ADRIAN — At the final Alumni Weekend at Siena Heights University, held April 17-19, the campus felt at once full and fleeting — like something both ending and refusing to end.

At the Homecoming Mass on April 18, Father Tom Helfrich, OSFS, who has served as campus chaplain for more than 20 years, stood before those crowding St. Dominic Chapel and offered his reflection on the Gospel of the disciples on the road to Emmaus — tying it to our shared experience of Siena.

It’s a familiar story — two followers of Christ walking in confusion and grief after the crucifixion, trying to make sense of what had been lost.

“And as I often do,” Helfrich said, “I raise a prayer for Siena Heights in our final semester.”

Then he paused and shared a moment from an earlier Mass.

“A woman came up to me afterwards and said, ‘I’m sorry — I don’t think I understood you. Did you say Siena Heights is closing?’ And I should have said, ‘Are you the only person in Jerusalem?’”

The line drew laughter, but it also carried truth. Even now, months after the June 29 announcement, the closing still lands unevenly — new to some, heavy for all.

“What do you do with disappointment?” Helfrich asked. “What do you do with heartbreak?”

He didn’t answer directly.

“Somehow you try to survive. Somehow we move on.”

I graduated from Siena Heights — then Siena Heights College — on May 11, 1980. But my connection to the school reaches back further than that.

My mother attended Siena in the early 1950s to study art, though she never completed her degree. Growing up in Tecumseh, we drove to Adrian often, especially for the 5 p.m. Sunday evening Mass at St. Mary’s — easier, my parents thought, than getting six daughters ready for morning Mass at St. Elizabeth.

My dad always took “the back way,” and we would pass the Siena campus along the route. My mother would point out the buildings where she had taken classes, and I remember being struck — almost overwhelmed — by the red brick of Sacred Heart Hall, the chapel, and the dormitories, Ledwidge and Archangelus. I imagined myself there long before I ever filled out an application.

In truth, it was the only school I considered, so it’s probably a good thing they said yes.

Siena became a family place. My sisters Catherine, Lisa, and Anne all attended, as did my brother John. It was woven into our lives long before we had the language to name what it meant.

That is what made the announcement last summer so jarring. And what has followed these past nine months has been something like the Emmaus road — part grief, part reflection, part slow recognition of what remains.

During Alumni Weekend, the campus filled again with familiar rhythms. Nearly 100 athletes were inducted into the final Athletic Hall of Fame, including my sister, Lisa Lapham Heusted, ’86. There were tailgates, tours, and the quiet ritual of taking photos in front of the places that shaped us.

Everywhere, people were telling stories. The alumni Facebook page was filled with photos — campus landmarks, old snapshots — each one sparking a flood of memories as more voices joined in.

Father Tom told one of his own — about his first experience with the alumni awards some 20 years ago, when he was asked, with little notice, to offer a prayer.

“It was a jaw-dropping experience,” he said. “Hearing the tales and experiences, seeing Siena Heights alumni — who they were, what they’ve done, what they’re still doing.”

Then he paused.

“And it happened again on Friday,” he said simply. “Life. Life.”

Not memory. Not nostalgia. Life.

That word lingered.

Because if there is a thread running through this ending, it is not absence. It is continuation.

“We’re going to have more alumni awards,” he added with a hint of a smile. “Because we still have alumni.”

He acknowledged the uncertainty — what becomes of the campus, what the future holds — but he was clear about something else.

“What we’ve been blessed with here is not coming to an end with commencement in May,” he said. “Who we are continues to live.”

In January, I returned to Siena in a new role, accepting a full-time position as Academic Coordinator for the McNair Scholars Program. I knew from the start it would be temporary. But it has given me something I didn’t know I needed — the chance to say goodbye not all at once, but in pieces. To walk the campus again. To tell my stories. To sing with the University Chorale. To listen to others. To see, in real time, how what began here continues in the lives of students who will carry it forward.

“What I do know,” Father Tom said near the close of his homily, “is that the worst thing we can do is isolate ourselves. It’s foolish and futile to hang our heads and moan.”

Instead, he spoke of seeds — of all that has been planted here since 1919.

“Seeds sown continue to sprout and drop new seeds,” he said. “Life goes on.”

There is, in that image, a kind of answer to his earlier question.

What do you do with disappointment?

You gather. You remember. You tell the stories again.

You refuse to believe that an ending is the same thing as a loss.

Siena Heights University may close its doors in June, but the life it created — 26,000 graduates, countless classrooms, quiet moments of discovery — does not end there.

We are not just residence halls and classrooms and athletic fields.

We are Siena.

And we will carry that with us for the rest of our lives.

As our patron, St. Catherine of Siena, reminds us: Be who God meant you to be, and you will set the world on fire.

That fire is still burning.

Related story:

• Closing a university is a process without a guidebook (May 2, 2026)