(1943-2021)

As in the scripture from the book of Ruth, she left the culture and land she knew and learned to walk softly with another culture and land in South Carolina. Just as Ruth did with her mother-in-law, Naomi, Carol made her new home among a group unknown to her until her arriving in South Carolina. … Carol came to listen and walk humbly among these people. She served them in any way she could.

This passage from Sister Carol Ann Dulka’s funeral homily, written by Sisters Kitty Bethea and Mary Rae Waller, refers to the ministry Sister Carol and Sister Mary Lequier carried out for more than thirty years among the Native Americans living around Ridgeville, South Carolina.

The pair’s outreach to one of the poorest areas of the Diocese of Charleston was a far cry, both in geography and in culture, from Cleveland, Ohio, where Sister Carol was born on March 8, 1943. She was the fifth of six boys and girls born to Anthony and Emeline (Horney) Dulka, along with Richard, William, Joseph, Patricia, and Mary Ann, who was born when Carol was nine years old.

Read more about Sister Carol Ann (pdf)

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

 

 

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(1923-2021)

When Mary Ellen McGuire, the future Sister Marie Therese Emery, was still an infant, both of her parents were killed in a car crash and she was placed in St. Ann’s Orphanage in St. Louis, Missouri, the city where she had been born on September 27, 1923. 

Mary Ellen was adopted at the age of three by Miss Blanche Emery, who had previously adopted eight other children, and was renamed Marie Therese after St. Therese of Lisieux. She was raised in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where Blanche was an English professor at the Normal College (later Eastern Michigan University) there and the first in the nation to teach children’s literature.

According to Sister Marie Therese’s autobiography, Blanche, who was forty-five years old when she adopted her new daughter, was condemned by many in Ypsilanti because she had adopted all those children. But she was “strong in mind and resolute in any task she decided to fulfill,” yet at the same time “beautiful, gentle, kind and thoughtful.” She built the first ranch-style home in the city so her children had plenty of space – complete with child-sized tables and chairs until they were big enough for the adult furniture – and created a library of more than two thousand children’s books for them to read.

Read more about Sister Marie Therese (pdf)

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

 

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(1932-2021)

The Laier family farm in Lima Township, Michigan, near the city of Chelsea, was the birthplace of Helen Zita Laier, the first daughter and third-oldest child of Gustave and Rose (Merkel) Laier.

Helen was born on August 10, 1932, joining her brothers Carl and Edward. She was followed by five more siblings: Thomas, Lawrence (who died in infancy), Robert, Teresa, and Donald.

Gustave was a native of Boden, Germany, while Rose was born in Sylvan Township, Michigan, which adjoins Lima Township. The couple bought their farm in 1927, and as a child Helen explored every inch of the property with its two large barns.

She and her brothers attended a one-room schoolhouse a mile down the road, where she was the only child in her class. “In the eight years I attended that school there were never more than twelve students,” she wrote in her autobiography, adding that she was never “academically inclined” and enjoyed recess more than any school subject. “This, I think, was due to the fact that at home we didn’t play – we had to help with the work,” she wrote.

Read more about Sister Helen (pdf)

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

 

 

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(1923-2021)

Of all the women who entered the Adrian Dominicans after having experience in the working world, at least one, Margaret Ann Swallow, can lay claim to being a real-life “Rosie the Riveter.”

Margaret Ann was born on September 30, 1923, in Alpena, Michigan, to Arthur and Mary (Mulavey) Swallow. She was the couple’s only child – a second child, a boy, died very early – although she said in an interview for her life story that she never considered herself an “only child” because many of her father’s brothers and sisters lived with her family off and on over the years once the Swallows moved to Detroit.

Arthur worked for the power company in Alpena and then was a line supervisor for Detroit Edison. The family came to Detroit when Margaret Ann was two years old, living first in St. Francis Parish and then in Gesu Parish, where she attended elementary school. She got to know two separate groups of women religious in those years: the Immaculate Heart of Mary Sisters who taught at Gesu and the cloistered nuns at Mary Reparatrix Convent, across the street from the school.

The Gesu schoolgirls visited the cloistered nuns, some of whom came from abroad, every Wednesday for needlework and sewing, and “on one occasion we were asked to accompany two French nuns to the dime store,” Sister Margaret Ann said. “That was an adventure for us, since the sisters could not speak English well.”

Read more about Sister Margaret Ann (pdf)

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

 

 

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