In Memoriam

We Remember

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(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 Patty (pdf)

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

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Tagged With: Associate, Patricia Seckel / 3952 Views

Sister Jude Van Baalen, OP

(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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Tagged With: OP, Jude Marie Van Vaalen, Sister Jude Van Baalen / 6053 Views

Sister Romona Nowak, OP

(1945-2017)

When she returned to Adrian on November 18, 2016, to live out whatever remaining time God had given her on Earth, Sister Romona Nowak proclaimed herself there to work on her Ph.D: “Praying for a Happy Death.”

Sister Romona turned those weeks and months of facing incurable cancer into a ministry to others, regularly posting meditations on her experience to the Adrian listserv. “Romona epitomized Henry Nouwen’s Wounded Healer. She beautifully and consistently ministered out of her own vulnerability,” said Sister Mary Jane Lubinski, OP, Sister Romona’s Chapter Prioress, at the Ritual of Remembering held after Sister Romona’s death. “Few of us would tell our story so boldly, speak of death and hold open the wound so that others may gain strength. She is a model and a preacher…”

Born on July 19, 1945, in Chicago to Lucian and Jeanette Wysocki Nowak, Sister Romona and her brother, Robert, grew up in difficult circumstances. According to the stories that her chaplain at the Dominican Life Center, Rev. Cathy Johnson, set down in a biography, Lucian was a hardworking baker, and there was tension in the home made worse by the fact that her mother was hospitalized for depression. “Mona learned to play the piano and this offered her freedom of expression which she found helpful,” her biography read. According to her application for admittance to the Congregation, she also played the accordion.

Sister Romona attended elementary school at St. Mary Magdalene and then went to Aquinas Dominican High, during which time she worked in a shoe store and as a waitress, among other things. After earning her diploma, she enrolled at Siena Heights College, and it was there, during a retreat, that she was introduced to the writings of Teilhard de Chardin. According to her biography, she “experienced a oneness with God and with earth. And this was when she knew she wanted to become a nun as a way to live her thank-you to God.”