Loretto Community

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.

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.

Sept. 25, 1913 – June 29, 2014 (Note: This remembrance draws heavily from the three autobiographies which Sister Margaret Fitzgerald contributed to her personnel file in the archive.) Margaret was…

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.

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.