In her first two years of high school, Madge Elmore felt liberated.

Attending the all-girls Catholic school Holy Names Academy in the 1970s, she spent her days surrounded by other girls and taught by nuns. There was no pressure to do her hair in the mornings or put on a face of makeup every day if she didn’t feel up to it; no one would look twice.

“It was just me being a part of the girls, and it was safe and it was wonderful,” she recalled in an interview Thursday. “It was free, and we could be as goofy as we wanted to. Nobody would think otherwise of it.”

Then, in her sophomore year, rumors started swirling that her beloved “girls club” was in a financial bind and considering closure.

By February, the Spokane school announced it would shutter at the end of the school year as costly f

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