Mollie’s Visit to Hawthorne, NY
Mollie (on the right in the back row) at her home in Jamaica Plain, MA, with her Mother on the left, and her sisters, Louise (Sr. M. James) and Elizabeth in the front row. In July 1912, Mollie arrived at Haw-thorne and soon learned from Father Walsh “that it might be better for the secretaries to disband until a later date when the time might be ripe.” She came to know that the work of the women might have to be given up if she or someone like her did not appear. With Father Walsh’s assurance of continuing to give $25 a month to each of the secretaries, they were to be ready by September with a decision to remain or not to remain.
Mollie and Nora Shea joined the secretaries to help out during the summer in order to facilitate the decision-making process. The day-by-day experience of living with Mollie intangibly created an atmosphere that was unifying and personally freeing for the togetherness of Mary Louise, Sara, Mary Augustine, and Nora. An excerpt from the 1912 Teresian Diary reads:
“These were happy days with Mollie as generous, as resourceful, as organist and leading soprano, as cook, as shampooist, as gardener – she did every kind of work imaginable….Even the cat is so glad to be here that he has given up his wild ways, and rests contentedly in Mollie’s lap.”
The personal presence of Mollie
gifted each woman with the spirit
of a natural born leader.
Mother Alphonsa of Hawthorne
During the summer, Mollie came to know Mother Alphonsa, the Foundress of the Dominican Sisters of Incurable Cancer, who had befriended Father Walsh’s women-helpers from the beginning. She learned about Mollie’s financial obligations and family responsibilities. She went to see Father Walsh and told him that she had promised a thank-offering of $2,000 for a great favor her Community had received and she wanted to use it to make the women’s part of the foreign mission work possible.
On August 17 she urged Mollie, “I want you to accept it, use it to meet those obligations and come back this Fall!” Only after Father Walsh and the Secretaries had persuaded Mollie to accept the providential offer of the gift did Mollie make her decision. She would join them in September. Time alone would reveal the importance of Mollie’s decision to the future of the Maryknoll Sisters. On January 6, 1929, MMJ gave a talk to the Community, sharing that her family only used a small portion of the $2,000 gift, and they returned the rest for the work of Maryknoll.
The Land Search
In July 1912, Father Walsh’s first attempt to buy property from Mr. Joseph Oussani for his future seminary at Pocantico Hills was effectively blocked by Mr. John D. Rockefeller, as he was bringing to completion his great stone mansion, Kykuit, and wanted to expand his property which was contiguous to this land.
On August 14, 1912, Father, together with Monsignor John J. Dunn, Director of the Propagation of the Faith of New York, and Mollie, motored to Ossining to look over a second property for sale by a Mr. Law, a “Hilltop Farm” of ninety-three acres with four buildings:
- Two homesteads at a distance from each other ~ the larger one became the first Seminary and the other became St. Teresa’s Lodge for the secretaries;
- A Carriage House with quarters for hired help became St. Michael’s used as a Chapel for the Society, and later for the Sisters’ dormitories;
- A Barn, that became St. Joseph’s, was used by the Seminary Students, then in the 1920s became the Sisters’ Novitiate.
The Hilltop Farm immediately won their hearts: its woodland and fields, its height, its sweeping view of the magnificent Hudson River and the blue hills beyond. After a second visit Father Walsh decided, “This is Maryknoll!”
Mollie’s Purchase of Ossining Property
On August 17, the very day Mollie received the generous gift from Mother Alphonsa, another special event occurred which also involved her in Maryknoll’s future: the purchase of a permanent piece of land for Maryknoll.
Late in the afternoon of August 17, 1912, Mollie left for White Plains, NY, to negotiate the purchase of land in Ossining. It was a three-hour ordeal for Mollie, as Miss Rogers from Jamaica Plain, MA. Mollie commanded the situation as only she could, even to the point of keeping up her end of the conversation when Mr. Law indicated that she must be expecting a large family. With-out hesitation Mollie said, indeed, she was!
On the way back to Hawthorne, the car met the extra chauffeur, Fr. Walsh, who had been awaiting developments from afar. No one suspected that the long coat covered Fr. Walsh’s clerical garb. A few days later Mollie legally transferred the property to the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America for the price of one dollar. The ending to such an event was a Magnificat of Thanksgiving ~ and Boston baked beans for supper! Maryknoll moved onto the map!
Mollie in Jamaica Plain, MA
On August 21, Mollie left Hawthorne for a few weeks with her family in Jamaica Plain. Mollie wrote thanking Mother Alphonsa again for the generous gift, saying:
“I can do nothing in a material way to thank you—but so long as I live and for long after if possible, at least a Memorare will be offered for you each day—a trifling thing in itself but powerful when laid at Our Lady’s feet… My people have been most generous… and after the first passionate outbreak, unselfishly gave me up…
“Each one is striving to do all the little things they know I love, and we are all saying good-by to the places that hold such dear memories of childhood. It is good to feel their love closing about me. My heart is a ragged old thing these days….Please pray for me.”
Mollie returned to Hawthorne on September 9, 1912, with Margaret Ann Shea, a young woman not yet eighteen, and the group of secretaries now became six: Mary Louise Wholean, Sara Teresa Sullivan, Mary Augustine Dwyer, Nora Shea, Mollie and Margaret Shea!
Leadership for the Secretaries
On September 14, Father Walsh wrote to Mary Louise, Sara, Mary Augustine, and Nora asking: “Do you wish Mollie to direct you, i.e., under my direction?… Write me on this subject…” The diary notes: “Before the day was over, we had all written to Father in reply to a note he had sent us this noon, and each had said “yes.” Father was too busy to give us a conference, but sent us a note in which he told us that Mary Joseph (Mollie) was to be head of the household until the Feast of the Epiphany 1913.
Mollie’s Accepting the Role of Directress
The Secretaries found themselves moved deeply when Mollie expressed her appreciation of them and accepted her responsibility with these words: “I want you to know how wholly I belong to you in every hour of the day and night, to serve you, to love you, to watch over you and with you, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, for of myself I can do nothing. Through Father Walsh and you I offer to this work the service of my entire being.” It was providential that just two years previously on September 15, 1910, Mollie had made a formal resolve to devote herself to mission work!
Mollie, Cook at the Seminary
On September 18, 1912, the Fathers, Students and Brothers moved from Hawthorne to Maryknoll, as Father Walsh was already calling his farm on the hill above Ossining.
After a period of straightening up and settling down, which Father Walsh crisply defined as “chaos,” and just as things were becoming normal, they woke up one morning to find that their cook had departed and left them breakfastless.
Father Walsh had only to tell Mollie what had happened. After consulting the secretaries, she set out immediately for Maryknoll from Hawthorne. Hannah, who had been cooking for the secretaries, joined Mollie the following day, and together they turned out three robust meals a day, with occasional evidence of Mollie’s special touches. They also cleaned all the pots and pans, stocked the empty shelves, met the usual situations of unexpected guests, late and early dinners, and the lack or delay of supplies!
They slept in the old farmhouse down the hill from the seminary ~ later St. Teresa’s Lodge. The farmer and his wife, Mr. & Mrs. Jenks, who still occupied it, offered each a room and a sagging bed. At the end of a long day Mollie would sink into hers too tired to stay awake and battle the cockroaches and bedbugs which came out in the dark!
One evening after the third meal of the day had been successfully turned out, Mollie went, tired and hot, to sit on the back steps of the Seminary and let the lovely evening air refresh her. She had not been sitting there long when a file of dark figures came around the corner of the house – priests, students and Brothers out for a short walk. The Fathers saw Mollie, lifted their hats and bowed their heads; the other young men tossed nods in her direction; and the well-fed line passed on down the hill.
They had all had a very good supper, and also a good dinner, and breakfast, Mollie thought. Why is it that we do not remember to say anything about food to the people who prepare it, unless there is something the matter with it? Not given to self-pity, she was as near discouragement as she could come.
Mollie went back to the kitchen, but she never forgot that people who create meals and others who help us deserve commendation just as much as artists, poets and philosophers ~ and perhaps even more!
~ ~ ~
A Glimpse of Margaret Ann Shea
(Who became our Sr. M. Gemma)
Margaret was born on December 3, 1894 in Roxbury, MA. After High School, she worked as a dressmaker and then cared for children. She met Fr. Walsh and asked if she could assist in his mission work. He directed her to Mollie Rogers, who was at home in Jamaica Plain, MA, with her family. Margaret, wearing a long-sleeved black dress, visited Mollie, making Mollie think that Margaret was a widow, but she looked too young to be that! After a lovely visit together, Mollie invited Margaret to go with her to Hawthorne, saying: “Come, let us just go together and see what God has in store for us!”
Margaret received the name Sr. M. Gemma. Her first assignment in 1920 was to work with the Japanese in Seattle, WA. Most of her mission life was working with the Japanese people. This was interrupted by the war in 1941 and she was interned with other religious women, and repatriated on the Gripsholm. In 1949, she returned to Japan and spent the next 19 years there, before returning to Monrovia, and then to the Sisters Center, where she was an Elder, sharing generously the precious history of the early days. She died peacefully on January 8, 1993, just completing her 98th year.
~ ~ ~
Questions for Reflection
1-How do the challenges, which our pioneers faced, relate to those we face today?
2-How is gratitude being nurtured
in our lives?
~ ~ ~
|
May 2011 The above Reflections were adapted from To the Uttermost Parts of the Earth by Camilla Kennedy, MM; Maryknoll’s First Lady by Jeanne Marie Lyons, MM; 1912 Teresian Diary; Elizabeth Carr’s Monograph, Spirituality of Mollie Rogers and Archival Documents. Maryknoll Contemplative Community for the Sisters Centennial Retreats-Reflection Committee |
