Author archive
Loretto Community
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.
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.
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.
(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…
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.
October 11, 1919 – March 14, 2014
Sister Charles Maureen Walker’s life closely follows the lives of early Loretto school-women from the Kentucky Holy Land. Baptized Mary Virginia at St. Charles Church, near Little Loretto, she grew up in the town of Loretto, the oldest child of her mother, Sadie–Mary Sarah O’Daniel, who married Charles Thomas Walker and raised his two daughters and the seven children they had together. Charles was the barber in Loretto for 39 years and their children attended Loretto Public School with the Sisters of Loretto. Mary Virginia began high school with the Ursuline Sisters at St. Francis in Chicago, Kentucky (just west of Loretto on the railroad line).
June 2, 1928 – March 10, 2014
Mary Jane Richardson was born to Catholic Kentuckians Roy Clinton Richardson and Elsie Margaret Kippes Richardson in Louisville Kentucky, where she grew up in St. Benedict’s Parish, the sixth child and only girl in a family with eight brothers, one of whom died in childhood. Jane was taught from the beginning by Loretto Sisters, at St. Benedict’s Elementary and Loretto High School, Louisville. She entered Loretto immediately after high school, receiving the habit and the name Sister Jane Marie on April 25, 1947.
By Molly Butler Interchange Online Loretto rallied among the hundreds of Earth-loving Kentuckians and friends that mobilized on February 12th for the ninth annual “I Love Mountains Day.” It was…
December 7, 1927 — February 17, 2014
Marita Woodruff was the second of five children of Albert and Ruth Donahue Michenfelder. Baptized Ann Ruth, she attended elementary school at Our Holy Redeemer, just down the street from the family home. Ann graduated from Webster Groves High School and then from Webster College, both also very near the Michenfelder home. According to her sister, Mary Phelan, Marita loved theatre, “She used to give neighborhood plays, and she did theater all through high school and college.”
November 11, 1925—February 16, 2014
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Leo James and Mary Sonefeld White, the daughter who would become Sister Ann White was baptized Mary Inez. In an autobiographical sketch written in the late 1980s, Ann called herself “a first generation Kentuckian, since my parents were transferred to Louisville from Grand Rapids, Michigan.” Little Inez began elementary school at St. Vincent DePaul parish, but moved with her family after just one month to Louisville’s west end, where she was enrolled at Christ the King School even though her family lived outside the parish bounds.
April 29, 1920-January 31, 2014
Virginia was born April 29, 1920 in Lodgepople, South Dakota. She and six siblings learned much growing up on their South Dakota farm. Their mother died when Virginia, the youngest child, was 13; but Virginia had been gifted with a depth of compassion and wisdom she took with her throughout her life.
July 31, 1920 – November 29, 2013
I have never been in a place that I haven’t fallen in love with, have never had any living experiences except happy ones. I have continued to LOVE the sisters. When choices became ours to make, I chose Santa Clara, then I chose Denver and now I am basking in my last choice, life once again at Loretto in Kentucky. This just might be the second-best choice of my life. Second, because going to Loretto in 1942 was my first, best choice.