Sister Mary Raymond Logue; Principal
Patricia Sullivan
Friday, May 23, 2008; Page B07
Sister Mary Raymond Logue, 70, a former principal of St. Michael the Archangel School in Silver Spring who was named one of the nation's 12 distinguished Catholic elementary school principals in 1991, died of septic shock May 9 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
Sister Raymond spent 28 years at St. Michael before retiring in 2004. For a portion of that time, she was president of the Elementary School Principals Association of the Washington Archdiocese.
She was known as someone who would find financial help for a child born blind and with birth defects, said an article published in The Washington Post in 1991, when the National Catholic Educational Association named her a distinguished principal. She also acquired a crib and other necessities for a single mother and her baby, ensured that families short of money could enjoy special meals and bought formal wear for needy graduates.
Sister Raymond was credited by parents with leading the school through dramatic improvements in its curriculum and athletic program. Minority enrollment at the K-8 school at the time was 93 percent, and half the students were non-Catholics. Education, she said, is based on “a deep personal regard for the individual.”
She was born Elizabeth Carolyn Logue in Baltimore and graduated from the city’s Institute of Notre Dame high school, where she was a star basketball player and inducted into the school's hall of fame. After graduating in 1956, she joined the School Sisters of Notre Dame and took the religious name Sister Mary Raymond in 1957.
Sister Raymond taught seventh and eighth grades in Camden, N.J., from 1959 to 1963 and taught at St. Mary’s in Annapolis from 1963 to 1964. The next year, she graduated from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland and moved to Harrisburg, Pa., where she taught the same grades at St. Margaret Mary Junior High until 1971.
She returned to Baltimore as principal of St. Benedict School in 1971 and moved on to Mechanicsburg, Pa., to teach and serve as principal at St. Joseph School. She also received a master's degree in education, with an emphasis on mathematics, from the University of Maryland in 1974. Two years later, she settled at St. Michael’s in Silver Spring. She most recently lived in Baltimore.
Survivors include two brothers, Leo Logue and Raymond Logue, both of Baltimore.