Sister Mary Beth Schraml, SSND

Our beloved Sister Mary Beth Schraml, SSND, 67, died peacefully at 1:06 p.m. on Thursday, January 17, 2019, in Mayo Clinic Health System Hospital, Mankato, Minnesota. During the night, she suffered a massive brain hemorrhage from which there was no chance of recovery.  Family members and her local community were present with her at the time of her death.The funeral liturgy, with Father Joseph Fogal as presider, will be celebrated Thursday, January 24, at 10:30 a.m. in Our Lady of Good Counsel Chapel. Visitation will be held the evening before, with a Vespers service at 7:00 p.m. Burial in the Good Counsel cemetery will follow the Thursday liturgy. In addition, a Memorial Mass will be celebrated in the Loyola Chapel at 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday. We extend our sympathy to her sister, Marie Groebner (Jerry), and her brother, Gary, her nieces and nephews and their families, her friends, Loyola colleagues and students, former students, and her sisters in community, the School Sisters of Notre Dame and SSND Associates.  She was preceded in death by her parents, Francis and Lorraine (Fasnacht) Schraml, and her brother Gayle and his wife Sandy.The youngest of four children, Sister Mary Beth was born in Mankato on October 25, 1951.  She was baptized Jane Geralyn at All Saints Church, Madison Lake, where the Schraml family lived on a farm just north of town. Sister Mary Beth’s theme of blessing, quoted at the top of this page, has been a constant thread in her autobiographical sketches.  She wrote, “It was a blessing to grow up on a small lakeshore farm just outside Madison Lake where the beauty and wonder of creation surrounded us.  Our home was filled with love and laughter, music and singing, faith and faithfulness, high expectations and encouragement.”  She continued, “Mom and Dad didn’t talk much about love, but we saw it in the way they cherished and honored each other.  They didn’t talk much about faith, but we saw it in their fidelity to Mass, the family rosary, service to our parish, helpfulness to the sisters at school, and a sacrifice to provide Catholic education for all of us. We all inherited our parents’ love of nature and travel, of quiet times and simple things, of learning and reading, and their resourcefulness, loyalty and determination.”Jane followed her brothers and sister when she enrolled at All Saints School in 1958.  She wrote, “Daily contact with the sisters at school was another blessing.  I loved the sisters who taught us, was intrigued by their dedication and cheerfulness, and often thought about religious life.” Her fourth-grade teacher, Sister Joan Herbrand, died in May, and the Schramls brought Jane and several classmates to Good Counsel for the wake.  This was Jane’s first memory of Good Counsel Hill, and she commented, “It was love at first sight.”  During her elementary school years, Jane knew she wanted to be a teacher of little children and even practiced from “How to Draw” books from the library because she knew she would need to be able to draw on the blackboard as a teacher.As an eighth grader, Jane asked her parents if she could attend Good Counsel Academy, but her dad said that she would go to Loyola High School, as her older siblings did.  He said, “I know what you’re thinking – we’ll send you up there [Good Counsel] and then you’ll walk across the street and become a nun.”  This is exactly what she was thinking, even though she hadn’t said anything about it.  She spent four years at Loyola, enjoying especially chorus – “I began to realize the gift song is for me and can be for others” - and journalism, serving as co-editor of The Loyolan as a senior.  And during her senior year, she did make plans to enter the School Sisters of Notre Dame postulancy, which she did on August 23, 1970. Several days later, on the feast of St. Augustine, the sisters received the first edition of their revised rule of life, You Are Sent. The postulants also received a copy, and Sister Mary Beth later described her experience that day: “That afternoon I walked around the campus and devoured the text and realized how blessed I was that I had landed exactly where I was sure God meant me to be.  I found a kindred spirit in Blessed Theresa who loved Jesus in the Eucharist, wanted to live simply, and spent her life educating children, believing the world could be changed through the transformation of persons.”  Jane spent two years as a postulant, attending college classes and learning about SSND life.  She became a novice in July 1972 and asked to be known as Sister Mary Beth.  She wrote, “I chose the name for Mary and Elizabeth – always feeling close to Mary, and having learned that ‘Beth’ in Hebrew means ‘house, home, dwelling place,’ and hoping to become a dwelling place for God and all those God places in my life.”On January 12, 1974, Sister Mary Beth professed first vows for three and one-half years, “but ‘forever’ in my heart.”  After profession, she took college classes for a semester, and then began her decades-long ministry of teaching young children at St. Francis de Sales, St. Paul, where she taught grades one and two until 1976. In 1976, she moved to Blessed Sacrament, Waterloo, Iowa, where she worked in a multi-aged primary building and taught grades one through four. Following one year at St. John the Baptist, Vermillion, Minnesota (1978-79), she returned to Iowa, teaching at St. Joseph/Notre Dame in Cresco (1979-88). From 1988 through 1990, she taught first grade at St. Mary’s in the Winona (Minnesota) Catholic School System and was also the assistant principal. In 1990 she became teacher of grades one and two at her home parish, All Saints in Madison Lake, where she stayed until 2005. From 1999 until 2005, she was also principal at All Saints.  In 2005, she moved to her ministry at Loyola, serving initially as a first grade teacher (2005-07), then as principal of the primary unit (2007-2016), and finally as Mission Integration Associate.  During her years in the classroom, she earned a BA in education and theology from Mount Mary College in 1976, and an MS in child development and early childhood education from Wheelock College, Boston, in 1993.Sister Mary Beth often wrote about the joys of teaching. “I have always considered it a great blessing to have found my niche in ministry early on, loving school as a student and loving it as a teacher.  It was a blessing to spend 33 years of my life as a classroom teacher, with little children who delighted and challenged me every day.  Their profound thoughts nourished my faith and prayer again and again. Over the years, wherever I served I found myself falling in love with the parish, the school, the community, my colleagues, and most of all, the children.” Another important aspect of Sister Mary Beth’s ministry was liturgical music.  She commented, “Everywhere I have served I provided prayer experiences, planned school liturgies, played guitar and led in song.”  She was often part of the liturgical music combos on Good Counsel Hill and assisted with liturgical planning for jubilee celebrations.  As a School Sister of Notre Dame, Sister Mary Beth was involved in vocation ministry and was active on the province vocation committee.  She developed a series of four PowerPoint presentations about SSND life for use with students of varied ages.  Each one is based on a quotation from Blessed Theresa, with Sister Mary Beth’s favorite based on Blessed Theresa’s prayer to be a “pure spark of God.” When asked by the current vocation team to share a life-giving experience, she responded, “A lifetime of touching children’s lives and the lives of their families – planting seeds with abandon!  Someone in grad school asked me why I ‘glowed’ every day.”  Other SSND involvement included the Global Connections Border Experience (2008) and the English Language Camp in Budapest, Hungary (2011).At Loyola, she was described as “personifying the heart and soul of our school.”  She made it a special point to integrate the spirit of both St. Ignatius of Loyola and Blessed Theresa Gerhardinger into the daily life of the school.  One of her favorite daily responsibilities was greeting students as they arrived in the morning.  As the official “tour guide” she was often the face of Loyola for new families.  She also was the bridge between Loyola and the School Sisters of Notre Dame, keeping sisters informed of activities at the school through a weekly newsletter that always concluded with day-brightening anecdotes.Family played an important role in Sister Mary Beth’s life.  Her brothers and sister, her nieces and nephews and their families were very special to her.  “My life has been one blessing after another!”Circumstances that are not understood took Sister Mary Beth too soon. However, in one of her Christmas letters, she wrote, “I find myself also thinking of running to meet God, knowing there are open arms, everlasting arms, waiting.”  And her prayer for all of us is “May you find yourself in God’s arms now and always.  Blessings and peace to you!”