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August 23, 2021, Detroit – Sister Nancyann Turner, OP, felt inspired to participate in Detroit’s Healing Memorial, a large-scale participatory public art installation that recognizes the depth of loss in Detroit and all Southeast Michigan during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A collaboration between the City of Detroit Office of Arts, Cranbrook Art Museum and the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, this memorial will offer support and healing for residents of southeast Michigan who experienced all forms of loss, including physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social, occupational, and environmental.
The floor to ceiling installation will be adorned by handmade fabric pouches or small fabric envelopes containing a written dedication such as a blessing, a remembrance or a prayer. The cumulative personal dedications will come together to form a dramatic installation at the TCF Center in Downtown Detroit. The exhibit will be unveiled on Tuesday, August 31, 2021, the official COVID-19 Memorial Day in Detroit.
Sister Nancyann, an artist, created a memorial for each Adrian Dominican Sister who died of COVID-19 this past year, as well as several more memorials for young adults who had participated in Capuchin Soup Kitchen programs during their childhood. Sister Nancyann had served as Program Director of the Soup Kitchen’s Rosa Parks Children’s and Youths’ Program.
For Sister Nancyann, creating the pouches was a sacred endeavor. “As I created each one, floods of memories came to me and I felt connected to each Sister and found myself praying to her,” she said. “I knew well many of the deceased Sisters and felt myself blessed as I worked on each memorial. Within each one, I wrote a brief letter and prayer to that particular Sister for whom the memorial was being made – 14 in all. I felt peace and solace in making our remembering tangible.”
Sister Nancyann noted that many people have been in grief and in communal lament for the past 18 months. “We have wept and we have mourned,” she said. “We have become so much more conscious of the pain surrounding an enormous number of people – way beyond our family, our Congregation – beyond our country. Our expansive grief has also reminded us that we are not alone … we are all in this together. We care for each other in new ways and we will assert hope and work for justice.”
Submitted by Sister Nancyann Turner, OP
Feature photo: These are among the pouches created by Sister Nancyann Turner, OP, that will contain blessings or messages in honor of the Adrian Dominican Sisters who died of COVID-19 in early 2021. Photo by Sister Nancyann Turner, OP
July 15, 2021, Adrian, Michigan – Adrian Dominican Sisters in ministry throughout the United States helped identify people affected by COVID-19 who could benefit from $1,000 grants issued by Catholic Extension.
Gary, the head of a household that included two other elderly adults on fixed incomes, received help in paying the three-month balance on his electric bill. Children participating in the Rosa Parks Children’s Program at the Capuchin Soup Kitchen in Detroit received their own set of garden tools to help them raise and harvest vegetables to take home to their families. They also received school supplies.
Val, a single mom in Chicago who contracted the COVID-19 virus and who struggled with bills even after returning to work, received help paying her electric bill and hospital bill, and received gift cards to pay for groceries and gasoline. Two women served by the St. Kateri Center in Chicago received help in paying their bills: Paula, an iron worker in Chicago and the single mother of four children, worked sporadically and was disqualified from unemployment benefits. Tina, who cares for two grandchildren, was laid off from her work of cleaning the rooms at Palmer House in Chicago.
These individuals and their families were the beneficiaries of special grants: the Sisters on the Front Lines Grants from Catholic Extension and, for the individuals in Chicago, grants from Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities (FADICA), which focused its Sisters on the Front Lines grants to families in Chicago. Catholic Extension, a member organization of FADICA, gives grants to underserved, “mission” Catholic communities in the United States to help them build up the Catholic presence.
The grants went to Adrian Dominican Sisters who minister to people on the margins and who knew individuals and families who had special financial needs as a direct result of the pandemic.
Sister Jane Zimmerman, a spiritual director at Marillac St. Vincent Family Services in Chicago, said it was a privilege to work with Val to receive the grant. “Val was overjoyed and so grateful to have received this unexpected assistance,” Sister Jane said. “As for me, the experience gave me the opportunity to reflect on our Adrian Dominican commitment to ‘walk in solidarity with people who are poor.’”
Sister JoAnn Fleischaker, OP, who worked with both Tina and Paula at the Kateri Center, said she was also grateful for the assistance from FADICA. She has been involved in the Kateri Center, a center for Native Americans in Chicago, since 2015, after ministering for 21 years in Oklahoma as part of a Dominican collaborative ministry with the Cheyenne and Arapaho.
Sister Maureen McGrath, OP, Director of the Catholic Community Center in Benton Harbor, Michigan, described Gary as the “kindest, most grateful man.” Thanks to the Sisters on the Front Lines grant, she said, “we were able to assist Gary with an electric bill which required more assistance than we could have pledged … When I told him about the Catholic Extension gift, he almost cried, he was so very grateful for the relief.”
Sister Nancyann Turner, OP, recent Program Director for the Rosa Parks Children’s Program, said the grant money was used for the Children’s Peace Garden Program. “With monies from the grant, sessions were held more often but smaller so that children could keep a social distance from each other.”
These grants – and several more – were shepherded by Sister Nancy Murray, OP. While she was sidelined during the pandemic from her formal ministry – portraying St. Catherine of Siena at parishes, schools and other organizations throughout the world. She coordinated the $1,000 grants to families served by organizations in which Adrian Dominican Sisters were involved.
Catholic Extension announced the campaign, Sisters on the Front Lines, in June 2020 as a way to serve people whose lives have been affected by COVID-19. The plan was to give grants of $1,000 to 1,000 Sisters, knowing that they would know which families needed help because of the pandemic.
Sister Nancy originally reached out to Adrian Dominican Sisters who worked with organizations that served people facing poverty or homelessness. Other Sisters who received the grants for individuals or families were Sister Theresa Mayrand, OP, Associate Director of Gianna House, Detroit, which offers resources to pregnant teenagers and to all new mothers in need; Sister Carol Weber, OP, Co-founder and Co-director of St. Luke N.E.W. Life Center, Flint, Michigan, which offers a variety of services to help people in the Flint community to become self-sustaining; and Sister Patricia Leonard, OP, Associate Director of St. Ann Place, which provides services to homeless women and men in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Sister Nancy also received a grant for an Adrian area migrant farm worker family that is suffering economically because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Other Sisters receiving the grant through FADICA were Sister Joan Mary, OP, who, as a volunteer at Aquinas Literacy Center in Chicago, tutored a woman who became pregnant and went to Syria to be with her mother. The grant enabled the literacy center to purchase laptops for adult learners so that they could continue to be tutored remotely.
Sister Eunice Drazba, OP, procured a grant for an employee who had been laid off from St. Leonard’s Ministries, which helps men and women leaving the prison system to adapt successfully in the community. Sister Dorothy Dempsey, OP, received a grant for a family with a special needs child.
Feature photo: Paula, with one of her daughters, received a check from FADICA to help her catch up on her bills during the COVID-19 pandemic. She was identified by Sister Jo Ann Fleischaker, OP, as heading a family that needed a grant.