She was born in St. Louis in 1911 and baptized Mary Melinda, after her maternal grandmother. She began elementary school in 1917 at St. James Parochial School in the city, but soon transferred to Immaculate Conception Parochial School in Maplewood…
Sister Mary Barbara Croghan was born in Denver, the first of three children of John and Barbara Stroh Croghan. Baptized Dorothy Ellen, she took her mother’s and her younger sister’s names when she was received in Loretto, being known as…
Don McCloskey approached his death like he had learned to approach each day of his life: open, present, feeling his feelings, communicating from the heart, eliciting an ever-deepening awareness and shared acceptance tinged with hope. How did he get that way? He…
Co-member Jim Schumacher, husband of co-member Mary Roberts, died the morning of Nov. 2 after a long illness. Jim was born in St Louis, the fourth of five children of George J. and Louise Bender Schumacher. He and his wife, Mary Ann Roberts, the former Loretto Sister Marian Jeanne, became Co-members in 2004.
Frances Gertrude Zoghby was the eldest of nine children of George Kaleel and Emma Kahalley Zoghby. Her father was born in Beirut, which was Syria at the time, now Lebanon. Her mother was a native of Mobile, Ala., and the Zoghbys raised their family there in Immaculate Conception Cathedral Parish. Of Frances’ siblings in this close knit family, three are living, as well as three of their spouses. Miriam, Cecilia and Raymond have been Frances’ faithful companions especially in her final years.
Mary Eloise Jarvis was the elder of two daughters born to Henry Noel Jarvis and Mary Wheatley Jarvis of Harrisburg, Ill. Henry, like his brothers, was a veterinarian surgeon; Mary was a music teacher and a gifted musician who passed on her gifts to both Eloise and her younger sister Eleanor. Eloise’s musical education began as soon as she could reach the piano keyboard and continued under her mother’s careful teaching for 12 years.
By Mary Catherine Rabbitt No one has taken the task of becoming a Loretto Co-member more seriously or intently than Mary Ann Lovett! Mary Ann DeBaggio Lovett first met the Sisters of Loretto at St. Ann’s Grade School in Arlington,…
Sister Helen Ann was born May 17, 1918, in Rockford, Ill. She was one of four daughters and two sons of Marie Ellen (Hennessey) and Thomas J. Reynolds. She entered the Sisters of Loretto from St. Peter Parish, Rockford, in 1936. Sister Helen Ann received the habit and her religious name on April 25, 1937, pronounced her first vows on April 25, 1939 and made her final vows on Aug. 15, 1942.
Carina Vetter was the seventh and youngest child born to Bernard Vetter and Bertha Pittrick Vetter. Her parents were first generation German-Americans, born in Cole County Missouri to German immigrants in the decade following the Civil War. Carina was born and raised in Jefferson City, Missouri, where she attended St. Peter’s parish grade and high school, taught by the Notre Dame Sisters. Graduating in 1937, during the lean years of the Great Depression, she put aside her desire to attend college and went to work as bookkeeper at an uncle’s machine shop.
Margaret Ann Hummel was born in Louisville, Ky., on St. Patrick’s Day 1932, just a few minutes after her twin sister, Rose Marie. They were the fourth and fifth children of six born to Norbert Daniel Hummel Sr. and Margaret Maloney Hummel, both Louisville natives. Margaret wrote in her autobiography that her parents fostered in all six children solid family traditions and religious values.
(Note: This remembrance draws heavily from the three autobiographies which Sister Margaret Fitzgerald contributed to her personnel file in the archive.) Margaret was born in Sterling Ill., the fourth of 15 children of Earle Fitzgerald and Virginia Schiltz. Of her family…
Sister Jeannette Marie Donnelly was very proud of her origins: She told the archives that she was born on the family ranch at Running Water, near Springfield SD, on or near the ranch her mother’s grand parents settled in the 1850s. Baptized Catherine Jeannette, she was the third of four children of James Edward Donnelly and Bertha Emma Moon. Before 1928 the family moved to the southeast, where Catherine Jeannette bounced from one grade school to another in Florida and Alabama. Relatives in New Mexico invited Catherine and her two older sisters, Lavonne and Ruth, to Las Cruces in 1935, so they could attend Loretto Academy.