Lowell Sun photo
From left, Jim Neary, Matt McCafferty, John O'Donnell, Brian Sheehan, Ray Crowe and Ken O'Neill.

11/04/2014
Lowell Sun
By Amelia Pak-Harvey

LOWELL -- Growing up in the Sacred Heart neighborhood, they were known as "the churchyard boys" -- they attended services at the Sacred Heart Parish, played sports in the church's backyard and finished eighth grade at the Sacred Heart Grammar School.

Nearly 50 years later, the church and its yard are the site of new condominiums, but the group of childhood friends are coming together to keep the memory of their youth alive.

With the help of various sponsors, six of the original churchyard boys are establishing a Sacred Heart Neighborhood scholarship for Lowell natives at UMass Lowell, where they all attended college.

"That is our hometown school," said Matt McCafferty, husband of UMass Lowell Vice Chancellor of University Relations Patricia McCafferty and one of the scholarship's founding trustees. "Even now, we're still kind of hometown guys, and that's important to us."

The trustees acknowledge the rising cost of a college education -- when they were in college in the '70s, tuition was about $300 a semester and they could pay for their entire tuition with one job.

For trustee John O'Donnell, a co-op at his current employer, Raytheon Co., paid for his education. Trustee Ken O'Neill worked as a paper carrier for The Sun.

Meanwhile, Sheehan worked in a downtown Lowell store.

"That's how my education was paid for," Sheehan said. "But you can't do that today."

The churchyard gang, which also includes alumni Ray Crowe and James Neary, hopes to begin an endowment of more than $50,000 in the next five years.

The university will award the scholarship, which totals 4 percent of the endowment fund each year, to students from Lowell who demonstrate financial need.

Preference is given to first-generation college students, because the founders were among the first in their families to go to college.

"I don't think any of us came from money, and we had multiple brothers and sisters," Sheehan said. "But we came to this school at a time when education was attainable, and now it's a lot harder."

UMass Lowell junior Ricardo Torres, who came to the U.S. from Puerto Rico at age 12, is the first to receive the scholarship this year. He's studying Spanish with a minor in education, with the hopes of becoming a middle-school Spanish teacher.

The $1,000 he received is a big help, he said.

"Financially, I always have a tough time," he said. "But with people like this helping people like me achieve the goals that we have, it's an honor to have people that care like that."

Torres, who runs on the school's track and cross-country teams, said coming to UMass Lowell was the best decision he has made.

"Since I was the first-generation college student from my family, I wanted to stay close to home," he said. "I just wanted to stay close to my younger brother to help him out whenever he needed anything, and just stay close to my mom."

Torres' mother reminds him he's setting an example for his brother, a junior at Lowell High.

"My mom always shoots me a text message in the middle of the night and she's just always like, 'It's probably tough right now, you have a rough time, but at the end you're going to come out on top,'" he said. "'You're just laying down the road for your brother to take.'"

The trustee group appreciates their humble beginnings in the Irish Catholic, working-class neighborhood that had Sacred Heart at its core.

They remember playing in Little League baseball and listening to the Sacred Heart band practice every Monday.

"I think we're very lucky, fortunate people," O'Donnell said. "There's other communities that don't have, I think, what we had. I say that sincerely. We have great friendship and the community that we were in was fantastic."

Their older brothers and sisters hung out with each other as what O'Donnell said was one great big family.

"We all knew everybody's families," he said. "I truly believe we were all an extension of a real big family."

When they graduated from Sacred Heart Grammar School, five of the six continued to Lowell High.

Now with their own children, the group reconnects over UMass Lowell hockey games, where McCafferty first mentioned the idea. 

"When Matt came up with an idea for a scholarship and being able to give back, I think we were all immediately excited to do it," Sheehan said.

This Saturday, the group will host a fundraiser for the endowed scholarship at the UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center. Tickets can be purchased at $50 online at alumni.uml.edu/sacredheartfundraiser or through the Alumni Office at 978-934-3140.

With ticket sales, donations and sponsorships, the scholarship is set to raise more than $30,000 -- an initiative that began with fond memories of childhood, initiated by a group of churchyard friends.

"No matter who you meet in the future in your life, no matter what acquaintances you make or friends you make in the future," Sheehan said, "nobody knows you like the guys you grew up with."