NEWS RELEASE                                            For Immediate Release

Contact: Doug Fleischli, Marketing Director

7 Pursuit Aliso Viejo, CA 92656

Ph:         (949) 448-9027, ext. 328               Cell:        (949) 233-5993

Email:     doug.fleischli@smaa.org             Web:      www.smaa.org

St. Mary’s Celebrating Founder’s Birthday October 1

ALISO VIEJO, CA, September 24, 2008—St. Mary and All Angels School will be celebrating Father Sillers’ 98th birthday on Wednesday, October 1, 2008, in the school’s Gymnasium at 10:00 a.m. Father Sillers (Reverend Canon Ernest D. Sillers) founded the non-denominational Christian school in 1994. He launched St. Mary’s with 79 students who were taught in portable trailers. The school’s existing school facilities were constructed between 1996 and 2002.

“Father Sillers is a truly remarkable visionary who will forever embody the spirit and soul of St. Mary’s School. His dream has become a vibrant and thriving reality, and his legacy with St. Mary’s is intact,” Headmaster John O’Brien said.

St. Mary’s librarian, Aileen Kay, recently published a children’s book about the life of Father Sillers entitled, Father Ern… Building Schools—Building Children. The 27 page photo-biography gives an account of Father Sillers’ life from growing up in Nova Scotia, Canada in a family of eight to getting married in 1935, becoming an ordained Episcopal priest in 1942 and settling in southern California in 1954 to begin what would become a legacy of ministry and building Christian schools.

St. Mary’s Middle School Principal Chris Lincoln, a founding faculty member, recalls working with Father Sillers during the school’s infancy, “We stood on the empty lot and Father Sillers described in uncanny detail the school that we had not even started to build.”

Sillers’ motto is “It’s better to build children than to repair people.” With this firm conviction, he founded St. Mark’s Episcopal School in Downey, St. Margaret’s Episcopal School in San Juan Capistrano, St. John’s School in Rancho Santa Margarita and St. Mary and All Angels in Aliso Viejo. At St. Mary’s, Father Sillers’ wife, Aldine, served as the school’s librarian until her passing in 2004. Aldine was the founding librarian at all his schools.

Founded in 1994 by Father Ernest D. Sillers, St. Mary and All Angels School is a non-denominational Christian school serving preschool through grade 8. St. Mary’s is fully accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), International Baccalaureate (IB), California Association of Independent Schools (CAIS), National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), National Association of Episcopal Schools (NAES) National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), European Council of International Schools (ECIS) and South Orange County Association of Private and Parochial Schools (SOCAPS). 

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