Walsh Jesuit High School

Walsh Jesuit High School is a private, Catholic, co-educational college preparatory high school in the Jesuit tradition, located in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, approximately south of Cleveland. Walsh's campus covers and is situated near the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. The campus features five outdoor athletic fields, a 5,000 meter cross country track, a 1,600 seat gymnasium, a field house, wrestling room, an all-sports complex (formerly known as Conway Memorial Stadium), and a residence for the Jesuit priests that staff the school. The school's chapel, named in honor of its patron saints, the North American Jesuit Martyrs, is topped with the distinctive metallic cross which has become the school's most prominent symbol and landmark. History Walsh Jesuit High School was funded by a generous gift from Cornelius Walsh (b. 1864), a prominent industrialist and Catholic layman who had lived his entire life in Cuyahoga Falls. Upon his death in 1932, Cornelius bequeathed his entire fortune to his wife, Jane, who continued to donate generously to Catholic institutions and, with the assistance of her nephew, William A. Walsh, designed her will to include a large gift for the foundation of a Catholic high school. William, partial to the Jesuits, convinced his aunt to bequeath to the Society of Jesus her property and $100,000 for the building of an all-boys school that would be a memorial to her husband. William approached the Chicago Province of the Jesuits with the proposal, but the gift lay dormant for years until found during a transfer of files from the Chicago Province to the Detroit Province in 1959. William urged Fr. John McGrail, S.J., the head of the Jesuits' Detroit Province, to reconsider the proposal made in Jane's will. The school's campus was originally planned to be built in downtown Cuyahoga Falls near St. Joseph Parish School, but using the gift from Jane (which had grown to $2 million under William's stewardship, and to which the Cleveland Catholic Diocese added $1 million), 50 acres were purchased from the Conway family farm north of downtown, with an additional 50 acres purchased later.