Students were separated into business and collegiate tracks. Business graduates made their mark in the commercial world while girls in the collegiate track continued their education in universities and colleges across the country. Most of the teaching positions at Buffalo Academy of the Sacred Heart were held by Sisters, but lay persons were becoming an important part of the faculty. In 1946, the senior class published a yearbook for their class. The 1948 Torch was the first yearbook for the whole school. The current name, The Cordette (“The Female Heart”), was adopted the following year.
War production brought thousands of new workers, particularly Black Americans escaping the Jim Crow South in search of work into the city. One industry that boomed during the war years was aircraft construction. Bell Aircraft and Curtiss-Wright Corporation ballooned in size as they produced planes for the war. Buffalo was also a center of aerospace innovation, and the top-secret first jet plane, the P-59 Airacomet, was built in the Trico Building (now the Tri-Main Building). Buffalo workers also built two Naval carriers, The Greater Buffalo (later the USS Sable) and the Seabee (later the USS Wolverine). In 1948, Buffalo’s first television station, WBEN, began broadcasting from the 18th floor of the Statler Hotel.
Thank you to Sr. Catherine Tronolone, Sr. Karen Allen, Sr. Helen Schumacher, Betty Kempkes Waclawek, Sr. Maura Fortkort, Sr. Pat Healy, and Sr. Mary Kay Stahl for participating in the Oral History Project.