St. Joseph Preparatory Seminary was opened by the Catholic Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston on Nov. 26, 1963, closed in 1987.
For the first three months, the 49 ninth-graders studied and slept at Parkersburg Catholic High School, before the seminary building was completed on 123 acres at a cost of $3 million.
The original intent of the high school seminary was to prepare boys for the priesthood. Later on, St. Joseph also strove to prepare students for college.
I graduated in June of 1976 along with the fine gentlemen in the video.
St. Joseph's Preparatory Seminary Class of 1976
Jug Run Road
Vienna WV
The choice of music is based on a shared communal experience. Every morning denizens of the dorm awoke to the sound of music from alarm radios up and down the hall tuned to the same station, WPAR with Morning D.J. Uncle Douger. The most popular top 40 tunes were the most ubiquitous, accompanying us down the hall to the showers for our daily ritual of morning ablution. Paul Anka's Having my Baby was annoyingly popular for too long but indicative of 1970s popular music, so I chose it as the theme for this presentation.