How is it that a high school, housed in an architecturally unremarkable elementary school building of only three floors and having functioned for less than forty years in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, still manages, today, to enjoy a genuinely dedicated and enthusiastically active alumni association a full twenty five years after its closing? What magical ingredient is present in the bond that joins these younger and older men – attendees and graduates - of the former St. Thomas More Catholic Boys’ High School? And finally, how does that lively esprit de corps manage to survive knowing that, sadly, there is now among them the one to be the last of them? A few of the questions are clearly answered here, the answers to others, however, may prove as elusive as Utopia.

To those of you who have logged on to STMforever.com, either intentionally or by chance and know nothing of this most unusual of alumni associations anywhere, please remain with us for a while as we try, briefly, to tell you our story.

In the early years of the twentieth century the Catholic student population in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was growing steadily. Soon there came the need to establish a new Catholic Boys’ high school in the western part of the city. That school was West Philadelphia Catholic Boys’ High School. Joining those Philadelphia youngsters enrolling in the new school were others from the distant, more rural areas of the western suburbs.