(1927 - 2017)

For some time I have thought and prayed that I had a vocation to the religious life. With the advice of my spiritual director and confessor, I was introduced to Sister Alice Joseph and her faculty at St. Brendan’s. Their simplicity and naturalness overpowered me completely.

So begins the letter which twenty-two-year-old Mildred Fogarty of San Francisco wrote to Mother Gerald Barry in late 1949, asking to make application to join the Adrian Dominican Sisters. Mildred, who had just completed her California nursing exams, had been educated by the Sisters of St. Joseph in high school (Star of the Sea) and by the Sisters of Mercy at St. Mary’s College of Nursing, but as her letter indicates it was through her home parish, St. Brendan’s, that she got to know the Adrian Dominicans and knew which congregation she wished to enter.

Mildred Rita Fogarty was born December 18, 1927, in San Francisco to Clifton and Mildred (Ward) Fogarty. Clifton worked for the W.A. Grace Steamship Line and Mildred was a homemaker. The couple also had a son, Eugene.

When Mildred Rita was just ten years old, her mother died; when she was twelve, her father married Rose Margaret McGreevey, and by all accounts stepmother and stepdaughter developed a very close relationship.

Mildred Rita entered the Congregation on February 1, 1950, and became a novice that August, taking the religious name Sister Joseph Eugene. She made first profession on August 9, 1951. With her nurse’s training, it was only logical that her first appointment would be to one of the Congregation’s hospitals, and she was sent to Sisters Hospital, Santa Cruz, California.

Read more about Sister Joseph Eugene (pdf)