(1936-2017)

When Sister Mary Ann Zakrajsek’s family and her fellow Adrian Dominican Sisters filed into Holy Rosary Chapel over the course of two days for her Vigil service and then funeral, they were greeted by a print placed prominently on an easel next to the ambo.

The print, which Sister Mary Ann had brought with her when she returned to Adrian from Cleveland, Ohio, just one month earlier, was of a painting by Christian artist Joann Reed titled, “Come Unto Me.” With its depiction of Christ’s arms reaching toward the viewer, it sustained Sister Mary Ann in life and through her last days.

Sister Mary Ann was born in Cleveland on January 10, 1936, to Matt and Antonia Perko Zakrajsek, both immigrants from Slovenia, in Yugoslavia. Matt worked for the Cleveland Wire Cloth and Manufacturing Company, while Antonia took care of home and family.

The Perkos had eleven children in all, three of whom died in early childhood. Sister Mary Ann was a twin to Richard, and her birth was apparently a source of great excitement, given that the other surviving children in the family at that point were all boys. At Sister Mary Ann’s Vigil service, her Chapter Prioress, Sister Mary Jane Lubinski, related a memory told to her by Sister Mary Ann’s cousin, Adrian Dominican Sister Miriam Joseph Lekan, who was thirteen at the time of Mary Ann’s birth: “Older brothers came running down the street announcing ‘We have twins! And one of them is a girl!’”

Read more about Sister Mary Ann (PDF)

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

(1944-2017)

When I was a novice at morning meditation one day, I read a great quote that has been with me all these years. It reads, ‘”I may go this way only once. If there is some good that I may do, let me do it now, for I may never go this way again.” I have tried to live by this – And what a life it has given me.

So ended the autobiography of Sister Christine Ostrowski, who died November 23, 2017, at the age of seventy-three.

Sister Christine was born August 22, 1944, in Detroit, to Leonard and Helen Wolkiewicz Ostrowski. She and her mother lived with her grandparents in the largely Polish enclave of Hamtramck until her father returned from service in the Army, then the family moved first to the east side of Detroit and then, in 1948, to the west side of the city. 

Leonard worked as a Detroit bus driver and Helen took care of home and family. “My parents were faithful Catholics, loving, hard-working and fun,” Christine wrote in her autobiography.

Read more about Sister Christine (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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(1944-2017)

Patricia Jean Seckel was born December 7, 1944 in Detroit, the middle child of seven.  Her parents, Robert and Ruth LaBell Seckel, lived in Detroit their entire lives. Both of her parents worked hard to provide for their family. 

Patty attended Our Lady Queen of Peace School and Madison High School, graduating in 1964. She felt a calling to work in the healthcare field. She worked for more than 25 years in nursing homes and with mentally and physically challenged children and adults.  

After her father died very suddenly in 1981, Patty lived with her mother in Clinton Township, Michigan. She cared for her mother and worked full time in nursing homes, urgent care facilities, and doctor’s offices. After taking classes for years, Patty graduated from the Carnegie Institute in 1988, earning a certificate as a medical assistant.

Read more about Patty (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).

(1939-2017)

“We come with awfully heavy hearts this evening to celebrate the life of Jude, our sister, our friend, our aunt, our cousin. She was one of us for a long time, and she was taken very quickly.”

So began the remembrance of Sister Jude Van Baalen by her Chapter Prioress, Sister Kathleen Klingen, at the Vigil Service held in Adrian on November 16, 2017. The “heavy hearts” to which Sister Kathleen referred had been made even more so by the unexpected and sudden circumstances of Sister Jude’s passing: only days before, she had suffered a brain bleed and been taken to a Chicago emergency room. From there, she was brought to Adrian, where she died on November 14.

Born Judy Marie Van Baalen on November 6, 1939, in Detroit, Jude, as she always preferred to be known, was the second child of Edward and Susan Lucille Flanagan Van Baalen. She had an older brother, Paul, and over time four more children – Susan, Marc, Edward, Mary, and Ann – were born into the family. As more little Van Baalens came into the world, the family moved to successively larger houses around the city, and as a result, Sister Jude attended four parochial schools: Gesu, Blessed Sacrament, St. John the Apostle, and St. Philip Neri.

Her high school years, however, were spent at Dominican High School, which brought her into contact with the Adrian Dominicans and planted the seeds of religious life. She wrote to Mother Gerald Barry on March 3, 1957, near the end of her senior year at Dominican High, requesting entrance into the Congregation, and became a postulant that June. When she was received into the novitiate in December, it was with the religious name Sister Jude Marie. One of her sisters, Susan, followed her into the Congregation in 1959.

Read more about Sister Jude (pdf)

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

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