Saint Mary's School Blogs

The Saint Mary’s School Song Book of 1915 and 1921 feature more than a dozen school songs, class songs, an alma mater adapted to the tune Believe me if All These Endearing Young Charms, and a since forgotten St. Mary’s Hymn with lyrics written by Margaret Cruikshank for the Class of 2013. Yet only two official works have stood the test of time – Hail, Saint Mary’s, our school song, and The School Hymn, We Build Our School on Thee.

The Kicking Post was for a time among Saint Mary’s most iconic traditions that has enjoyed two lives on campus. The original Kicking Post was a white wooden post topped by a simple finial knob located at the end of the walk on west campus that led to the beloved “little store” on Hillsborough Street. The tradition held that kicking the post would bring a letter from someone special.

The Kicking Post is one of those unwritten student traditions of which we don’t know how or when it started, who started it, or how it went away, but we do know it was an important part of everyday school life from at least the 1950s through the 1960s.