Christopher was named a Blue Ribbon School of Excellence.

Excellence in Catholic education, she say, starts with loving, faith-filled teachers who are there for the children and not for the paycheck. That has resonated in the double duty – virtual and in-person instruction – most teachers have been offering since the pandemic.

“I can honestly say if you want a job done, you ask a teacher, and they’re going to find a way and figure it out,” Meche said.

As she prepares for the next chapter of her life, Meche reflects on all the “dog-ate-my-homework” stories she has been told and lovingly investigated while giving a motherly correction and the benefit of a doubt. Fittingly, Rachel Trahan, a  former Meche student who has taught at St. Christopher for 20 years, is taking over as principal next year.

“I’m so proud of her,” Meche said. “They’re like my kids, really. They are adults. We work alongside each other. But they’re still my kids.”

[email protected]