By Florida Catholic staff - Florida Catholic
MIAMI GARDENS | When Julke Llorens returned to Msgr. Edward Pace High School last year to celebrate the school’s 53rd anniversary, he also was celebrating a family tradition: Llorens is a member of the school’s first graduating class (1964), and also the first in a family of three generations of Pace students.
Llorens — a permanent deacon at St. John the Apostle Church in Hialeah — arrived in Miami from Cuba Aug. 15, 1962 — an unaccompanied teenager brought through the so-called Pedro Pan program sponsored by the Archdiocese of Miami. He arrived just in time for his senior year of high school.
“It was my first experience of school in America,” Deacon Llorens said. “Back then the boys were taught by the Marist Brothers, separately from the girls.”
During the early 1960s, the girls who attended Pace were taught by members of the Teresian Association, a lay association dedicated to evangelizing through education and culture.
“The unconditional welcome and support I received at Pace during my senior year, and the sense of belonging to the Pace family, stayed with me through the years,” Deacon LLorens said. “It was an experience deeply rooted in Christian values. Everything that was preached was practiced.”
After graduating from Pace, Deacon Llorens attended Spring Hill Jesuit College in Alabama and later Miami-Dade Community College. In the 1980s, Deacon Llorens and his wife, Mary, encouraged their three children — Teresita, Julke Jr., and Lourdes — to follow in his footsteps.
“Twenty years after I graduated, Teresita received her diploma from Pace, then Julke Jr. With Lourdes, my youngest, it was interesting because she did not finish her high school education at Pace, but at Hialeah-Miami Lakes.”
Although she slightly broke the tradition, Pace left enough of an impression that Lourdes wanted her kids, Carlos and Claudia Gonzalez, to attend her family’s alma mater. Now, 51 years after their grandfather first walked the halls of the school, Carlos, a senior, and Claudia, a sophomore, are the third generation in their family to attend Pace.
“Of course, I very much wanted my children and eventually my grandchildren to have and to share such an experience with others,” Deacon Llorens said. “There is something special there.”
FYI
Msgr. Edward Pace High School graduates from the 1960s will hold a multi-class reunion at Pace High School on Saturday, April 18. For information, contact alumni director Melanie Otero, 305-623-7223, ext. 347.