Sister Sheila Lenehan was born in Sandyford, County Dublin in 1943. She was the sixth in a family of six girls and two boys. She received her education in Sandyford and at Loreto College in St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin. After joining MMM in 1961, she trained as a nurse in Drogheda and then was a staff nurse in charge of the outpatients’ department in the International Missionary Training Hospital for about a year. She was remembered for her boundless energy, organizational skills and ability to multi-task.
These skills were well used when, in 1969, Sheila was one of the first two MMMs assigned to Brazil.
1923 – 17th November 2014
Sister Helen (Letitia) Lavin was born in Barnsley, Yorkshire, England in 1923, one of five children. She received her early education in Barnsley and moved to Ireland when she was nine. Because she had an aunt in the Holy Faith Convent in Haddington Road, Dublin, she was able to attend boarding school there until she completed her matriculation in 1941. She returned to England and joined the team of women working in Bletchley Park to decipher the Enigma Code. Sister Helen never revealed any information about this highly secretive work even in later life. Apparently she was an expert at cryptic crossword puzzles!
Helen joined MMM in Ireland in 1949. After profession she trained in general nursing in the Mater Hospital in Dublin, in children’s nursing in Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, and in midwifery in Drogheda. She worked as a staff nurse in Drogheda, where she was involved in the infants’ and toddlers’ wards. She encouraged parents to be involved in the care of the children, which was forward thinking for that time.
Sister Helen’s first mission assignment was in 1962, to Nigeria, where she worked for seven years in Akpa Utong, Ikom and Ndubia. She was there during the Biafran War. She then nursed Mother Mary for a year before a short assignment at the Clinica Mediterranea in Naples. After updating at the Bristol Royal Infirmary she was infirmarian at Kylemore Abbey and helped in the guest department in Drogheda before returning to Nigeria in 1975 for a further seven years. She was matron in Ondo and also served in Ogoja and Ndubia. She returned to Ireland in 1985 and worked in the respiratory physiology unit in Drogheda.
In 1989 Sister Helen went to England and volunteered in a home of the elderly. She also helped in our MMM community in Somerville, MA, USA. In 1990 she back in England, where she was warden in a sheltered accommodation facility for the elderly in London for five years. She later volunteered and was a Eucharistic minister in homes for the elderly. She received a silver medal of merit from the Order of Malta for this work.
Helen retired to the MMM Motherhouse in Drogheda, Ireland in 2000. She helped out wherever there was a need. She transferred to Áras Mhuire in 2008, where she was a gentle, smiling presence and always invited others for a cup of tea. She died peacefully in Áras Mhuire on 17 November 2014, after a long illness.
Nationality: Irish
Congregational Register No. 423
D.O.B. 01.10.1924
First Profession 20.10.1958
Died: 05.07.2005 Aged: 80 years
Bernadette Larney came from Kileen in Co. Louth. She was from a large family of six boys and three girls. After completing her secondary schooling she helped her mother at home for some years before going to England, where she worked as a bank clerk for a time. It was while she was in England that Bernadette heard of MMM and decided to enter. She was 31 years of age and at her reception she was given the religious name of Sr. M. Bernadette Therese.
The life of Sister Aloysia Lagween is part of the early Christian story of Tanzania, or Tanganyika, as it was then called. Born Emeliana, in Tlawi-Mbulu, Tanzania on 13 April 1933, her mother died in childbirth. The newborn infant was immediately cared for by a heroic woman who was responsible, with three other Maasai women, for bringing the Christian faith to the Wairaqw people in the northern Great Rift Valley in East Africa.
The first convert to Christianity, Joseph, and his young wife, Juliana, adopted the baby. During their life together they adopted seven children and had three more of their own. So ‘Ally’, as we affectionately called her, lived a happy life with her many sisters and brothers. When Juliana died Joseph remarried, and Ally had seven more siblings.
Nationality: Irish
Congregational Register No: 146
D.O.B. 11.05.1894
First Profession: 16.03.1948
Died: 08.07.1967 Aged: 73 years
Sr. Joannes entered in Drogheda on 8 September 1945 as Mrs. Nan King (née Bolger). A native of Co. Wexford, she had been living in Co. Down since her marriage to her late husband. She took great pride in the fact that the new parish church in Newcastle was built on her rose garden!
Nationality: Irish
Congregational Register No. 331
D.O.B. 01/02/1928
First Profession: 03.10.1959
Died: 09.11.2010 82 years
Sister Marguerite was born in Kilteevan, six miles east of Roscommon town. She trained as a nurse at Western General Hospital in Hull and gained experience nursing in Canada. She returned to England to train in midwifery in Liverpool before she responded to the call to join MMM in 1957.
Her first missionary assignment in 1960 was to Nigeria, where she staffed at Urua Akpan, Use Abat, Ikot Ene and Anua. A quiet and very efficient member of our community, nobody wanted to let her go, but she was eventually recalled from Africa. She specialised in children’s nursing in Liverpool in 1972. She then became sister in the children’s unit at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda.
In 1982 she was asked to go to America, where she served at our mission at Clinchco, Virginia, and covered mission awareness work all over the United States.
In 1987, on returning to Ireland, she was assigned to Kilmacow, Co. Kilkenny, where MMM managed a residential home for the elderly at Rosedale.
Despite failing health in recent years, her death came as a shock to all of us. When her remains were brought back to Kilmacow, the parish of St. Senan celebrated a loving farewell Mass before we brought her to Drogheda for our own farewell and burial. Our hearts go out to her loving family who mourn her loss with us.
Nationality: Irish
Congregational Register No. 177
D.O.B.: 23.12.1919
First Profession: 07.09.1949
Died: 07.01.2010 Aged: 90 years
Christina Kathleen Kerr was raised in Dundalk, Co. Louth, with two brothers and two sisters. As a child she spent a lot of time in Cappagh Orthopaedic Hospital. At that time Cappagh was in the middle of the country, surrounded by open fields and fresh air, which was considered beneficial for sick children. While Christina was in Cappagh, she met another little girl, Anne Bridget Joan Clifton, later to become MMM’s Sr. Joan of Arc. Was it just a happy coincidence that both girls would grow up to become MMMs?
Sister Marita was born in Macroom, Co. Cork, Ireland on the feast of the Holy Innocents, 28 December 1932. Her parents christened her Brigid Mary Innocent and she was known to her family as ‘Inny’. She was the second child in a large family and received her early education at the Mercy Convent, Macroom. After qualifying as a pharmacist in the College of Pharmacy in Dublin in 1957, she worked in retail pharmacy in various towns in Ireland and assisted her father in the pharmacy at home before joining MMM in 1960.
Congregational Register No. 272
D.O.B. 28.12.1925
First Profession 08.09.1953
Died: 19.11.2003
Aged: 77 years
Born in Mullingar, Co. Westmeath, of a family of six children, Brigid trained as a registered mental nurse before joining MMM in 1950. During her second year novitiate training, she began upgrading to registered general nurse and later did her midwifery training. Between times she worked as a staff nurse in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda.
In 1960, Sr. Fintan, as she was then known, was assigned to Naples, Italy and from there to Ethiopia where she remained until 1967. After she returned to Ireland, she worked as home sister in the nurses’ hostel in Drogheda for two years and then had the privilege of nursing Mother Mary Martin for almost five years.
Following a short period of renewal and updating, Sr. Brigid was assigned to Uganda. She worked as a ward sister in Kitovu Hospital for three years. Back in Ireland she worked mainly in Dublin and in Drogheda in fund-raising and later in parish ministry and prayer groups.
During much of her life, Sr. Brigid suffered from ill health. Illnesses in her youth led to a certain gentleness in her personality and to a deep compassion for the suffering of others In 2001, Sr. Brigid was transferred to Áras Mhuire where she died in 2003, just a few weeks after celebrating her Golden Jubilee. She is buried in Drogheda.
Born in 1923 at Kilmainham Wood, Co. Meath, Sister Eileen was educated at Loreto College, Cavan, before joining the Medical Missionaries of Mary in 1944.
After religious profession, she qualified as a midwife at the Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, and in 1953 took up her first missionary assignment in Tanzania. She was among the pioneering community who founded Makiungu Hospital, near Singida, and has recorded vivid memories of those early days.
