The final commencement ceremony at Anna Maria College last week marked a bittersweet moment for the school’s last graduating class, as students and community members reflected on memories made at the small Catholic college following the announcement of its planned closure.
The college brings fond memories for the family of Molly Bish, who in their years of work to find answers and justice after the 16-year-old disappeared in 2000 helped establish the Molly Bish Center for the Protection of Children and the Elderly at the school.
“It’s sad. We’ve done a lot of work there,” said Heather Bish, Molly’s sister and director of the Molly Bish Foundation. “It was planned to be like a training center. We know in my sister’s case that law enforcement did not know how to respond to a missing persons case, and there was a lot of mistakes.”
Closing of Molly Bish Center at Anna Maria College
Established in 2004, the center helped cross-train thousands of police officers and social workers, organized fingerprinting and child identification kits and served as a community resource in Central Massachusetts before concluding its work last year…