Welcome to the Virtual Tour

Welcome to the "NEW" St. Philip Basilica High School Gaels Alumni Association Online!

To all of our fellow alumni, family & friends of St. Philip Basilica High School of Chicago, Illinois, we extend our sincere welcome to our "New" & "Improved" alumni association website.

When our school closed, at the end of the 1969-70 academic year, we were left with a huge void. We no longer had a school or school administration to supplement our communication efforts & our needs as alumni, to freely associate with our classmates. We had nowhere to seek out information, or each other.

Fortunately, the Brennan brothers, Tom, '35 & Jack, '53, along with others who helped maintain contact with their own classmates, had already developed, at least a mailing list of some alumni, who had previously been active with the alumni association. Tom & Jack continued, throughout the many years that passed, to continuously increase the size of their list & continued to maintain contact, to the best of their ability, with those that were on it.

Throughout the nearly 45 years, since 1970, the brothers, and their associates, kept our alumni association alive through our Annual Alumni Banquet, held each spring, as a traditional "male only" reunion type event, since our school was an "all male" student-body institution.

Tom Brennan passed away in 1999, and Jack found himself running things on his own, without the benefit of the many technological & Internet tools that are available to us, today.

Since 2003, we've maintained a continuous internet presence, using an old "legacy" formatted design, that was quite adequate for our early needs, yet lacking today, in the many additional features & functions, that our members expressed as desirable.

In 2005, we obtained our own web address (URL) and associated email address. It was then, and continues to be, our hope to continue expanding our site, as our primary source of communication with our fellow alumni, families and friends, no matter where in the world they might be located.

In order to take full advantage of the newest HTML5 standards, we've now completed updating to our new web site design, which has actually been a long time in coming, and has required many long hours, days, weeks and even months to develop, but is now a reality, with many new features that help to enhance its appearance, as well as the many new functions that have been included.

We truly hope that you enjoy what you see, with our new appearance, and we also hope that you find it much easier to navigate around the site & find what you seek.

Please be sure to watch the instructional videos above, for assistance in learning how to use the various features and functions of the site. Don't forget to visit our guestbook, to view the many messages from classmates, that have been entered over these past years, and then leave your own message, to be included in the guestbook.

You should also check the "Info Boxes," above and to the left of this content, for news & information about past, current & future events, as well as newly added information about our school, and our alumni association, our continued activities & our annual alumni banquet.

If you have any questions, or wish to make any comments, criticisms, suggestions, or provide us with additional information about our school & its history, to be added to our site, we'd certainly like to hear from you. Please use our Contact Form, to express whatever you wish, or communicate with us by email at [email protected] . We hope you enjoy your visit, and come back again, often.

Security: For both security & privacy reasons, no information provided via any online forms, contained on this site, is retained or stored anywhere on this web site or on our server. We respect your privacy & have taken painstaking steps to protect it. All information required & entered in any of our online forms, is immediately transferred & delivered directly to our secure & encrypted email, where it is then entered into our secure, encrypted & remote database. This policy includes all information that is ordinarily and freely available elsewhere on the Internet. Please see our Privacy Policy.