All former students of All Saints’ Episcopal School and All Saints’ College will get a chance this weekend to peek at campus changes and visit with former classmates while meeting AmeriCorps volunteers now occupying the school on Confederate Avenue.

If you go

The first all-class All Saints’ Episcopal School Reunion at 2717 Confederate Ave. will kick off Friday with registration at 3 p.m. and an open house at 5. Saturday’s events will begin with registration at 9 a.m., chapel service at 11, lunch at noon and dinner and entertainment at 7 p.m. Events will wrap up at 10:30 a.m. Nov. 8 with services at The Church of the Holy Trinity, Episcopal, on South Street. For more information, call 601-636-5266 or visit www.allsaintsweb.com.

It will be the first all-class reunion for the school that was 98 years old when a lack of funding closed it in 2006.

“It’s going to be a big event,” said Ginny Rosser Abraham, a 1988 graduate. “A lot of people have volunteered for this event.”

Abraham will be among 500 who have registered.

Individual graduating classes have held their own reunions, but this will be the first for all classes.

The three-day celebration will kick off Friday with registration at 3 p.m. and an open house in the rectory at 5.

Saturday’s events will begin with registration at 9 a.m. and a service at 11 a.m. at the All Saints’ Chapel and lunch to follow. Dinner and entertainment will begin at 7 p.m.

Events will wrap up Sunday with a 10:30 a.m. church service at The Church of the Holy Trinity, Episcopal, on South Street led by the Rev. John Jenkins, a former headmaster and event coordinator.

Jenkins became headmaster of All Saints’ in 1962, the year the school lost its junior college division and gained the ninth grade. That year, it changed its name from All Saints’ College to All Saints’ Episcopal School.

When the school was opened in 1908, Green Hall was the only building on campus. Johnson Hall, a dormitory named for financier, Mrs. J.W. Johnson, was built in 1925 as class sizes grew.

Today the property consists of nine buildings on 40 acres off Confederate Avenue, just north of North Frontage Road.

The religious boarding school accepted girl students until 1953. Boys were admitted as day students in 1961 and, in 1970, the school accepted its first black students.

During Tuesday’s event meeting, volunteers consisted of former teachers and students who all shared nostalgic memories.

“I was an angel,” said Vicksburg resident Bobbie Peterson Marascalco, co-chairman of the event committee and a 1970 graduate. “One of the first activities you did when you came to school was that you drew to see if you were an angel or a devil. I had a lot of family members prior to me who had been a devil and all my nieces and nephews, except for one nephew, were all devils.”

Angels and devils competed against one another in all areas of the school including academics, sports and contests.

Shelby Flowers Ferris of Vicksburg will be the alumna representing the graduating class of 1936, the oldest class attending.

“I’m looking forward to the reunion,” said Ferris, 91. She was a day student and, like many of her classmates, saw generations of family members graduate from the school. “There were many day students at that time, so I had many friends from Vicksburg,” she said. Ferris recalls countless memories during her time at All Saints’.

“It was always orderly, and we had an assigned academic rating when I was there,” she said. “The highlight of my time was when I was chosen as the May Queen in my freshman year. They had a pageant every spring, and each class selects one to compete. It’s comparable to the homecoming queen. That was just the biggest thing in my life at that time,” she said, laughing.

Two of her five children, Hester Ferris Magnison of Austin, Texas, and Shelby Ferris Fitzpatrick of England, attended All Saints’ during the 1970s.

Her husband, the late William Ferris of Vicksburg, was a plantation owner who furnished the school with equipment and a small labor force enabling the expansion of the property during the late 1950s.

After the religious boarding school closed its doors to students in 2006, the property was dormant until a different crop of students arrived in August.

Currently, 160 AmeriCorps volunteers live in the dorms.

“The heritage of All Saints’ as a school,” began Jenkins, the current liaison between the property’s owners and AmeriCorps, “much of that is being carried on by AmeriCorps and their willingness to go out and help other people to better their lives.”

He said the Episcopal diocese of Mississippi, which co-owns the school with the Episcopal dioceses of Louisiana, Arkansas and Western Louisiana, leased 80 percent of the property for the national volunteer group on a five-year commitment. He noted the lease will have to be updated each year.

The reunion, which organizers hope will be held every five years, is open to all with ties to the school.

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Contact Manivanh Chanprasith at mchan@vicksburgpost.com