Loyola President, Father Dave Mastranglo, S.J., and Counselor Father Jim O’Reilly, S.J., share many Loyola High School memories.



In the early 1990s, the Detroit Board of Education proposed starting several all-male academies in an attempt to address the alarmingly high dropout rate of high school males. However, a U.S. District Court ruled that the plan violated the Michigan Constitution.

But recognizing that the Board’s plan had merit, Cardinal Adam Maida contacted Father Joe Daoust, S.J., Provincial of the Detroit Province Jesuits, to discuss taking on this project. A year-long feasibility study, conducted by Father Ken Styles, S.J., concluded a school of this type was needed and could be conducted on a non-public basis. The Archdiocese and the Province decided to jointly sponsor this project, the only such arrangement in the country.

In August 1993, Loyola Academy – as it was called in its early years – opened its doors to 43 ninth graders in a small wing of the former St. Francis Home for Boys at Linwood and Fenkell. Longtime Detroit educator, Father Malcolm Carron, S.J., served as President, with Father Styles as Principal and the late Wyatt Jones, Jr., as Dean of Students.

One year later, the school moved two miles west on Fenkell into the former St. Francis de Sales School, where it has remained. Adding one grade at a time, the school reached its full, four-year enrollment in the 1996-97 school year. On June 1, 1997, Loyola proudly graduated its first senior class. In fact, every member of Loyola’s 14 graduating classes has been accepted into one or more colleges or universities.

A Catholic school in the Jesuit tradition, Loyola began as a concerned response to a pressing need in Detroit and its surrounding communities. With strong involvement of parents and staff at every step of the way, its graduates – truly "men for others" – demonstrate the level of academic, physical, social, and spiritual growth first envisioned by the school’s founders.