(1929-2019)

“Something good is to come for these two babies!”

According to Sister Grace Flowers’ twin sister Dorothy, those were the words spoken by a Sister of St. Francis who had cared for the two babies and their mother when the girls were born at St. Francis Hospital in Miami, Florida. The nun had placed the twins on the hospital chapel’s altar when they and their mother were ready to be discharged, and made that fateful prediction.

Dolores, the future Sister Grace, and Dorothy were born on December 16, 1929, to John and Mary (Hatton) Flowers. They were the youngest of John and Mary’s four children; first came Catherine, then Margaret, then the twins. Only three years separated all the girls, and with them being so close in age they did many things together. Sadly, however, Catherine died in 1937 just before her eleventh birthday.

The Great Depression was just getting under way when the twins were born, but “we were not poor because we always owned our own home and had a car,” Grace said in her autobiography, “but we did not have unnecessary things. Mother worked as a registered nurse and my father always had a job.” In Grace’s application to enter the Congregation, she listed John’s job as supervisor for the Miami Transit Company.

Dorothy and Dolores attended public school from grades one through four, until the parish, St. Mary’s, opened its school, and both girls completed their elementary and secondary schooling there. Dolores then enrolled at Barry College (University), which is how she first came into contact with the Adrian Dominican Sisters. She had thought about religious life off and on already, but when she observed the way the Dominicans lived their community life, she knew it was the Congregation for her.

Read more about Sister Grace (pdf)

(1940-2019)

When as a high school sophomore Nancy Jane Exworthy, the future Sister Margaret Augustine, told her mother that she wanted to enter religious life, her mother dropped the bowl she was drying and ran upstairs to her room, crying.

It was many years before Nancy Jane found out what had prompted her mother’s emotional reaction. After Nancy Jane made final profession, her mother finally told her the tale of her very difficult birth, to the point that the doctor had come out of the delivery room and asked her father which one, mother or baby, he wanted saved if it came down to that.

“My mother said she prayed and prayed for help, and she heard a voice say to her, ‘She’s mine. Will you give her back to me?’ and my mother said yes, and when she said yes, I was born,” Margaret said in her “A Sister’s Story” video in 2017.

“And I was kind of sickly as a child, so she always thought that some time I’d be gone, and she said when I told her I wanted to be a Sister, she heard the same voice. That’s what startled her and she dropped the bowl; it wasn’t my announcement. She said the voice said, ‘Remember, you promised.’”

Read more about Sister Margaret Augustine (pdf)

Memorial gifts may be made to Adrian Dominican Sisters, 1257 East Siena Heights Drive, Adrian, Michigan, 49221. Funeral arrangements are being handled by Anderson-Marry Funeral Home, Adrian.

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(1933-2019)

Patrick Joseph Morley and Mary Catherine Finnegan shared a common heritage as immigrants from County Mayo, Ireland, when they met and fell in love in their adopted hometown of Chicago. Their marriage in 1926 would lead to four children: Frank, John, Eileen, and Rita Jean, who would become Sister Sean Morley.

Rita Jean, the youngest of the Morley siblings, was born May 25, 1933. Patrick worked for the Illinois Central Railroad and Mary Catherine oversaw home and family until tragedy struck: Patrick died when Rita Jean was just ten years old, and Mary Catherine provided for herself and her children by going to work as a clerk at the Adler Planetarium.

Still, “my mother continued the spirit of our home with the importance of God in our life, and so our home was filled with laughter and we were very happy,” Sister Sean said in her autobiography. She remained very close with her mother until Mary Catherine died, like her husband at a relatively young age, in 1954.

The family lived in St. Laurence Parish and the children attended the parish school. Rita Jean went on to Loretto Academy for two years and then to Aquinas High School, where she was educated by Adrian Dominicans. Her sister, Eileen, fifteen months her senior, wanted to join the Congregation directly after eighth grade; their mother refused permission at that time but Eileen did enter after her second year of high school, becoming Sister Patrick Mary.

Read more about Sister Sean (pdf) 

(1929-2019)

When Sister Kay Wejrowski first entered the Everett (later Edmonds) Dominican convent, her father gave the whole idea six months because there were so many other things she had said she wanted to do in her life, including becoming a pilot and having horses and dogs.

But “when the six months passed and she was still there … he was very happy and later very proud when she made final profession,” Sister Kay wrote in her autobiography. In fact, she added, both her parents went on to become Dominican tertiaries, and when her father died he was buried in the Dominican habit.

Katherine Nellie Wejrowski was born October 5, 1929, in Bremerton, Washington, to Joseph and Florence (Roberts) Wejrowski. As Florence was recuperating from the birth, her maternal grandmother named the baby after herself and then – “feeling slightly guilty,” as Sister Kay put it – included the paternal grandmother’s name too.

Read more about Sister Kay (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).