Latest News

Be it jumping off a bridge or retreating to a bed, the intervention of angels was required to pull a beloved leading man, the principal character, back from the brink.

"They told me I had a nervous breakdown," Picaro said. "They also told me that they never had anyone have one that could joke about it a half-hour later."

It probably wasn't that soon after, but certainly Picaro could smile about it now, with at least some, not all, of his wonderful life restored. With the assistance of many, Picaro lifted himself from personal despair and kept the school that he had dedicated most of his working life to from vanishing into history.

To mark the one-year anniversary of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark's announcement that it would close St. Patrick — forcing it to soldier on as the nondenominational, grades 7-to-12 Patrick School — Picaro's beloved boys basketball team will begin state tournament play on Friday, a triumph in itself.

With the word out at this time last year, recruiting vultures from competing schools circled, out en masse for the last game the team played as a Catholic school. Coach Chris Chavannes, who doubles as the school's vice principal, had the chore of keeping his team intact, even when it was unclear that the program and the school would continue.

That he succeeded, he said, was a tribute to the school's disciplined, family environment, despite a setting in the city's hardscrabble port vicinity amid blocks of liquor stores and bail bond shops. "That's something Mr. Picaro created," Chavannes said.

Losing basketball would have been deflating for Picaro, the former St. Patrick principal and the new school's headmaster. But having the institution disappear as it approached its 150th anniversary would have been devastating when he, in fact, needed a second family. He needed it as much as the countless students, many from impoverished backgrounds with special needs, had needed a second family when he welcomed them through the doors of St. Patrick over 41 years before sending them on to college.

"The school has been my life," he said, no exaggeration for a child of Elizabeth and its Catholic schools and schoolyards.

Picaro is an archetypal, no-frills Jersey guy — a bit louder than he needs to be, parking an old Saturn in the headmaster's spot outside the school. He requires little prodding to wax nostalgically about the days when Elizabeth was a basketball hotbed, long before the game became a global commodity. He fell hard for it while growing up in the 1950s, and as a senior at Sacred Heart High, he scored a combined 80 points over two 1959-60 games against rival St. Patrick before moving on to play at Fairleigh Dickinson.

Sacred Heart, where Picaro began his career as an educator, is a parking lot now, perhaps the enduring explanation for why Picaro, hired at St. Patrick in 1971, never did leave.

"My intention was to stay a few years, get my master's in administration and then move to public school," he said. "But I'm a good, practicing Catholic and I wound up believing that the reason I was there was because I was put there."

The school lives on inside a one-story former Social Security building on Morris Avenue, just past a street sign marking the Elizabeth border, across the street from a 7-Eleven. The reason Picaro and other administrators received from the archdiocese for pushing them out of their former home — a redbrick Gothic-style building next door to the church with distinctive 212-foot spires — was that their school was too debt-ridden, too small, after enrollment fell to 151 by last year with a freshman class under 30.

In response, school officials pleaded with the archdiocese to remember that St. Patrick had long admitted students from troubled public schools that bigger and more expensive parochial schools would not accept. They argued that the school was greater than the sum of its aging parts and the growing perception of it as just a basketball factory with contractual ties to the Nike machine.

Yes, Picaro said, basketball had become synonymous with St. Patrick as it rose to national prominence under a former coach, Kevin Boyle, who left two years ago for Montverde Academy in Florida, and his successor, Chavannes, the former junior varsity coach. Kyrie Irving of the Cleveland Cavaliers, the first overall pick in the 2011 draft, and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist of the Charlotte Bobcats, the second overall pick in 2012, are two of the school's four graduates currently playing in the N.B.A.

"Because we were such a small school down in a crime-ridden port, people just couldn't believe that we were so successful in basketball," Picaro said. "They said: 'Why are those kids going down there? What are they doing for them? What are they giving them?' "

What players got, Picaro insisted, were lessons in comportment, strict dress codes, no special treatment. The players, he said, have long been drilled to refrain from what he called "look-at-me-I-dunked-the-ball" antics. In a recent victory over Pope John of Sparta, N.J., still wearing their green, Nike-made jerseys with St. Patrick across their chests, the Celtics maintained an up-tempo but orderly and team-first approach, a tone set by the low-key Chavannes.

At St. Patrick, Picaro was the assistant principal in charge of discipline for 20 years and the principal for 21. Chavannes, who has been at the school for more than two decades, recalled walking through the doors for the first time and mistaking him for the janitor.

"There he was, vacuuming the hall," said Chavannes, whose team is 22-3 team this season and the top seed in its nonpublic tournament bracket. "You didn't have to be around here long to know that he was the rock, the pillar. Everyone knew that his life was all about, 'What can I do for you?' and that he never paid as much attention to himself as he should have."

That one-way, all-in approach became the bridge to a breakdown, given the trauma that came with losing his wife, Dorothy, to cancer in 2004. One of Picaro's three sons was later found to have a bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and wandered the streets of Miami for three years — habitually using drugs and being arrested on various charges. When he returned to New Jersey in January 2011, Frank Picaro was a shell of himself, and the burden of saving him fell to his 70-year-old father.

By September 2012, Picaro said, the competing pressures of work and family became too much. He went home one day, got into bed and stayed there, not bothering to call in sick for several days. A brother-in-law convinced him to seek help. He went on sabbatical from St. Patrick, played cards with retired friends, did long-neglected chores around his home in nearby Roselle. He returned to school three months later, just as the archdiocese moved to close the school.

Meetings were held. Appeals were made. The archdiocese, stressing that it had subsidized the school's operations four years running, said it could no longer justify the expense, though Picaro believed that what it wanted was the projected income from leasing out the building.

The battle for survival was on, but Picaro was in no shape to lead it. "I had enough stress at home," he said. "I couldn't have any more."

After futile attempts were made to merge with other schools, here came the narrative climax, a springtime Christmas. David Lipman, a retired businessman who lives in Montclair and is an ardent supporter of the school and its team, spearheaded the effort to create a five-year financial plan. A surge of alumni fervor ensued, including commitments to help from Irving and Kidd-Gilchrist. Parents boycotted an open house that St. Patrick was required to hold for the recruitment of its students by other archdiocese-member schools.

Watching a recent basketball game with her son, Frank, a freshman, Diane Iazzetta, a lifelong Elizabeth resident, said, "He was devastated when he heard the school might close." She said her son needed the "small, family environment" after the death of his father.

Another parent, Jennifer Collins, said she never would have allowed her basketball-playing son, Darrian, to commute to St. Patrick for the past five years after transferring from public school in South River, N.J., near New Brunswick, if she didn't believe the academics were sufficient.

"He was an honors math student," she said. "He's been thriving academically, not just in basketball. He's at the top of his class, on his way to college. It's been more than we could hope for and we, like the other parents, were willing to do whatever we could to keep the school open."

Throughout the spring, Lipman and others combed the city for an alternative site, reporting back to Picaro. Kean University considered housing the school, a ray of hope that didn't vanish until early summer. It wasn't until August that they settled on the Social Security building — vacant, gutted, with a leaking roof.

As if directed by Frank Capra, people began stepping out of Picaro's past, asking what they could do. Years ago, Picaro had earned a few extra dollars during summers with Richard Guempel, who owns an electrical contracting company with his brother, John. Free of charge, they renovated the building, constructing 10 gleaming classrooms, offices, a computer laboratory and a multipurpose room.

Elizabeth's mayor, J. Christian Bollwage — his wife a graduate of St. Patrick — helped with building permits and variances. Picaro went to an annual summer luncheon for what he called "broken-down old Elizabeth ballplayers" to speak about his school. Hubie Brown, a St. Mary's graduate and an Elizabeth star before Picaro, opened his checkbook for what Picaro called "a large donation." In the mail one day came a note from a man relocated to Florida, a former Picaro rival. "I remember your fantastic jump shot," the man wrote, along with a $25,000 check.

So, no, do not expect Picaro, a shooter in his time, to play much defense on the role basketball continues to play at his gymnasium-less school, which reopened on Sept. 13 with an enrollment comparable to what it finished with at St. Patrick. Not when he has watched Chavannes's guys — including the St. Joseph's-bound senior star forward DeAndre Bembry — practice without complaint all over the city, or in neighboring towns, and as early as 5:30 a.m. down the road at Kean, where the Celtics won the Union County tournament last week.

They have even had to make the three-mile trek downtown to a small court in a public school building across the street from their old building, the St. Patrick sign still attached, time standing still there after 149 years.

"I miss the old place," Picaro admitted recently. "I'm thrilled to be here, doing what I can, even if it's not as much as I used to do because I have to be careful. But there's so much history over there. And just this morning I was thinking, We're not Catholic anymore."

Money remains tight and the future uncertain. Just the same, after what he's been through, Picaro is holding on, watching closely as his son continues to heal. He is keeping the faith, along with a crucifix that hangs above the door, inside his office.