(1932-2018)

“We met over the dough.”

That was what Sister Andrea Broutin’s parents used to tell her about the way they met. “For a long time I thought we had a lot of money,” she said in her life story. As it turned out, the reference to “dough” was literal – her father met her mother at the Detroit bakery where he worked.

Andre Broutin had come to Detroit from Belgium, while Helena De Munter was born in Gladstone, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. When Helena’s father died of throat cancer at an early age, her mother moved to Detroit with four of their twelve children and went into business for herself as a bar owner.

After Andre and Helena married, they made their home in St. Jude Parish on the east side of Detroit. Two children were born: Andrea, on March 1, 1932, and John, eight years later. Following Belgian custom, Andrea was named for her father. Her two middle names, Rose Marie, were in honor of her two grandmothers.

Andrea came into the family at the height of the Great Depression, and ironically enough considering her interpretation as a child of the word “dough,” her parents struggled to make ends meet. “But I never felt poor,” she said in her life story. “In my house we had a lot of love, a lot of plain, good food, and my mom was a delicious cook. My dad baked bread, cakes and pies, which he also did at work, so we were very fortunate.”

Andrea attended public schools throughout her elementary and secondary education. But her friends went to St. Jude School, and she made a habit of skipping school so she could go to morning Mass with them, after which they would go out for breakfast. “My Catholic friends had a lot of free days, like saints’ days, but I didn’t know all that stuff then,” she said. “I would just go with them to Mass and I loved it.”