AUBURN — Hundreds of graduates and students from the Catholic schools of Lewiston and Auburn gathered Saturday at St. Dominic Academy on the first day of a two-day 75th anniversary celebration for the now consolidated elementary-to-secondary school.

“This day has met and exceeded all expectations,” said Donald Fournier, president of Saint Dominic Academy.

Former students of several local parochial schools, and members of their families, were gathering half an hour before the event began.

Sue Dutil Duchette, who works in the St. Dom’s alumni/advancement office, agreed that attendance was remarkable in terms of both numbers and class years represented. She said she had talked with a graduate from the Class of 1945.

Among the people looking at displays in the school library was Conrad Paquette, Class of 1953, who went to St. Bernadette Parochial School in Lisbon, one of the older Catholic schools in the area. He now lives in Boston.

“I came up to see what things are like now,” he said.

It was his first return to the area in many years. Paquette recalled his school days when he was a drummer. He went on to service in the U.S Marine Corps and remembers playing golf in Hawaii with President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The library displays included a variety of scrapbooks and many years of high school yearbooks named “Echo.” There were copies of “Veritas,” the St. Dom’s newspaper, and mementos from St. Dominic High School’s storied championship hockey seasons in the 1950s and 1960s.

Several classrooms served as reunion meeting spaces for the 13 Catholic elementary schools of past years. The room for St. Louis and Sacred Heart schools of Auburn had about two dozen people renewing friendships at one point Saturday afternoon.

Many of the former students came from large families. Among them were five of seven sisters who attended St. Louis Catholic School in New Auburn between 1961 and 1978. They are all daughters of Albert and Lucille Carrier, and there also were three boys in the family.

The sisters, who lived on Seventh Street in New Auburn, are Theresa Demers, Laurette Gosselin, Pauline Gregoire, Jeanne Dore and Louise Robinson, and they still live in the Lewiston-Auburn area.

Ed Boucher, a well-known local musician, recording producer and music businessman, St. Peter’s Class of 1962, said he had been meeting and greeting old friends throughout the afternoon.

“It began when I got here and it hasn’t stopped yet,” he said.

Many of the memories he shared with friends involved his years with the Royal Knights, an early rock ‘n’ roll band, and the historic PAL Hops at Lewiston City Hall.

“I ran into one guy I hadn’t seen in 30 years,” Boucher said.

Jolene Ten Eyck of the Holy Cross School Class of 1963 went on to Lewiston High School. She, and many other girls who could not attend the then all-boys St. Dom’s, can now call themselves alumnae of the school, according to a recent official decision announced by Fournier.

One of Van Eyck’s fond memories was of Sister Constance, who was her “favorite nun, and a real person.”

Saturday’s 75th Anniversary program concluded with an assembly in the gymnasium, in which several plaques and awards were presented in honor of lay teachers and religious orders.

Jim King, superintendent of Maine Catholic Schools, told attendees the reunion recognized “the amazing connectivity of generations” in the L-A area.

Also speaking were Connie Cote, noted French-language radio personality and former legislator who said she is approaching 90 years of age and is a graduate of St. Peter’s in the early 1940s, and Auburn Mayor Jonathan LaBonte, St. Dom’s Class of 1998.

The program paid tribute to Sister Pauline Bonenfant, 98, who was an admired teacher during her 77 years as a Dominican nun. Sister Pauline spent the afternoon moving from room to room and along the corridors as she reminisced with dozens of people. She taught in the 1930s at Cours Supérieur, the girls’ division prior to 1946.

The 75th Anniversary Celebration for St. Dominic Academy continues with a Mass of Appreciation at noon today, Aug. 14, at the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Lewiston with the Most Rev. Robert Deeley, Bishop of the Diocese of Portland, presiding.