GRACE Center opens for summer programs

By Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free Press

UXBRIDGE – Children eagerly participated in the arts last week at the new GRACE Center – thanks in good part to Grace Rett’s sister and mother.
The Grace Rett Athletic Complex and Education Center behind St. Mary Church and Our Lady of the Valley Regional School is for parish and school activities. It is named for Grace Rett, a St. Mary’s parishioner and OLV basketball player, who died in 2020 in a motor vehicle accident while on a training trip with the College of the Holy Cross women’s rowing team.
“I wanted to do something with the kids over the summer,” explained Brianne Rett, Grace’s sister, an OLV alumna going into her sophomore year at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York. “And I figured since the GRACE Center wasn’t being used over the summer, we might as well fill it with kids.” (She helps at OLV during college breaks, she said.)
This is the first summer for the center, which was dedicated last January.
Donna O’Donnell, OLV assistant principal and eighth-grade teacher and athletic director, said she and Miss Rett each approached the principal, Edward Reynolds, about the school offering summer activity weeks. She and Miss Rett ended up working together, with help from Miss Rett’s mother, Mary Jo, and other volunteers.
“I was going to do a couple STEM weeks,” a program that teaches science, technology, engineering and math, Mrs. O’Donnell said. Miss Rett wanted to teach sports and arts. The decision was to offer one week of each for students entering grades 2-7.
Miss Rett organized the June 27-July 1 Sports and Games Activity Week, which drew about 15 OLV students. Christopher Rett, her father, ran the board game portion.
Mother and daughter organized Exploring the Arts Activity Week, held July 18-22. Mrs. Rett said 17-20 children, most from OLV, attended.
OLV STEM Academy, which Mrs. O’Donnell is organizing, is planned for Aug. 8-12. Called “Mission to the Moon,” it is to include lessons about rocket propulsion, designing protective gear and creating a model moon society, she said.
Mrs. Rett said “it’s bittersweet” helping at the building named for her deceased daughter. But at the GRACE Center, the church and the school, “I feel at peace,” she said.
Grace was athletic, had a beautiful voice and loved the arts and science, she said; “she definitely would have had a hand in this.” Faith also meant a lot to Grace and part of the arts week included acting out a Bible skit.
Acting especially engaged children on July 21, as they prepared for a talent show for family and friends that afternoon.
“Brianne told them, ‘You’ll get out of the week what you put in,’” Mrs. Rett said. She said she and her daughter encouraged the children to express themselves at the talent show and assured them they would not be judged or laughed at.
Students seemed eager to share their talents. Liam Roy, going into fourth grade at Our Lady of the Valley, wanted Mrs. Rett, the school music teacher, to play the keyboard for him so he could practice his song, “My Heart Will Go On,” from the movie “Titanic.” And he was concerned that the backdrop of the sinking ship he’d painted would be properly displayed.
Emmalee Gadboury, a rising OLV fifth-grader, busily glued rectangles to another backdrop to represent a brick wall, which her classmate Cameron Berger said was for a comedy skit they wrote. Mrs. O’Donnell even got down on the floor to help “lay the bricks.”
Meanwhile, OLV students Victoria Silva and sisters Caelyn and Brynn Kent practiced a Minion dance with OLV alumna and teen-age volunteer Sophie Compston. Sophie’s twin, Julie, was also a volunteer.
“We were so happy for the kids, because they really got into it and they loved having an audience,” Mrs. Rett said after the talent show. She said about 40 parents, friends and parish staff came.
“Brianne and I each start them with an artist-of-the-day,” Mrs. Rett said. “We just give them some fun facts” about musicians and visual artists. The children also made pictures, employing different styles of art, which were displayed in a gallery at the GRACE Center the last day of the week.
Mrs. Rett said that at the sports program children played basketball, and volleyball using nets and poles loaned by Marianapolis Preparatory School in Thompson, Connecticut, from which her daughters graduated.
The students learned a lot; there were “a lot of smiles all day long” and “supporting each other, community building,” Mrs. O’Donnell said.
This week she said there was still space available for the STEM activity week. The registration form is available on the school website ourladyofthevalleyregional.com. The cost, ranging from $50 to $240, is based upon the number of days and hours a child attends, with a reduction for siblings, and added fees for “before care.”
Mrs. O’Donnell said this pays for the cost of running the programs, including supplies and monetary compensation for her and Miss Rett. (Other helpers are volunteers). Any extra money will be used for the school’s physical education program, she said.
“We’re hoping to expand” the three offerings next summer, she said. “Hopefully, we’ll do at least six weeks next year, roughly every other week,” without competing with Whitinsville Christian School’s basketball program that many OLV students attend.

PHOTO Album