In Memoriam: Rosemarie Buckley

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When vanity license plates first began appearing on cars in the 1980s, neighbors in the Rockville neighborhood of Fallsmead were not surprised to see a Chevy Malibu station wagon displaying tags proudly announcing that a ZAG MOM was driving the car.   Those neighbors knew that the station wagon belonged to Rosemarie Buckley, and that she had more than earned the title.  You see, the license plates were a present from her Gonzaga sons:  John, Jr., ‘Gonzaga Class of ’78, Anthony Class of ’79, Lawrence, Class of 1980, Peter, Class of 1982, and Paul, Class of 1986.  Sending five sons through Gonzaga alone would justify Rosemarie Buckley laying claim to being a ZAG MOM.  But the truth is, her involvement through the years on behalf of the faculty and students of Eye Street goes much deeper than that.   It is not hyperbole to say that Rosemarie Buckley’s leadership and service has done much to define what it means to be a supportive Gonzaga parent today.

A proud first generation Italian-American, she is prouder still to have been born in Boston.   A graduate from Emmanuel College, she married John Buckley of Charleston, Mass and in 1960, the couple move to the Washington, D.C. area to set up new roots and to raise a family.  

In 1974, when John Jr. came to Eye Street as a fourteen year-old Freshman, he found a Gonzaga very different than the school we know today.  Still reeling from the aftermath of social unrest of the late 1960s, and possessing what was even then an ancient physical plant lacking many of the staple educational facilities of the day, enrollment at Gonzaga had dwindled to less than five hundred students.  These were the “pre-Metro” days, and for parents to send their sons down into the inner-city took courage and an unwavering belief in Jesuit education.  Rosemarie and John Buckley had courage and faith in abundance.

It was also in 1974 that Gonzaga welcomed a new President, who was open to new ideas.  To restore Gonzaga to its place as a preeminent college preparatory school in the Washington area, Father Bernard Dooley, S.J. reached out to the school’s loyal constituents to get involved.  Father Dooley referred to such people as being “the true believers in Jesuit education.”  He soon learned that in the Mothers Club, and especially in Rosemarie Buckley, he had a stronghold of true believers.  An enduring friendship would ensue between Father Dooley and the entire Buckley Clan.  

Father Dooley came to admire Rosemarie Buckley for her devotion to Gonzaga and the way performed her service with a quiet grace.  Two times, she would be asked to lead the Mothers Club as its President, first from1979-1980 and again in 1985-86.  With a recovering Gonzaga in desperate the need of funds, it was Rosemarie along with others who inaugurated the Mothers Club Christmas Gala.  That first Gala was christened “Christmas Around the World”.  This year, the Mothers will celebrate the 31st consecutive Christmas Gala, an event that over the years has contributed millions of dollars to help advance Gonzaga’s mission to build Men for Others.  

With the Christmas Gala firmly established as an annual fundraising and social success, it was during Rosemarie’s second term as Mothers Club President that she and some of the other mothers asked, What more can we do for the boys of Gonzaga.  It was then that the Mothers’ Club established the Mother/Son Mass and Brunch, an annual spring tradition on Eye Street that remains to this day one of the highlights of the academic year. 

By the end of Rosemarie Buckley’s two terms as Mothers Club President, Gonzaga was no longer a crumbling school in the ghetto, but a place where parents were eager to send their sons to learn and grow into Men for Others.  The classrooms were full of students.  Academic achievement was high, and climbing.  Among other improvements, the campus boasted a new gymnasium and an expanded library.  The stronghold of true believers was swiftly expanding.  Gonzaga was back.
  
But as any teacher can tell you, the boys see everything- they miss nothing.  And so it is true of the five Buckley sons, who saw their mom performing quiet acts of kindness, like buying winter coats for men at the McKenna Center, and baking an apple pie for John Warman to celebrate each Gonzaga musical.  To teach her sons the value of hard work and commitment, and to help pay for them to attend Gonzaga, she’d arise daily with them at 4:30 A.M. to deliver newspapers.  Son Peter recalls how the two of them developed a great delivery system in which he would drive and Rosemarie would toss the papers out the car window, all the while listening to Dire Straits on the car stereo.  

When her sons had graduated from Gonzaga, Rosemarie’s –and the Family’s involvement with the school—did not come to an end; it was, instead, a new beginning.  While, Rosemarie remains active with Eagles’ Wings—and never misses a Christmas Gala, or a production of the Gonzaga Dramatic Association—sons Peter and Paul are longstanding members of the Gonzaga faculty.  Peter works in the school’s Network Operations Center and Paul is a teacher in the Mathematics Department, and is the producer of Gonzaga plays and musicals.
  
It is, therefore, Gonzaga’s honor to recognize Rosemarie Buckley – A ZAG MOM of exemplary grace and devotion—and award her the 2012 St. Aloysius Medal.