(1943-2019)

With a father who was a judge and a mother who passed her own love of nature on to her children, Maureen Fenlon learned early on the importance of both social justice and caring for the Earth. These qualities shaped most of her life in ministry as an Adrian Dominican Sister.

Sister Maureen was born on May 29, 1943, in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, to James and Noel (Finlan) Fenlon. Her entrance into the world was not at all certain; Noel spent three days in labor and neither mother nor baby was expected to survive the ordeal. But survive they did, and Maureen became the fourth of five children born to the couple in less than five years: Brian in August 1940, Paul in May 1941, Dennis in April 1942, Maureen, and finally Shauna in June 1945. “We were close not only in age but as lively playmates,” she wrote.

James Fenlon and his brother were both attorneys who became judges, and Maureen said in her life story that listening to their conversations shaped in her a sense of fairness, justice, and compassion. Both men believed in leniency for the people they sentenced, she said, despite criticism from law enforcement, and “I learned a lot about social justice and it made me proud of them for their compassionate ways.”

Read more about Sister Maureen (pdf)

(1920-2019)

My views on missionary life have certainly changed over the years, since at the beginning I thought I was ministering to the poor in Pamplona, but as time went on I realized that I was being ministered to by my Pamplona friends. Several theologians and writers are asking the same question: What do we learn from the poor of the world?

These words are found in the life story of Sister Mary K. Duwelius, who spent more than three decades ministering in the Dominican Republic and Peru in addition to serving migrant populations during her many years in south Florida.

Dorothy Catherine Duwelius was born on June 26, 1920, in Elkhart, Indiana, to John and Mabel (Ness) Duwelius. She was one of four children, along with her brother Kenneth and two younger sisters who were identical twins, Eileen and Arlene. “Both our parents were happy, holy, and hard-working,” she said. “Mother kept everything under control and we children knew how to settle down when advised to do so.”

Sister Mary K.’s lifelong commitment to social justice and the poor may well have come from her Depression-era upbringing, instilled by her parents. A railroad track ran directly behind their home, and those riding the trains often knocked on the back door asking for something to eat – and could always find a meal there.

Life in the Duwelius home revolved around activities in the family parish, St. Vincent’s in Elkhart. John was an usher and active in many church groups, while Mabel “was a great organizer of ice cream socials, dinners and card parties” in the parish. All the children attended the parish school. “Each day we would devoutly pray before class and then break forth loudly singing ‘Cheer, cheer for Old Notre Dame,’” Sister Mary K. said. “I didn’t find this strange and for years thought that this was done in all Catholic schools in the world.”

Read more about Sister Mary K. (pdf)

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

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(1946-2019)

A large white house on Lakewood Avenue on the east side of Detroit, in St. Ambrose Parish, was home to Robert and Mary Jo (Pease) Plummer and their family of seven boisterous children including Mary Ellen, the second oldest. Eighteen years separated the oldest, Bill, and the youngest, Liz. In between, in addition to Mary Ellen, came Cathy, John, Margaret, and Virginia.

Robert and Mary Jo were both Montana natives (Missoula and Butte, respectively) who met as students at the University of Montana. The pair married and moved to Boston, where Robert, who had entered officers’ training with the U.S. Navy, studied sonar technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Eventually, he was in the submarine service in the Pacific during World War II.

After the war, the couple moved to the Detroit area, where Robert went to work for the U.S. Rubber Company, now Uniroyal. When Sister Mary Ellen was born on September 14, 1946, the family lived in a small house in what is now Harper Woods, but when she was four years old they moved to the home on Lakewood.

“It was there that we roller-skated for hours (our driveway was the best in the neighborhood!), played house, raked leaves, grew gardens, made snow people (and had great snowball fights!), and bumbled our way through school and adolescence toward adulthood,” Sister Mary Ellen wrote in her life story.

Read more about Sister Mary Ellen (pdf)

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

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(1928-2019)

Lorraine Morin was two weeks shy of her thirty-third birthday when she finally took a step she’d been discerning almost half of her life: she wrote to Sister Patrick Jerome Mullins, the Congregation’s novice mistress at the time, asking to be admitted.

“It may be that, now that I can no longer fight it, it is too late,” she wrote.

But the General Council gave its permission, and on June 26, 1962, Lorraine arrived in Adrian from her home town of Cambridge, Massachusetts, to become a postulant.

Lorraine was born on October 10, 1928, in Somerville, Massachusetts. Both of her parents, Joseph Morin and Adelaide Ouellette, were natives of St. Helene, Quebec who had immigrated to Massachusetts, Joseph’s family to Salem and Adelaide’s to Lowell.

Joseph was a mill foreman and Adelaide a dressmaker when the couple married in June 1913. At some point Joseph became a barber, for Sister Lorraine spoke in her life story about how her father would give his clients “haircuts and a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of counseling.”

Read more about Sister Loraine (pdf)

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

Leave your comments and remembrances (if you don't see the comment box below, click on the "Read More" link).