Remembrances

Hedwig Isabelle Catherine Bruck arrived as Frank and Mary Bruck’s first child exactly nine months after their marriage, “an embarrassment” her parents joked. She was born in Quincy, Ill., although both sides of her family were settled in St. Louis. Mary Denis, as she would be known for 78 years in Loretto, gave an extensive…

Mary Theresa Wiseman was the oldest child of Charles Bernard and Christine Margaret McMillen Wiseman, two Catholics from the area around Elizabethtown in Hardin County, Ky.  Their family grew to include five girls and two boys.  Bernard was a farmer and the family moved from time to time.  Theresa was born in Hodgenville in Larue…

Elizabeth Jane McWilliams was born in Rockford, Ill., the only child of Frances Marguerite “Betty” McWilliams and Francis Lloyd “Mac” McWilliams.  These two Midwesterners amply gifted their daughter with Midwestern frankness and Catholic faith.  In a lengthy interview during Loretto’s 2012 Jubilee, Betty began with her growing up and how she got to Loretto: “My…

Sister Frances Weber was born Cornelia Frances Weber in Freeport, Texas, one of four children of Roland Emile Weber and Elizabeth Mary Kleinpeter, both Louisianans by birth. To her parents and her siblings, Helen, Joe and James, she was Connie. She first came to know the Sisters of Loretto when her mother enrolled her in school…

Lois Ann Gohl was born the fifth child of William August Julius Gohl, of St. Paul, Minn., and Rose Caroline Woerner Gohl of St. Louis. Their large family home was in the St. Louis suburb of Webster Groves, where Ann attended the public grade and high schools. With these bare-bones facts, we pick up Ann’s own account…

(Author’s Note on Kay Lane SL: Kay left us nothing written about herself. But she was a great storyteller.  What follows here are the facts from Kay’s personnel record, embellished with the memories of her novitiate classmates, friends with whom she lived and worked, and especially her close friend, Kathleen Tighe SL.) If Kay Lane were…

Author’s Note: This remembrance of Sister Marietta Goy draws heavily on the report of an interview of Marietta done in 2008 by Kathleen O’Malley.  Additional material is from Marietta’s personnel file. When Marietta Goy came into the world she was baptized Geraldine.  She grew up in the farming community of Sublette, Ill., as the oldest…

Rita Hurtt was the third of four children of Arthur and Gertrude Hurtt of Pagedale, on the inner ring of St. Louis suburbs where families had large yards and gardens. Rita tells us something about her family and early childhood in a small essay she wrote titled “Three Cheers forChildhood”: “Being young and carefree as…

A year ago, Mary Katherine Hammett’s younger brother, Johnny, wasn’t able to attend her 75th jubilee. So Johnny and his wife, Lois, wrote out and sent a collection of their memories and these give us the beginning of the story of Mary Katherine’s life.  Mary Katherine was born on May 20, 1925, in Colorado Springs, Colo.,…