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(1933-2023)
The Song of Songs is one of the most beautiful love poems in Scripture. Perhaps that is what Julianne read and heard in her heart in 1950 when she entered the Felicians. She asked to see the lover’s face and to hear his voice. The love letters of God and Julianne were written for twenty years with the Felician Sisters, and then the cleft of life’s rocks echoed the voice of her beloved to the Adrian Dominican Sisters.
Sister Patricia Harvat opened her homily for Sister Julianne Wolny’s funeral with this reflection on Sister Julianne’s long relationship with her God, a connection echoed by Sister Julianne herself when she wrote in one of her annals: “Ever since I left home in 1947 to enter the Felician Academy, I wanted to deepen my relationship with the Lord through a religious commitment.”
Sister Julianne was born on February 16, 1933, in Saginaw, Michigan, to Frank and Martha (Sobkowiak) Wolny, both of whom were born in Germany. She was the oldest child of three, with Bernard and Marianne rounding out the family.
Read more about Sister Julianne (PDF).
Memorial gifts may be made to Adrian Dominican Sisters, 1257 East Siena Heights Drive, Adrian, Michigan, 49221.
Sister's Memorial Card (PDF)
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(1934-2023)
For Joan Ann Marconi, an unhappy experience – her parents’ painful divorce – paved the way for something much better in her life: her introduction to the Adrian Dominican Sisters.
Joan was born in Boston on June 23, 1934, to Armand and Irene (Gagliardi) Marconi. It is not known how Armand, a native of Rome, Italy, and Irene met, but they married in Boston in 1931.
Because of complications during her birth, Joan ended up being her parents’ only child. Still, she was surrounded by extended family; she grew up among many uncles and aunts, and Sunday dinners at her maternal grandparents’ house could easily involve some twenty people. In her March 25, 2019, “A Sister’s Story” video, she told the story of how her grandmother fed not only the family but many neighbors as well. It was Joan’s job as a child to take plates of pasta to these neighbors and then, several days later, go around and pick up the plates in preparation for the next Sunday.
She was in about second grade when her parents divorced, and she lived with her maternal grandparents for several years when her mother was offered a job in Miami, Florida. Then, after eighth grade, she moved to Florida to live with her mother. Irene earned a good wage as a bookkeeper, and “life in the sunny South became both exciting and energizing for me,” Sister Joan wrote. “I was also thrilled to be with my Mom."
Read more about Sister Joan (PDF)
(1932-2023)
On September 6, 1961, three young women arrived in Adrian from San Fernando in the Philippines to begin their formation process to serve as the nucleus for a new Dominican congregation back home. The next September, two more of what Mother Gerald dubbed “The Queen’s Daughters” – because she was so impressed by their gracious manners – joined the two of their countrywomen who had remained.
One of the 1962 arrivals was Evangelina Fernandez, or Vangie as she was called. Vangie was born on April 25, 1932, in Talavera in the Philippine province of Nueva Ecija. Her parents were Ciriaco and Jacinta Garcia Fernandez.
Vangie graduated from Talavera Provincial High School in 1949 and went on to become certified as a teacher by the Philippine Normal School in 1952. She earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary and high school education from Wesleyan College in Cabanatuan City in 1957.
Read more about Sister Evangelina (PDF)
(1935-2023)
Eugene McAuliffe was visiting his brother in a Spokane, Washington, hospital when he encountered the lady who would soon become his wife, Sally Milnor, the daughter of a ship’s captain who often took his children along on his seafaring adventures. The couple settled in Spokane after their marriage, and on January 12, 1935, their first child, Virginia Kathryn, the future Sister Rosaire, entered the world.
Just a few months later, with the Great Depression at its height, the Works Progress Administration was established, and Gene became part of the crew that built the Grand Coulee Dam. He moved his wife and baby daughter to a town built for the workers called Coulee City, and it was there that two more children, James and Sally, came into the family.
In 1940, with work slowing on the dam, the McAuliffes moved to Snohomish, Washington, where Gene worked as a construction supervisor, and the family grew by two: Patricia and Michael. Then, as the United States entered World War II in 1942, Gene took advantage of the booming shipbuilding industry and moved the family once again, this time to Bremerton, Washington.
Virginia attended elementary school at Our Lady Star of the Sea School in Bremerton and then went to high school at Holy Angels Academy in Seattle, where the Everett Dominican Sisters (later to become the Edmonds Dominican Sisters) were her teachers. She entered the Everett congregation after graduating from Holy Angels in 1953 and was received as a novice in June 1954, with the religious name Sister Rosaire.
Read more about Sister Rosaire (PDF)
Our Adrian Dominican cemetery with its circular headstones is a beautiful place of rest for women who gave their lives in service to God — and a peaceful place for contemplation and remembrance.
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