100 Years in Missouri

Ursulines serving in their 100th year in Missouri

By Dan Heckel, Mount Saint Joseph Staff

When Sister Michele Morek entered the Kansas City, Mo., offices of National Catholic Reporter in 2017, she likely wasn’t thinking that her newest ministry was the continuation of an Ursuline legacy in the “Show-Me” state.

Sister Michele is the North American Sister Liaison for the Global Sisters Report, which serves under the umbrella of NCR to report on women religious across the continents.

“I am always running into people who ask what kind of sister I am, and ‘Ursuline’ almost always elicits an ‘Oh Yes!’ of recognition or connection,” Sister Michele said. “They obviously had a big impact on the area.”

Ursuline Sisters of Paola, Kan., made the biggest impression in metro Kansas City for decades. When the Paola Ursulines merged with Mount Saint Joseph in 2008, they joined a long history of their Kentucky Sisters serving in Missouri, although mostly in the eastern and southern parts of the state. Sister Michele’s housemate – Sister Angela Fitzpatrick – has served as a caregiver in both Kansas and Missouri since 2010.

This is the 100th year that the Ursuline Sisters have served in Missouri – beginning with a hearty band of three Sisters who in 1921 began teaching at Sacred Heart School in a tiny bootheel town called Wilhelmina. Within a decade, Ursuline Sisters began serving in two other Missouri cities – Glennonville and Affton – where they became legendary and attracted numerous young women to become Sisters. Eight current Sisters hail from Missouri, and they said without the influence of the Sisters who served in their town, they likely would not be Ursulines

Spring 2021

Sister Michele Morek, center, liaison to North America, gathers with two staff members of the Global Sisters Report in

today. December 2019. At left is

Ursuline Pam Hackenmiller, managing Associate Janet Kuper is a editor, along with staff reporter Soli Salgado. (Harrison Ford and the Most teacher at St. Interesting Man in the World Teresa School are only volunteers.) in Glennonville and said the Sisters’ influence is still palpable 22 years after the last Sister departed.

“The Ursuline Sisters have left a spirit of hospitality that is seen in every aspect of community life here at St. Teresa School and Parish,” Kuper said. “A hardworking, give-it-your-all spirit that tries to say, ‘Yes, I will help.’ A spirit grounded in The first three Ursuline Sisters to serve in community worship and prayer Missouri stand in front of the convent in with a wholehearted love for Wilhelmina, Mo., in 1923. From left are music. Many of our musicians Sister Florine Wiseman, Sister Mary Charles can name Sisters who helped Gough and Sister Thomasine Mattingly. them along the way.” pastor of Sacred Heart Church in

The Ursuline Sisters imparted Wilhelmina, asked Mother Superior a love for education in the Aloysius Willett for teachers. Like community of cotton farmers, many parish schools at the time, Kuper said. Sacred Heart was a public school.

“I see this Ursuline spirit Mother Aloysius agreed, but growing daily in the lives of our she died later that year. Her schoolchildren and our community. replacement, Mother Agnes Years ago, the Ursuline Sisters O’Flynn, kept her promise in planted seeds and cared for them 1921, sending Sisters Mary Charles lovingly with prayer, sacrifice and Gough, Thomasina Mattingly and many hours of hard work. The Florine Wiseman to Wilhelmina. seeds are growing now and are Mother Agnes had led the Ursuline producing good fruit.” Sisters to their first mission in A Toehold in the Bootheel New Mexico in 1919, so had no

In 1920, Father Vincent fear of this mission – despite not Tesselaar, a Servite priest and being certain how to get there, as evidenced by this letter to the

Janet Kuper at priest.

St. Teresa School “I have located Dunklin County in 2008 on the map and Wilhelmina in the Directory; please inform me how you made the trip to Owensboro; we are not familiar with travel in your direction and Wilhelmina strikes us as being an out of the way place,” Mother Agnes said. “However, we have scaled the

Missouri From page 3

Rockies and are not afraid of difficulties in this line.”

Just 10 miles away from Wilhelmina is Glennonville, and in 1930, the Ursuline Sisters began teaching at St. Teresa, also a public school. Operating two schools in close proximity allowed the Sisters to live together. One peculiar element of the Glennonville school was the “cotton vacation” – school was dismissed for six weeks in the fall so the children could help pick cotton, the town’s major cash crop.

The two schools operated until 1953, when the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that religious sisters could not wear the habit and teach in public schools. The Wilhelmina school closed, but the people of St. Teresa Parish decided to pay for a parochial school. It was too expensive to keep the high school open, so following its closure, five girls who wanted to continue a Catholic education came to Mount Saint Joseph Academy in Maple Mount. One of those girls is today Sister Cecelia Joseph Olinger, now in her 62nd year as an Ursuline.

“I doubt that I would have become an Ursuline if I hadn’t attended the Academy, much less been taught by Ursulines in Glennonville,” she said. “It was the atmosphere here at the Mount that allowed me to hear and feel God’s call.” Sister Mary Celine Weidenbenner remembers the Sisters as she played outside St. Teresa Church as a child. “There was a sidewalk and steps leading to the Sisters’ house. We would form a procession to greet them,” she said. “They were like the heart of the church.”

As a senior at the Academy, she considered joining a cloistered community, but while walking the grounds at the Mount she stopped at a stump that had a quote from the book of Daniel – “Those that instruct others into justice shall shine as stars for all eternity.” When Sister Angeline Mattingly told her that was the Ursuline motto, she had a new focus.

“I thought the Ursulines were centered on God. There was a presence to God, and I wanted to be part of that.”

Sister Michael Marie Friedman was taught by Ursuline Sisters in all 12 years at St. Teresa and the Academy.

“I enjoyed all of them. The Sisters were so loved in Glennonville and such an important, respected part of that parish community,” she said.

Among Sister Michael Marie’s Ursuline influences were Sister Cecilia Mary McBride, who taught her in the seventh and eighth grades and was instrumental in helping her come to the Academy. (She later left the community and is now Millie Kapp). Current Sisters Amanda Rose Mahoney and Naomi Aull both taught her at St. Teresa.

“In those ‘pioneer’ days, the farm families kept the Sisters in meat, vegetables and eggs, and drove them where they needed to go. They loved doing it,” Sister Michael Marie said. “They also drove them back and forth to Mount Saint Joseph – which was a five-hour drive from the bootheel. The community loved the Ursulines. Their legacy lives on today. They were such an important part of everyone’s life and joined in all the parish activities as they could.”

Sister Amelia Stenger met the Sisters in the first grade and has her own special memory of Sister Cecilia Mary.

“When I was in the fourth grade, Sister Cecilia Mary asked if I would like to sing in the children’s choir. Normally you didn’t get to join the choir until the sixth grade,” Sister Amelia said. “That is where I learned to read music. We sang much of the music in Latin so by the time I came to the Academy, I was able to sing all kinds of music.”

Having the Ursulines in Glennonville made it possible for the children to have a Catholic education, Sister Amelia said. The next nearest Catholic school was 25 miles away in Poplar Bluff. A total of 85 Ursulines taught at St. Teresa until the last one departed in 1999. “The people of Glennonville were lucky to have our Sisters come to that faraway town. It was a Catholic settlement with very few Catholics in other towns nearby,” Sister Amelia

Sister Mary Clement Greenwell is with her students in grades 1, 2 and 3 at St. Teresa School in 1935.

said. “Children from the school have always done well wherever they went to high school. The school is small, but it is still serving the people of the area. When I go there, people always talk about their teachers. Most of them have died but they are remembered well.”

Sister Rebecca White went to public high school in Glennonville and was considering joining a Franciscan order, when her catechist, the late Ursuline Sister Elaine Byrne, asked if she were going to consider the Ursulines.

“I spent a few weeks the following summer working with the Ursulines, and I knew I had found my home,” Sister Rebecca said.

Ursulines in a Big City

In 1928, Father Tesselaar was asked by his community, the Servants of Mary, to leave Wilhelmina and open a parish and school in the St. Louis suburb of Affton. They named it after the seven noblemen who began the Servite community – Seven Holy Founders. Father Tesselaar knew just who to ask for teachers.

He even got the same Sister as principal who he had in Wilhelmina – Sister Mary Charles Gough. She taught the five upper grades and Sister Louis Hilary Mattingly taught the three lower grades. The third Sister was on her first mission and served as music teacher, organist and director of the first choir. She would go on to become a legendary music teacher for the Ursulines – Sister Francesca Hazel. The history of the parish notes that the early Sisters were more than just teachers.

“They also did all the cleaning of the church and school, ran the cafeteria, washed the altar linens, made minor repairs and on occasion even wielded a paint brush.”

While the school started small, it grew into one of the largest the Ursuline Sisters operated. By the 1950s, up to 18 Ursuline Sisters served at Seven Holy Founders. When the last Sister left in 1989, 105 Ursuline Sisters had served at the school.

Two of their students were current Ursuline Sisters Katherine Stein and Mary McDermott. Sister Mary met the Ursulines in the first grade in 1962. “I remember my first principal was Sister George Marie Wathen. I loved her,” Sister Mary said. “She helped teach me to read with Highlights magazines.” When she was in the seventh grade, Sister Mary went to the Ursuline convent on Saturdays to help Sister Rose Marita O’Bryan – then a religion teacher at the school – clean her area of the convent.

“Sometimes, we went to the park nearby and fed the ducks,” Sister Mary said.

Sister Mary had a dream to open an orphanage and a restaurant after graduating from high school. Sister Rose Marita (now deceased) invited her to Maple Mount to spend a week, and when Sister Mary arrived, she realized the Academy was identical to the blueprint she’d drawn of her orphanage.

“I knew this was where I was meant to be,” she said.

The Ursulines taught about 60 miles south of St. Louis in Hillsboro at Good Shepherd School (1947-61) and added a second school in the St. Louis suburbs in 1965 when St. Angela Merici opened in Florissant. In 1977, (former) Ursuline Sisters Martha Nell Blandford and Kathy Gallo began serving at St. Mary’s School in St. Louis for special needs students. There they befriended a woman doing her college practicum – Michele Ann Intravia.

“I grew very close to them because the three of us did playground duty each day together,” said Sister Michele Ann, who celebrated her 40th jubilee as an Ursuline last year. “We were each on a different playground with about 30 to 40 students but somehow we could all meet at the fence and talk while watching the children.” Former Sister Amy Williams (now Amy Payne) also joined the group and continues to be a friend today.

Sister Joyce Marie Cecil (then Sister Lisa Marie) plays guitar with her fourth- and fifth-grade students at Sacred Heart School in Poplar Bluff, Mo., during the 1985-86 school year. The Ursuline Sisters taught in Poplar Bluff from 1975-89.

Supporters, priests and women religious gather for the dedication of Seven Holy Founders School in Affton, Mo., on Oct. 21, 1928. The Ursuline Sisters operated the school until 1989. RIGHT: Four of the Ursuline Sisters serving at Seven Holy Founders take part in a celebration in 1955. From left are Sisters Natalie Ring,

Annunciata Durr, Victoria Brohm and Ancilla Marie Warren. Continued on page 6