REGINA Magazine 33 | Page 8

A Dead Thing Goes With the Stream

Reflections on Starting Up a Winning Catholic High School

By Natasa Zambelli-Wilkie

ale Ahlquist is all things Chesterton. Not only is he is an author, public

speaker, Evangelical convert to Catholicism, and Catholic apologist, he has written, edited, or contributed to more than fifteen books on G. K. Chesterton.

Dale is also the co-founder of Chesterton Academy, a Minneapolis-based high school rated one of the top 50 Catholic schools in the United States. It was the school which fascinated REGINA writer Natasa Zambelli-Wilkie, a Croatian writer based in Malaysia. Here, she interviews Dale at length.

D

REGINA: What is your background?

DA: I had a fairly wide and varied experience in business, lobbying, non-profit work, writing, speaking, and television, all of which would prove to be useful in getting a school going. But I’d never been involved in education!

REGINA: Why did you decide to start a school?

DA: Mostly for selfish reasons. I was looking for a high school for my own children and couldn’t find the right one.

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