Q. Your family history is fascinating. Can you share some stories about your family, your heritage and your experiences? A. I was born in Butte, Montana. Montana was in very beautiful array, not the way it is today. My mother came from Cork, Ireland. Father came from Donegal. They did not know each other until they got to the United States. My mother’s father came to the United States when he was a young man. He worked in the mines in Alaska. It was very lucrative. He had a good head on his shoulders and God blessed him. Many of his friends came to Alaska when he did, but they didn’t have the same luck that my grandfather had. He felt sorry for them. The more he made, the more he gave away. Pat Harrington. He did it with a reminder: “I’ll help you, but when I decide to go back to Ireland to marry my sweetheart I expect you to reimburse me.” He waited until he knew they were settled and could really get along well. Then he said, “I’m going back to Ireland and I’m going to marry Nora Kelly. He went back to Ireland, but he collected his money first. They were married. He bought 140 acres of land. He paid cash for it. He was known as the rich Pat Harrington because he could handle money. He was a good businessman. He wanted a large family, my mother did too. They settled in Cork. They had a mammoth farm. It was interesting because, when he planted his land, he planted it for the Harringtons and for God’s poor. Anything we got, they got. He used to have a custom that at 4 p.m. each day, people who could not afford things would appear at the gate with their little bags. In the meantime, my mother had made butter, and other things. They knew everybody in the area. If they had young children, they would receive other things than the families with older children. One year, Ireland was badly hit and all of the farms failed, except Grandpa’s. He had nine children. He called a meeting of them. He explained to them that God had the power to make everybody’s farms the same. He explained why the family had such good. He said it wasn’t just for our family, it had to be shared. He said, we always gave half to God’s poor, but now we are going to give threefourths to God’s poor and keep one fourth for the Harringtons. The kids were all for it too. He rewarded them. If they were very, very good, they could stand with him at the gate. My mother was the oldest of the nine. She said it used to thrill her when her Dad would hand her a chunk of butter and say, “Mary girl, how much do you think that weighs?” When it was right, he would pat her on the back and say, “That’s fine, Mary girl.” She said it was just a very happy family. Q. Your grandfather seems like he was a special man. A. Grandfather, he was a legend. This is interesting too. He came to the United States because he studied people who had been in the United States. Ireland was having a very difficult time. He wanted his children to be educated in the United States. He was a man ahead of his time in so many ways. Every single one of his children had the opportunity to come to the United States to be educated with the hope they would come back to Ireland and share their education. Of the nine, eight wanted to come. He didn’t put any force on the one who didn’t in any way. He let her have her own way. She has a family and every one of them is college educated. She got it in another way.

When my mother was 17, she had an opportunity to come to the United States. She came to Boston to her cousin’s house. She was so lonesome. She went to live with another cousin in Montana. Her aim was to become a nurse. She was a very bright woman. My family says if she would have had the opportunities that the others had, she could have been a Ph.D. three times over. She wanted to be nurse. When she came to Montana, she went to work in a hospital and she had gotten all of her clothes for nursing school. Everything was ready. Her sister Kate, a beautiful woman, wanted to become a sister. Her father objected. Kate talked it over with my mother, Mary. She said, “Kate, it is your life. He’s not going to live your life. He loves you too much to cross you off of his list. It will take him a little time to get used to it.” And Kate said, “How am I going to do it? I don’t have any money. Mom said, “I will step out of nursing school and I’ll give you the money you need to go to the convent.” Kate became a very, very well respected nurse. She was the head of the nursing community and ran a hospital in Denver. It was almost like a payback When my father came from Ireland, he didn’t go to Montana. He went to Pennsylvania. Everything was mines in those days. He worked in the mines, but he didn’t like Pennsylvania at all. Some of his friends were in Montana and so he went there. That’s how Mom and Dad met. We had a very, very happy home. Dad was a very good business man, too. He owned several veins in the mine and regulated them. One night he was going down to check everything. We don’t really know what happened. He met with an accident. He was in the hospital six years, a total vegetable. My Mom was left with three children: Jim, myself and Mary Claire. It was a very difficult time for her. She had to be mother and father to us at the same time. Where she got her psychology, I do not know. It was God given. Where she got her gift of strength, I do not know. It was God given too. If she was not the kind of woman she was, I do not know what would have happened. Q. What can you tell us about your immediate family? A. I was the youngest, Jim was the oldest. We also lost one sibling. I know I was a little tiny girl couldn’t have been more than 2. We had a custom that the night before Christmas, Santa Claus would come and decorate the tree. Well, Santa was Dad. Jim felt he was old enough then. “I’m old enough to help Santa,” he said. My mother let him do it. We had a beautiful stairway leading upstairs. There was a beautiful banister. My sister said “I’m going down to see what’s going on down there. The two of us were kneeling on the steps, looking through the swag. Jim walked by and saw us. He said, “Mom, the kids are up.” My mom said if we got up again, she would tell Santa to leave. Ohhh, we didn’t want that to happen. We didn’t get up at all. Every Christmas, the three of us got a big chimney. Each one had seven gifts in it that went from Christmas Day to New Year’s Day. We couldn’t open one except for the day they were set for. It wasn’t much. We were comfortably situated at this time. On Christmas Day, we opened our gifts. There was an orphanage several blocks away from

home. Mom would say to us now you go in and pick out the gift you want to give to the little boys or girls at the orphanage. Never did you give them something you didn’t like. Usually it was something you liked very, very much. I can still remember holding this doll. I didn’t want to give it up, but I did. It went to this little girl who didn’t have anything. Mom would take us down to the orphanage. She probably told sister we were coming. They would bring out two little girls and a boy. My mother was so distraught with my father’s illness. There was no possibility that he could be removed from the hospital. When I was 5 years old, they decided they needed to get him out of the mountainous climate and move toward the Midwest. One of my uncles came from Ireland to live with us. We never had a time when there wasn’t a man in the house. They were always relatives, you know, but we always had a male figure. My uncle Henry went searching around. He settled in Chicago on the south side. The furniture came. All of the trunks came. All of a sudden my mother pushes us through the door, locks the windows. We didn’t know what was going on. A little boy was on the corner and yelling, “Extra, extra read about the woman murdered in her kitchen.” My mother sat on the truck and cried. I’m going to have to raise my children in this kind of a place? It turned out to be nothing like that. We got used to things. We eventually moved. Despite the fact that I didn’t have a father visible, I certainly had the male figure. My uncles were good to me. One of them, too, died doing an act of kindness. He was working on a railroad. They had some kind of a glove they would put on when they would throw the switch. And they had to have it on both ends. The man who was working with him got sick. He only had time to grab off one glove and put it on. The train was coming too fast. He threw the switch. He saved the people in the train, but he was electrocuted. I loved him. He was my second father. When two uncles came up to school to get me, I knew something was wrong. They wanted to walk me home from school. They were so gentle. They were such a support to my mother. Daddy died when I was 9. We were in the Great Depression then. We lost everything. When we lost it, it fell into the hands of Daddy’s assistant who was a crook. But, we made it on our own. Now this boy Jim, my brother, had an unusual sense of honesty. My mother had to go to work during the depression, naturally. We would try to do things to help her so she would not have to do them when she came home from work. She would leave in the morning. I was the one who did the crummy jobs. My sister did all of the decorating. It was really a very happy childhood. My mother made it that way. I look back and realize how much she did. I didn’t realize then, and I’m sorry I didn’t. I was always playing school. I had all the kids in the block. I was always the teacher. Q. How did you learn about the Sisters of Providence? A. When I was in eighth grade, the Sisters of Providence sent someone to our school. She talked about the juniorate. She explained the juniorate was a place where girls who felt

they might have a vocation would like to go to high school. If they had one, it would develop. It they didn’t have one, you would know it. I thought, “Ohhh, that’s what I want.” I couldn’t tell anyone. I didn’t know who to tell. I got a letter that said they would accept me. I showed it to my mother. She said, “What is this?” I said, “Well, it’s a school for anyone who wants to be a sister, and I want to be a sister. I really do, Mom.” She said, “I know it.” I said, “What?” She said, “I know it, but it wasn’t for me to tell you. You had to come to that decision yourself. I have no doubt in my mind, but you are going to have a hard time with your brother. Your father is dead and your brother feels he has to take his place. This will be a good chance to see if you’ve really got it. If you can stand up to what he demands from you, then I will let you go. If you can’t then I think we’d better forget it.” So, I stood up to him. He took me with his boyfriends. He would take me with his friends and we’d go ice skating, dancing. He was very hard on me. He said what kid this age knows what she wants to be. I said, “This kid.” He really checked on me right and left. I remember when it came time for me to enter the novitiate, he would say to my mother when I was coming home from school, “You’d better have supper ready and I’ll go and meet her. Get her the things she likes to eat.” We didn’t have the money to get things I liked to eat. He was wonderful, absolutely wonderful. I remember once when I was out way too late. I knew my mother was going to be worried. He’s waiting for me at the door and he says “She’s very upset. Don’t open your mouth. Just go in and be quiet.” That’s what I did. The poor little dear was worried sick. She had had so many heartaches. You know whose party I was at? Sister Brendan Harvey’s. All of the kids from the block were there and all the kids from school were there. We had a wonderful time. Jim said, “Mom didn’t know it. You could have called her.” He was always there to even things out. When it came time for me to go to the novitiate, oh, he really gave me a rundown. Talk about being examined. I was really put on the chopping block, but I made it. I went to the novitiate. Today, I am a sister 74 years. I have been very, very happy. I have loved every assignment I have been given, some more than others. I have to tell you that my life, if I were to define my life, it has been a very, very peaceful life. I went through the novitiate. I went through the training. I went through the teaching. I was a teacher and an administrator. I was secretary to the provincial in the east. I have to say I have loved my life. Q. Do you mind sharing about your health challenges? A. I became very ill not too many years ago. They took me to the hospital, and when they dismissed me, the doctors told the community be good to her, she doesn’t have very long to live. They brought me home, here, and I’m still living. That was 2007. I was supposed to die. Since then, I have gone to Heaven’s gate at least five times. I’ve gotten the message, “Go back, they’re not ready for you.” I don’t know what’s going on. Maybe they are making a beautiful mansion for me.”

Q. How do you know you were at Heaven’s gate? A. I was dying. I knew it. I really was dying. There are no if, ands or buts about it. I remember when I finally did come back the first time, the sister who was in charge at the time said would you like to come over to the McLaughlin room. Maybe you would like to show the sisters how good God has been. When I got there and I began thanking them for everything they had done for me, Now here I am, I have a heart that is no good, and I have kidneys that are completely useless. I am on my way out. When, I don’t know. I look so good, they tell me, that it’s kind of embarrassing at times. The sisters have loved me; they have loved me deeply. They didn’t spoil me. They have given me everything. I don’t mean to say my life has been perfect. When I think how close I have come to saying goodbye to everyone, and now here I am telling them how wonderful they all are, it is just unbelievable. I have been a very happy person. Q. What was your motivation to become a Sister of Providence? A. I don’t know how I can answer that. I knew instinctively that this is what I wanted. Everybody was saying to me you are too young to know what you want to do with your life. I said, “No, I am not too young to know. My aunt was a Sister of Charity and she wanted me to come to her order. I just knew instinctively that I wanted to be a Sister of Providence. Q. You were a teacher for many, many years and also a principal. What appealed to you about the teaching ministry? A. Having these children of God, some coming from homes that weren’t all they should be and some coming from homes that were wonderful, I appreciated their honesty. I enjoyed seeing them use the gifts that God gave to them. I ought to tell you about Woody. He was fed up with everything in the 1960s (social revolution). He always tried to shock me. I refused to be shocked. He said to me this one day, “I went to the protestant church.” I said, “Fine. You can find God any place you want to find God.” And he said, “What’s wrong with you?” I said, “I don’t think anything that I know of.” Q. With that kind of a strong, positive spirit, what gives you hope in today’s world? A. Providence never fails. With Saint Mother Theodore Guerin, we cannot go wrong. I have noticed in our community an increased presence of God since she was canonized and made known. I don’t have any doubt that we will get along. We might have difficult times, but we will make it. Q. What is the most important thing in your life right now? A. God, and getting ready to die.

Q. What would you say to a woman who is considering an opportunity to join the Congregation and experience the same happiness you’ve found in your life? A. They can do anything they can put their minds to. I guess the first thing I would say is “Why do you want to become a sister?” Mother Theodore told us the Providence of God will last out. I do think there is still a good opportunity. I don’t think it’s going to be anything like I went through. I don’t think they are going to be taught the way I was taught. But, I think she would enjoy being here. Q. Have you had any role models who are sisters? A. Oh, yes. I am most grateful to Sister Gertrude Clare, Sister Rose Dolores, Sister Mary Collette, Sister Danielle Sullivan, Sister Eileen Ann Kelly. I could go on and on. You’d have a long list of them. They lived the life as I thought it should be lived: honesty, justice, fairness. Q. How much influence does Saint Mother Theodore have in your life? A. Mother Theodore has had a lot of influence on me in the past few years, lots more than she had at the beginning. At the beginning, I didn’t quite know her, but I was willing to trust her. Now, I love her so tenderly that I don’t even have to think about it. I remember saying to her specifically, “I don’t really know you. Do something about it.” And, I think she did. Q. If you could have three wishes granted to you, what would they be? A. First, see God face to face. Second, to die; I know some people won’t understand that. Third, to be able to find God in each person I meet. I know each one brings a message to me from God. Q. What would you like to hear God say to you when you get to Heaven? A. Welcome, welcome, welcome!

Quick connections

Sister Dorothy is … Happy, peaceful, because she has God in her heart. How would you like to be remembered? As an upright, honest, happy, peaceful woman.

What the world needs now… Honesty, justice and mercy. What world event has had the most impact on you? Lately, the earthquake in Haiti. I have prayed for them so hard. I am passionate about … A lot of things, but my answer is God.

Favorites

Food: Certainly not bananas because I have to eat three a day. Maybe cantaloupe. Book: Oh, my. I used to read seven a week. Movie: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Recreation: Crocheting, reading. Sport: Volleyball, tennis. Pizza: Cheese and pepperoni. Holiday: Christmas. Quote: In God we Trust. Dessert: Angel food cake with a little orange in it. Animal: Small puppy dog, one I could hold. Style of music: Waltz. Class in school: English and history. Least favorite food: Figs.