History of Royal Palm Academy

In 1997, responding to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, a woodworker named Patrick Moore initiated a dialogue with his wife Carol about the possibility of starting a private Catholic school in the North Naples area. After a year of research it became clear that the National Consultants for Education (NCE) embodied the school model Naples needed. Site visits to a number of NCE’s affiliate schools and an encounter at Pinecrest Academy in Atlanta, Georgia cemented into Patrick’s heart the desire to bring a gem like that to Naples, FL. As Patrick awaited his tour of Pinecrest Academy, he stopped in the chapel and was struck by the beauty of a first-grade boy kneeling in adoration in front of the Blessed Sacrament. The image never left his heart and he knew that Naples needed a school that would form the hearts of children to authentically love Christ like that little boy did.

On April 27, 1998, Patrick’s birthday, Carol placed a phone call to an attorney to incorporate the school. Carol told Patrick, ‘’Surprise honey, I incorporated your school!’’ They, along with five of their children under seven, the youngest being one-year old twins, and co-founder Lou DePrisco set out to found the academy. Humbled by the awesome undertaking, they hired school experts, NCE, and purchased the Kids for Jesus (K4J) virtue program. They saw clearly that their mission was to start an academy using the successful Legionary model with hope that one day the Legionaries would be willing to take it under their umbrella thus insuring fidelity to its founding mission indefinitely.

On September 2, 1998, bewildered by an opening enrollment of six students (two were their own), they faithfully forged ahead confident of their mission. It took and still takes a string of miracles to establish and advance the Academy. The first miracle was the sudden availability of three trailers on a dusty rented field behind a pink building in Golden Gate right before the Academy opened. Others included the Passover-like mantel that surely protected the school when hurricane Irene was poised to directly hit Naples. Not even a frond from the campus’s solo palm tree was disturbed. Even more beautiful are the many miracles of conversion that have occurred and continue to occur at the Academy.

Those who have sacrificed for the Academy include: benefactors, Jack and Rhodora Donahue, Dick and Barbra Fisher, James and Gail Mcready, Consecrated Principal Catalina Nader, founding Chaplin Msgr. Robert Schriefer (may he rest in peace), Co- founder Lou DePrisco, consultant Jim Pieczynski, and spiritual advisors/ friends Fr. Emilio Diaz LC, and Fr. John Connor LC. There are countless others, too numerous to mention, that without doubt have supported and sacrificed to make Royal Palm Academy one of the foremost schools in the nation today. May they all be rewarded in Heaven!