When Sister Vitalis Koester of the School Sisters of St. Francis died last year at the age of 105, one of my classmates from Alvernia High School in Chicago, where Sister had been a fixture from 1934 to 1977, went to the funeral in Wisconsin. After the burial, she was standing around, praying probably, when a gravedigger nearby waved at the rows of nuns buried in that holy cemetery, and said, simply, “You know, we owe them.”
Indeed. Sister Vitalis remembered every single Alvernia girl she ever met--thousands of them--and presided over our alumni organization for decades after our beloved school closed. And we owed her a great deal—for making us laugh, love theater, speak well (she was a speech teacher), sit up straight, and cherish each other. But what I think she did best was teach us to appreciate all the people who have ever helped us, taught us, influenced our lives in any way. As we get older—or at least, as I get older, I think about these people several times a week, it seems.
I was educated by the School Sisters of St. Francis for 12 years. Now, before you turn away, I’m not going to talk about religion. Of course, there’s that, but religion isn’t what I think of when I think about those good women.
My first-grade teacher, Sister Laurelle, was just 19, with a year of college under her belt. Those were the baby boomer years and St. Philomena School was overwhelmed with the vast number of six-year-olds from the parish in need of education. So the motherhouse in Milwaukee sent Sister Laurelle. But she rose to the occasion, and the grounding she gave us in phonics has followed me throughout a career in journalism. She also taught me that I was smart when she bragged to my mother that when she asked the class to come up with words that began with H, I quickly shouted “Hacienda!” OK, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers helped with that one.
Sister Lillian (second grade) taught me perfect Palmer penmanship and not to fidget. Sister DeSales (5th grade) terrorized me into not biting my nails but also gave me a love of geography.
Sister Gertrudine (sixth grade) taught me to love history. However, she thought it was really strange that when we were asked to write about a great American, I chose J. Robert Oppenheimer. From the look on her face, I knew enough to switch to Jane Addams. An early lesson in political correctness, that. At this point, I have to tip my hat (a chic new Fedora) to Tom and Caroline Kramer, ardent Bob Taft Republicans, who didn’t even blink when I said I was going to write about some pinko.
But the most remarkable of those grade school nuns was Sister Irmengarde, my seventh grade teacher, a woman who began teaching at St. Philomena in 1898 (you have read that correctly). She had to be at least 80 in 1953, but after spying us whispering about SEX on the playground, she considered it her duty to fill us in. She was direct, totally unembarrassed, amazingly thorough in her knowledge of anatomy, and a lot more helpful than the book about the birds and the bees that my mother gave me.
And so it continued. In high school, Sister Aloisa told me I could write and Sister Denise informed me that “Carol Kramer” was “a great byline!”
Sister Clairemarie, an early member of the Catholic Interracial Council of Chicago, gave me an interest in social justice, and Sister Maristella taught me how to read an essay.
Sister Finbar taught advanced algebra so well that when I went to college I tested right into a calculus class. I’m happy that a few years ago, at a luncheon, I was able to thank her. You don’t often get to tell your early teachers what you owe them.
Fortunately, I was able to truly please Sister Seneca, my Latin teacher, just 10 years after studying Caesar with her. I had skipped Virgil because I thought it would be better to take chemistry and it had broken her heart. I can still here her saying, “You, you Carol, you aren’t taking Virgil!”
