In Memoriam

We Remember

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Sister Patricia Downey, OP (Jean Edmund)

(1939-2023)

Pat was a highly respected, competent, deeply committed administrator. She was recognized for this ministry by Barry University in 2003 when she received the Adrian Dominican Leadership Award on behalf of the Adrian Dominican Sisters who worked in diocesan central educational offices. But she was as deeply committed to her vocation as an Adrian Dominican Sister. In her annals she often shared her choice to live simply and her mindfulness of the challenge of balancing ministry with  community life.

Sister Rosemary Asaro, Holy Rosary Mission Chapter Assistant, in this eulogy was describing Sister Patricia Downey, whose ministries had included thirty-seven years in educational administrative positions in Michigan and especially Illinois.

Patricia Jeannette Downey entered the world in Chicago on January 18, 1939, born three months prematurely to Edmund and Jeannette (Sunderland) Downey. In her life story, she attributed her early arrival to being “[e]ager to join my mom, dad, and older sister.”

She ended up being the middle of three children, between Mary Catherine and Edmund, born two years after Pat.

Read more about Sister Pat (PDF)

Memorial gifts may be made to Adrian Dominican Sisters, 1257 East Siena Heights Drive, Adrian, Michigan, 49221.

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Sister Margaret Mary McGill, OP (Agnes Carol)

(1925-2023)

Once upon a time in a Barry University newspaper, “The Flame,” the writer noted Sister Margaret Mary McGill blushed at the suggestion that she was an educational trailblazer. However, given her accomplishments, she was indeed a trailblazer, always open to new challenges, preparing herself to meet them, and she rarely shied away from anything.

Sister Judy Friedel, Chapter Prioress of the Holy Rosary Chapter, said this in her eulogy for Sister Margaret Mary McGill after summarizing Sister’s many years of service as a teacher, school administrator, paralegal specializing in immigration issues, literacy center director, and Peace Corps volunteer. These ministries and her studies took Sister Margaret Mary to several U.S. states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, and Hungary.

She was born in Rhode Island on November 12, 1925, to John and Agnes (Acorn) McGill. Little is known about her younger years other than that she had an older brother named Robert and two younger sisters, Virginia (known as Hope) and Dorothy, and that the children took turns living with their divorced parents.

Her first teachers were the Mercy Sisters at St. Joseph School in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. After elementary school she briefly attended Pawtucket East High School, but then went to live with her mother in Florida and completed her high school education at St. Ann School in West Palm Beach. The Adrian Dominican Sisters who made up the faculty there inspired her to religious life, and she entered the Congregation in 1944 right after graduation.

Learn more about Sister Margaret Mary (PDF)

Memorial gifts may be made to Adrian Dominican Sisters, 1257 East Siena Heights Drive, Adrian, Michigan, 49221.

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Tagged With: Agnes Carol, Margaret Mary McGill / 1448 Views

Sister Helen Hankerd, OP (Mary Ingrid)

(1929-2023)

Helen Magdeline Hankerd, born in Chelsea, Michigan, on August 26, 1929, was the oldest of Oleta (Hutzel) and Emmett Hankerd’s seven children. She was followed by, in order, Therese, Mary, Eileen, Paul (known as Bud), Rose Ann, and Jane Cecile.

Helen remembered her childhood as a happy one, and her family was quite close-knit and remained so their entire lives. Sadly, Oleta died in March 1942 when her youngest was born, and Jane Cecile herself died when she was just two years old. Emmett, who owned the Hankerd Pure Oil service station in Chelsea, was determined to keep the family together, even when he had to go to court to ensure he maintained custody of his children. He remained single for two decades until marrying his second wife, Beatrice Doyle, in 1963. Beatrice had been widowed a few years earlier.

Along with her siblings, Helen attended St. Mary School in Chelsea, which is where she first met the Adrian Dominican Sisters. Her high school years were spent at Chelsea High School, across the street from the family home, and after graduation in 1947 she went to work in a local grocery store.

But a long-held call to religious life won out soon enough, even over the scholarship she had been offered by the University of Michigan. In August 1947 she sent a letter to Mother Gerald seeking entrance to the Congregation. “For a long time I have cherished the hope of becoming a Dominican Sister, and now I feel that I am free to fulfill that desire,” she wrote. She was about to turn eighteen, she added, and her two next oldest sisters would both be in high school and able to carry on the work at home.