NATCHEZ — More than 40 teachers, students and alumni gathered Saturday to remember the lives changed at Trinity Episcopal Day School.

“This is a day for all Saints,” said the Rev. Alex Allain, an alumnus. “It is good we’re here to celebrate our school once again.”

Trinity Episcopal Day School administration announced in January the school would close its red doors permanently after 47 years of operation, and the final class will graduate in May.

The Rev. Brian R. Seage, bishop of Mississippi and one of the speakers at the memorial, said instead of focusing on the sad fact of closing, the Trinity family should focus on the hundreds of lives that the school changed.

“Think about how blessed we were to have these relationships,” Seage said. “It was the first place for faith development … but also the bedrock on which their faith was formed. I’m sure many of our students would say they were blessed.”

Allain thanked those who supported the school, saying often it was a mother or father who served doubly as a volunteer, a teacher or a coach.

More than anything, Allain said, Trinity was a family.

“This place will again send you out,” Allain said, “to love and to learn, as was Trinity’s goal.”

As Trippy Shields, who graduated from Trinity’s first class in 1972, read a passage from Ecclesiastes, his voice cracked.

“For everything, there is a season,” he read, “and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die … a time to weep, and a time to laugh …”

More than anything, Seage said, the memorial was a time of celebration and a time to remember why the school was so dear to so many.

“We do say goodbye to the bricks and mortar, but we do something else,” Seage said. “Goodbye is just the contraction of the words ‘God be with you.’ It’s a a blessing. Today, we bless this school, this bedrock.”