By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

Four years ago Bojan and Dvor Mitrovic arrived in Chicago from Bosnia-Herzegovina with their parents and couple bags of belongings. It took less than a year for Bojan to decide he and his brother didn’t want to go to a public high school.

Emmanual Mitchell grew up in Woodlawn, attending St. Gelasius. His mother died when he was in eighth grade, and now his 26-year-old sister supports him and his brother.

With the help of scholarships from a Big Shoulders Fund grant, the three students attend Mount Carmel High School. On Nov. 2, the third annual Lend a Shoulder Day, they had lunch with some of the fund’s benefactors and shared their stories.

Kim and William Bax, managing partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Karen and Giancarlo Turano of Turano Baking Co. toured Mount Carmel, visiting classes and meeting students, along with Fox News sports anchor Cory McPherrin. They were among more than 230 Big Shoulders donors and community leaders who visited some of the 111 inner-city schools that receive money from the fund.

Carmelite Father Carl Markelz, the school’s principal, said a $15,000 block grant from Big Shoulders provides partial scholarships to 30 of the school’s 800 boys. Several other students have Gallagher scholarships administered by the Big Shoulders Fund.

During their tour, visitors watched students conduct a physics experiment, learned about Spain’s transition to Christianity in a Spanish class and heard a student in the Advanced Placement U.S. history class give an oral report on feminism.

Along the way, they gazed at the trophies and framed sports pages that lined the walls and the corridors of the cafeteria, which also serves as a theater and wrestling gym.

William Bax, a 1961 graduate of Mount Carmel, said some parts of the school haven’t changed—particularly the 1920s-era gym and swimming pool. But in some ways, the school has changed a great deal, he said.

“I just love seeing the places I knew so well,” said Bax, who last year visited his elementary school, St. Philip Neri, on Lend a Shoulder Day. “You visit the Catholic schools, and you see such a will to learn and a lot of discipline and a lot of happy kids.”

This year was the first Lend a Shoulder Day for the Turanos, who recently became involved with the fund.

Both men took time to talk about their careers with seniors from political science and accounting classes.

Turano, who arrived in Chicago from Italy with his family in 1958, told of driving his father’s bakery truck to St. Joseph High School in Westchester, making deliveries to homes along the way. Since then, he and his brothers have built up the business, which now employs 550 people and provides bread for Olive Garden and Boston Market restaurants across the country, along with distributing it in grocery stores.

He urged the students to take their schoolwork seriously, even if they don’t think it will be relevant to their careers.

“Everything you learn in school, it has a place in your career as you go along,” he said.

Like Bax, his college degree is in accounting, although he never practiced as an accountant.

Bax talked up the idea of accounting as a major or a career, saying his first exposure to it came in a class at Mount Carmel.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, and after that first accounting class I knew I kind of liked it,” Bax told the students. “If you have any desire to get into any kind of business, whether you want to sell something or run something, the more you understand the language of accounting, the more successful you will be.”

Big Shoulders started Lend a Shoulder Day three years ago to give corporate and community leaders a first-hand glimpse of the importance of inner-city Catholic education, said James J. O’Connor, chairman of the Big Shoulders Fund and retired chairman and CEO of Commonwealth Edison and Unicom.

Catholic schools Superintendent Nicholas Wolsonovich participated by visiting three elementary schools with Cardinal George.

“This is a great opportunity to showcase the quality inner-city Catholic education provided to approximately 38,000 students,” Wolsonovich said. “The fact that our drop-out rate is less than 1 percent speaks volumes of the education provided to our students.”

At Mount Carmel, which draws students from its own Woodlawn neighborhood and as far away as Michigan City, Ind., about 98 percent of graduates attend college.

Bojan Mitrovic and Mitchell both intend to be among them next year.