Most of those connected with USS, know that we have been celebrating 40 years of service to Pittsburgh and surrounding communities since late 2021. Culminating in a special “Homecoming 40th Anniversary Reception” on Friday, October 21, 2022, at the site of the old Ursuline Academy and home of the original Ursuline “Center” (currently the Waldorf School of Pittsburgh), the agency brought together Ursuline Academy alumni, our friends and supporters, staff, board members, and volunteers (past and present) to join USS for this special recognition event.
To repeat a bit of our history that was shared that evening, this “Ruby” anniversary, marks 40-plus years in operation since, in the fall of 1981, the original Ursuline “Center” opened for business as a multi-service community center in the old Winebiddle Street manse that housed the Ursuline Academy. For nearly 100 years prior to that, generations of Ursuline Sisters out of Louisville, Kentucky educated and molded class after class of “refined young ladies” right here in the Friendship neighborhood of Pittsburgh, where our agency first got its start.
Responding to a community needs survey, conducted by the founding Executive Director Sr. Elaine Eckert, OSU, the first Center provided not only services to our aging neighbors, but to families and children as well through childcare, job-training, and even a “Friendship House” for the families of patients being cared for at nearby St. Francis Hospital. In the 1990’s, the Ursuline Sisters sold the old Academy building to a private developer and moved the agency to a space on Baum Boulevard. Around that same time, they called the remainder of their Sisters home to Louisville and turned the agency over to the local community simultaneously changing its name to Ursuline “Services.”
Over the years, the agency’s concentration of services gradually focused more fully on those for elderly neighbors aging in place through the provision of care management and protective services. At the same time, the agency was established as a sole-source provider of guardianship services for seniors under an agreement with the Allegheny County Area Agency on Aging. As a result, the agency updated its name to Ursuline “Senior” Services in 2005 to reflect its more specific service to our older neighbors.
In 2012, after the acquisition and operation of the Good Grief Center for several years, the agency settled on the name Ursuline “Support” Services to better communicate the comprehensive nature of the services we provide, those that “help navigate life’s transitions,” in all the many forms such changes can take. The agency’s staff completed its move to the former grief center location on Murray Avenue in Squirrel Hill in 2017, where we remain in operation today.
Through all the twists and turns of our forty-year history, one thing has endured: the compassionate care provided by those who have worked with USS for the benefit of our aging, disabled, and disadvantaged neighbors–what we call The Ursuline Way. Our goal remains to treat all those we meet with dignity, respect, trust, and (most especially) kindness. At Ursuline, we never turn anyone away who requests help—even if all we can offer is an appropriate referral for a service we may not provide.
One of the highlights of our Anniversary Reception was Sr. Rita Joseph Jarrell, OSU (the last principal to serve the Ursuline Academy of Pittsburgh when it graduated its last class in 1981) presented our agency with the Ursuline Coat of Arms. Sr. Rita, who coined the phrase “the Coeur d ’Ursuline “ (the “Heart” of Ursuline), advocated that our organization be permitted to display the Coat of Arms (an honor reserved for Ursuline institutions worldwide) in recognition of the legacy the Academy has left in the community-benefit organization Ursuline Support Services has become.
In response to Sr. Rita’s reception remarks, Waldorf School of Pittsburgh’s Head of School Kirsten Christopherson Clark shared with the guests how the legacy of the Ursuline Academy also lives on in the children of Waldorf School. Waldorf children are reminded every day of the generations of students who flowed through the halls of their school building long before they arrived. She pointed out that there are many “Ursuline” symbols and artifacts displayed and built into the building that the children experience every day. One class even studies the building and the Friendship neighborhood history as part of their year-long curriculum.
All in all, the reception allowed for a special evening to remember and recognize what one building in the “heart” of Friendship has given our community over the course of nearly one and a half centuries. As Sr. Rita never falls to remind the remaining alumni of the original Ursuline on Winebiddle Street (as Executive Director Tony Turo shares with past and present staff and volunteers of Ursuline Support Services) that the “heart” of that building still beats in the important work Ursuline still provides across this community every day!
Tony Turo