Friends, Alumni Gather for West Coast Dinner, 2019

The Thomas Aquinas College Alumni Association held its largest-ever West Coast Dinner Saturday night, as some 260 alumni returned to the Santa Paula, California, campus.

The evening began with a memorial Mass in Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel, offered for the repose of the souls of two alumni who have died in the past year, Douglas Alexander (’77) and John Kaiser (’07), as well all deceased alumni from those classing marking reunion years. Afterward, old friends gathered for a reception, followed by a dinner, by the Guadalupe Fountain on the academic quadrangle.

The guest of honor for the evening was Dr. Michael F. McLean, president of Thomas Aquinas College, who honored six classes which had come together to celebrate reunion years  — 2014, 2009, 2004, 1999, 1994, and 1979. “It has indeed been a great blessing for me,” said Dr. McLean, “to be on this faculty and to see the College grow and to have gotten to know so many of you over the years.”

The president then thanked the alumni for the various ways they support their alma mater — through their financial assistance, as members of the Board of Regents, and by offering career support to current students — before pausing to reflect on the College’s past accomplishments and future plans. “Encouraged by nearly 50 years of success in California, we look east to establish a second campus of Thomas Aquinas College committed to the same mission as our California campus,” he said. “With the advent of our New England campus, we look forward, over time, to renewing the face of the earth by educating a much larger number of alumni just like yourselves — men and women well-formed in the best of the Catholic intellectual tradition and strong in faith, hope, and charity.”