Amid the festivities to celebrate 150 years of Catholic education in Vicksburg this weekend will be a dedication and ribbon-cutting Friday morning at the newly named William F. Lauderdale Sr. Physics and Chemistry Lab at St. Aloysius High School.

Lauderdale was a 1938 graduate of St. Aloysius who went on to become assistant personnel chief at Waterways Experiment Station. He also served in the U.S. Marines in World War II and in the Army during the Korean War.

He retained a connection to St. Al, as he and his wife, Mary Jane, sent their four children — Warren County Supervisor William Lauderdale Jr., former Hinds County Supervisor Joseph Lauderdale, Hinds Community College Work-Based Learning Coordinator Jane Flowers and artist Chris Maloney, a Madison resident — to school there and at St. Francis Xavier.

“We were delighted and honored that they would consider naming the lab for him,” said Joe Lauderdale, who made the donation of an undisclosed amount in the family’s name.

The former supervisor, a civil engineer in Jackson, said he was recently invited to visit the school and address a couple of the classes about the importance of Catholic education in his life.

“I was so impressed with the students — with their dress, their appearance, their attitudes,” he said. “Since I took science, not only there but going on to take engineering in college, I know it’s an extremely important area of their education. I wanted to do something to support it.”

Ribbon-cutting and dedication will be at 9:30 a.m.

The gift will be used to upgrade the lab in stages over at least the next five years, said St. Al development director Patty Mekus.

“We’ve added a number of things we needed in the lab, including equipment, (prepared) slides, different curriculum and lots of hands-on activities for physics and chemistry,” Mekus said. “We’ll be able to use it for years to come.”

Joe Lauderdale said he especially remembers former St. Al principal, Brother Mark Thornton of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart.

“I had the utmost respect for Brother Mark,” he said. “He was extremely devoted to educating hard-headed kids like me and molding us into a character that would help us in later life. We might not have realized at the time the importance of what (the brothers) were trying to do for us, with the discipline and determination they had.”

The Brothers of the Sacred Heart opened the school in 1879 and largely staffed it until its reorganization in 1968, when the Sisters of Mercy took over operation of the Catholic schools. The sisters then turned the schools over to lay administration and control in the early 1990s.

The Scott building, which houses the science lab, was built in 2004.

William Lauderdale Sr. was a charter member of the current St. Michael Catholic Church and a member of the Knights of Columbus Council No. 898, Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion. He died in 2003.