(1933-2020)

“I have been blessed in so many ways and for this, I am grateful.” 

These words concluded Sister Carolyn Nelson’s story of her life, a life which began on January 21, 1933, in Chicago. She was the only child of Edward and Virginia (Schuster) Nelson, but after her father’s sudden death and her mother’s remarriage, she was eventually blessed with a younger sister, Judy, when Carolyn was sixteen years old, and with another sibling whom her parents adopted when Carolyn went to the convent. “My mother and (I don’t like the word) step-father decided that they didn’t want Judy to grow up alone as I had,” she said in her autobiography.

Edward owned a business that often took him on the train between Chicago and Denver. One day he was on the train when his appendix ruptured, and although he made it back to Chicago and a hospital, it was too late to save him. Carolyn was just two years old.

Virginia and her little daughter moved to Detroit to live with Virginia’s parents. The family lived in St. Ambrose Parish, and Carolyn attended the parish school from first grade through high school. Her mother remarried, to Joseph Francis Malley, when Carolyn was six years old.

Read more about Sister Carolyn (pdf)

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