It Continues Because of a Promise
When a special Mass at St. Mary’s in New Monmouth is offered at noon on Saturday, September 26, it will be even more than a memorial to staff and graduates of Mater Dei High School who have died over the years.
It will also be the continuation of a practice started by a former history teacher at the school and continued for the past two decades by Mater Dei friends because one graduate made a promise to that teacher and has kept it ever since.
It was the late T.C. Murray, a beloved history teacher at Mater Dei High School, who brought the tradition of an annual Mass or Remembrance for deceased students and faculty members to Mater Dei. He patterned it after a similar remembrance from his own alma mater, Power Memorial Academy in Manhattan back in 2007.
But it was Mari Campanella Kovach, a graduate of Mater Dei in 1978, who has led the team and kept the promise she made to that teacher back in 2008.
Mari had helped Murray in 2007 when the first Mater Day Memorial Mass was offered. So of course she helped him again when he planned the mass for 2008. That was when he asked her if she would promise to make it an annual event. She promised him wholeheartedly. A few months later, T.C. Murray died.
But Mari’s promise has brought hundreds of Mater Dei teachers, graduates, parents of graduates, friends, brothers and sisters and more to the mass each year which, over the years, has grown in the number of people being honored.
This year’s Mass, as always celebrated the last Saturday of September, will be Sept. 26 at St Mary’s Church in New Monmouth, and all are invited to attend. The Reverend Stanley Lukszewski, more lovingly known as Father Stas, a former Vicar at St. Mary’s, will be the main celebrant of the mass.
Mari Kovach was Mari Campanella from Highlands when she graduated from Mater Dei in 1978. The daughter of the late Eileen and Joe Campanella, she is a young woman who always keeps her promises, is always willing to help others, and always remembers her Mater Dei years.
So it is no surprise this was a promise she has willingly kept, living up to the same standards Murray had set, standards similar to those the teacher had also initiated at his own alma mater, Power Memorial Academy in Manhattan which continues today.
Although retired as Associate Director for Technology and Strategic Plan in headquarters at the US Army RDECOM at Fort Monmouth, Mari is now co-owner and co-CEO of an engineering services firm, General Technical Services (GTS) headquartered in Wall.
She had joined GTS as the Director of Programs, then after the death of the company president, she and her business partner bought the company. The firm partners with U.S. defense agencies to research, develop, and deliver next-generation technologies that enhance awareness, precision, and readiness across the modern battlespace primarily in the Power and Energy, navigation and sensing technical areas.
She and Kurt, who will be married 37 years this November, have one daughter, Rachel, a graduate from TCNJ with a BS in Biomedical Engineering . Rachel currently works for Booz Allen.
Another Mater Dei graduate, Cathy Daniels , one year behind Mari, and her friend who has also been keeping Murray’s annual event a tradition. A graduate of the class of 1979, Cathy was elected President of the Mater Dei Alumni Association in 2007 and helped organize that first Mass when the Alumni Association held a breakfast in the cafeteria after the Mass.
Not many years later, another alumnus, Tom Dooley, added his own energy and affection for Mater Dei and its faculty and join Mari and Cathy in ensuring TC Murray’s promise would not only be kept but would include all wanted to precipitate in the annual remembrance.
For Mari and her parents, choosing Mater Dei after she graduated from our Lady of Perpetual Help grammar school in Highlands was an easy decision. Her parents wanted to be sure she continued her catholic education, and Mater Dei High School seemed the perfect place, a bus ride away on the Boro Bus and joining with other OLPH graduates and friends. Today she still recalls she liked everyone of her teachers at Mater Dei, but TC Murray certainly stands out, along with her biology detach “Doc” Keiber, as well as George Hansen, Bob Kitson and her religion teacher, Sister Catherine Tronolone.
The sponsor of the annual Mass of Remembrance is the Mater Dei High School Alumni Association, with Ray Brush Mari’s liaison for the association and the administration.
Mari also reaches out for volunteers for the musical parts of the liturgy, and former classmates, brother, sisters and parents of those being remembered at the mass red the list of all those for whom the mass is offered each year..
Almost 20 years in remembering and having special mass also shows how important it is to families and alumni, Mari noted. “Many family members of people who we remember at this Mass attend the liturgy and have expressed their appreciation that we celebrate this Mass every year,” she Sid. “We do it for them as well as for TC Murray and ourselves.”
This year it is even more important, Mari continued, With the school now demolished, and the property now part of the Middletown Township parks system preserving green acres for the community, “this Mass gives our community another opportunity to gather and celebrate our friends, faculty and staff and to remember our shared experiences at Mater Dei.”
This year, close to 600 people will be remembered at the mass, including deceased faculty, and staff; there are 446 alumni of Mater Dei who will be remembered this year, an increase of more than 25 since last year’s mass.
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