(1925-2019)

Even as a little girl in her native Ireland, Nora Brady wanted to be in religious life.

But “all I could really do was to dream about it, and pray that one day my dream might come true,” she wrote in her letter to Mother Gerald seeking admittance to the Congregation. And on June 27, 1948, dream finally became reality when Sister Nora arrived in Adrian as a postulant from her adopted home city of Chicago.

Sister Nora was born on November 5, 1925, in County Caven, Ireland, the fifth of Mathias and Annie (Shierdan) Brady’s six children. Five girls (Susan, Mary Ellen, Ann, Bridget, and Nora) and a boy (Hugh) came into the family in all.

Tragedy struck early in Nora’s life when Mathias, a farmer, and Annie died exactly two months apart in 1930, before their youngest daughter had even turned five. Uncle Hugh, who lived with the family, became the children’s guardian.