Sister Anne Bernadette Stein, OP

Transcription

1 Sister Anne Bernadette Stein, OP When Frances Stibich was a young woman, she traveled to Detroit from her hometown of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, to visit one of her sisters, who lived on Gratiot Avenue in a flat above the Stein Hardware store. During that visit, she happened to meet the storeowner s son, Anthony Stein. Love quickly bloomed, and the couple married in Four children resulted from that union: Dorothy Antoinette, Ruth Marie, Eugene, and Barbara Ann. Ruth Marie, the future Sister Anne Bernadette Stein, was born on September 1, 1926, in Detroit. The family lived in St. Anthony Parish, and Ruth Marie attended the parish school for the first and last parts of her elementary education. As she put it in her life story, My sister went there to school for all twelve years but my brother and I kind of shopped around for a while. That resulted in her spending two years at the Stevens Open Air School in Detroit. Open Air schools were established to help combat the spread of tuberculosis by providing facilities that had plenty of fresh air and good ventilation, and an uncle of the Stein children had been exposed to TB. Eugene spent four years there, while Ruth Marie attended for three years, from 1935 to 1938, and then went back to St. Anthony School. When she was in fifth grade, the city of Detroit decided to widen Gratiot Avenue, meaning that both the family and the hardware store, which Anthony was running by that time, had to move. The Steins went to live with Anthony s mother, and Anthony eventually relocated the shop to a spot in nearby Grosse Pointe and the family moved to a home nearby. Ruth Marie had completed her freshman year at St. Anthony High School by that point, and her mother had registered her at St. Paul High in Grosse Pointe Farms for the upcoming school year. But when September came, the school had no record of the registration, so she went back to St. Anthony s and completed her sophomore year there. She spent her last two years of high school at St. Paul s. There, she was taught by Adrian Dominican Sisters, one of whom encouraged her to enter the Congregation. This was the farthest thing from my mind, she said in her life story. But she attended Siena Heights College (University), where she had earned a partial scholarship, and it was there despite her best efforts to ward off the Holy Spirit s work that she eventually realized she was being called to religious life. She entered in June 1946 and received the habit and her religious name that December. After her canonical novitiate year, she remained in Adrian to finish her college education. Her first assignment, in 1948, was to Holy Cross High School in Santa Cruz, California. When she got her appointment card missioning her to Santa Cruz, I just stood there with my mouth open, she said in her life story. It so happened that before she entered the Adrian Dominican Sisters, she had gone to see the pastor at St. Paul s and he had asked her where she wanted to be missioned. Her reply was, Someplace near the water; a few hills in the background would not be bad either. He told her he would pray for that to come to pass and now here she was, heading for a city on the Pacific coast with the mountains nearby.

2 After three very happy years ( ) spent there as a math teacher, Sister Anne Bernadette was appointed to Mount St. Mary Academy in St. Charles, Illinois. Leaving Santa Cruz was a real disappointment for her, to say nothing of the fact that she was definitely not excited about going to a boarding-school environment. It is really hard being on duty almost 24 hours a day, she said. I sometimes went into the practice room and played the piano when no one else was around. I discovered you could go out one of the windows and you would be on the roof of the gym. I learned you could lie out there and look at the stars and [no one could] find me. But Sister Anne Bernadette came to enjoy her students during her six years at The Mount, and hated to leave when she was sent to Aquinas High School in Chicago in She said of her Mount St. Mary s students: Any time they had a reunion and I could possibly go, I would. They grew up to be the wonderful people I hoped they would be. That was very satisfying. She earned her master s degree in mathematics from the University of Notre Dame in August 1957, at the same time she was beginning her ministry at Aquinas High School. Her three years there were followed by appointments to Regina Dominican High School in Wilmette, Illinois ( ); St. Edward High School in Elgin, Illinois ( ); and back to Aquinas ( ). Then, she spent one year ( ) in Farmington, Michigan, at Thomas P. Beahan Junior High (the former Our Lady of Sorrows High School, which closed in June 1971 and reopened as a junior high, with its new name, that September). This marked the last of Sister Anne Bernadette s many years as a teacher, at least in a formal sense; she spent some time as a volunteer math tutor at the Dominican Literacy Center in Detroit. But her work life took on a whole new dimension when, in 1973, she took a job in the finance division of the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor. After thirteen years there ( ), she took her mathematical skills to the Ann Arbor Credit Bureau, where she was a part-time bookkeeper from April 1987 to January During that time she also did bookkeeping for a realty company in nearby Chelsea and worked with the religious education program at St. Mary s Church, also in Chelsea. Sister Anne Bernadette retired in early 1998 and continued to live in Ann Arbor until November of that year, although a serious car accident in late April necessitated a lengthy period of recuperation in Adrian. When her father died in 1991 (her mother had died in 1986), her sister Dorothy moved into his apartment in Harper Woods, Michigan, and after Dorothy died, Sister Anne Bernadette went to live there. She remained there until moving to the Dominican Life Center in September Sister Anne Bernadette died on November 1, 2018, at the age of ninety-two. Besides her parents, her sister Dorothy, and her brother Eugene, she was predeceased by three cousins who were also Adrian Dominicans: Sisters Shirley Ruder, Mary Coronata Stein, and Marie Elizabeth Doherty. Sister Ann Romayne Fallon, a member of Anne Bernadette s crowd, preached the homily at the funeral Mass on November 8. All of us gathered here this morning have come to honor the memory of a woman loved and respected by her family members, her Dominican sisters, members of her crowd and her mission group, her many friends, former students, and all who brought comfort and eased her pain during the past six years. We all share a common experience. Each of us carries our own particular story of how our lives have been touched by Sister Anne Bernadette and, indeed, our individual reason for being here today.

3 Perhaps it happened at a young age or a bit older. Maybe we first heard God s voice as a young adult or even later in life. Whatever the case, time was essential to the reality of what God has asked of us. No matter what our story is, God ever so patient always awaited our response. Sister Ann Romayne went on to relate the story of how Sister Anne Bernadette had recognized during her teen years that God was pursuing her, but that she had no desire to listen and actively avoided any Adrian Dominican Sister who gave even the slightest hint of suggesting she was a candidate for religious life. However, try as she may to deny the reality of the truth she held in her heart, God s untiring pursuit finally came to a close on Sunday, June 23, 1946, when the future Sister Anne Bernadette arrived on these holy grounds and acknowledged her sincere and profound Yes! She never looked back and all of us are better for being her relative, her Dominican sister, her friend, or just for having known her. As the final days of her earthly journey became evident, Anne Bernadette surely found special peace in the words we heard today in John s Gospel: Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise her on the last day. Hope is witnessed in the Resurrection. Your life, Anne Bernadette, has been lived in hopefulness. Now you enjoy the presence of God who loved you deeply even while pursuing you untiringly. You have answered with the same full dedication to the Call that compelled you to make countless lives better during these seventy-two years as a dedicated Preacher of Truth. Now, enjoy the peace and happiness that is yours and so well deserved!

4 From left: Sister Anne Bernadette s parents, Anthony and Frances (Stibich) Stein. Ruth Marie (Sister Anne Bernadette), left, and her sister Donna From left: Sister Anne Bernadette and other faculty members visit a research lab during a field trip for chemistry students of Mount St. Mary Academy, St. Charles, Illinois, Sisters Elaine Scanlon, Kathleen Scanlon, and Anne Bernadette Stein, October 1969

5 From left: Sisters Joann Weigang, Jean Charles Birney, and Anne Bernadette Stein enjoy the 2002 Gathering in Adrian. Sister Anne Bernadette Stein, Nurse s Aide Kelly Houghton, and Larry the Cow Members of the 2006 Diamond Jubilee class are: back row, from left, Sisters Jean Fitzgerald, Laura Pesick, Ann Romayne Fallon, Joan Donovan, Edith Kathleen Zemke, Jean Librizzi, Georgina Luznicky, Beverly McEachin, Helen McDaniel, and Mildred Ann Huber; middle row, from left, Sisters Anne Richard Baker, Mary L. Russell, Anne Bernadette Stein, Joyce Mary Rybarczyk, Patricia Cecile Slattery, Denise Walsh, Elizabeth Francis Tekaucic, Sheila N. Flynn, Jeri Renner, Winifred Lynch, Ann Patrice Remkus, Therese Groulx, and Jean Irene McAllister; and front row, from left: Barbara Wetterer, Mary Therese Guigar, Virginia Therese Conway, Jean Anthony Sporer, and Michele Gebhardt.