Sister Maura was born in Youghal, County Cork in 1938, the fourth of nine children. She joined MMM in 1956. After qualifying in medicine in University College Dublin she was assigned to Angola in 1967. In preparation, she first went to Lisbon, Portugal to learn the language and to study at the Lisbon School of Tropical Medicine.
She was to spend fourteen of the next twenty years in Angola, then known as Portuguese West Africa, mainly as medical director of the hospital at Chiulo. Situated in a remote area in the south of the country, at the time, the hospital was small, with limited resources. Maura contributed greatly to its development.
Sister Denise was born Philomena Lynch in Baillieston, Glasgow, Scotland in 1932. She attended West of Scotland Commercial College, obtained an advanced certificate in elocution in London, and worked as a secretary in a solicitor’s office before joining the Medical Missionaries of Mary in 1951. Her sister Patricia is also an MMM.
After profession she did nurse training in the IMTH. In 1956 she was assigned to Nigeria, where she served for three years as a secretary in Ikom. Back in Ireland, she worked in administration in the IMTH for five years and completed a diploma in social studies. Returning to Nigeria in 1965, she was a secretary in the Apostolic delegation in Lagos for three years.
Nationality: Irish
Congregational Register No. 2
D.O.B. 13.01.1907
First and Final Profession 06.01.1947
Died: 10.11.01 Aged: 94 years
Nora Leydon was born in Kilmactrenny in Co. Sligo. Nora was the third child in the family. Her mother died some months after her birth and this circumstance made her very special to her father. After leaving school Nora went to Maguire’s Secretarial College in Dublin.
Nationality: Irish
Congregational Register No. 320
D.O.B.: 07.10.1923
First Profession 09.09.1960
Died: 19.06.2010 Aged: 86 years.
Rosaleen Mary Levins came from of a large, religious, north Dublin family. Two of her brothers were later ordained. Rosaleen Mary grew up to be a strong, determined, independent-minded girl. As just a young woman she joined the Belfast Fire Brigade during WWII to do her bit to save lives during the heavy bombing of that city. Before entering MMM at the age of 28, she was working as a bookkeeper in a bakery in north Dublin.
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.
