Sister Anna Marie Tholkes, SSND

As a liturgy celebrating 150 years of Catholic Education in Mankato concluded in the Good Counsel chapel, Sister Anne Marie Tholkes died peacefully at 2:40 p.m. on Friday, September 11, 2015, in Notre Dame Health Care, Our Lady of Good Counsel, Mankato, Minnesota. Sister Anne Marie had ministered in Mankato Catholic Schools for 21 of those 150 years. Her niece, Sister Mary Edwin Lanners, SSND, and others were with her when she died. The Funeral Mass for Sister Anne Marie, with Father Eugene Stenzel as presider, will be at 10:30 a.m., Tuesday, September 15, in Good Counsel Chapel, Mankato, followed by burial in the Good Counsel cemetery. The vigil service will be at 7:00 p.m. on Monday. We extend our sympathy to her sisters Rose Ann Weiskircher and Delphine McMahon, her brother Jim, her nieces and nephews and their families, her friends, former students and colleagues, and her sisters in community, the School Sisters of Notre Dame. She was preceded in death by her parents, Mathias and Anne (Nosbusch) Tholkes, her sisters Regina Lanners and Odelia Schommer and her brothers Lambert, Cyril, Gerald, Fabian, Cletus, and Matthew. Sister Anne Marie was born in St. Leo, Minnesota, on the feast of the Assumption, August 15, 1922. She described how she was named, "I was baptized August 20th in St. Leo Church. On the day of my birth, Dad's younger sister, Dorothy Marie, now Sister Mary Leo, took her final vows in the congregation of the School Sisters of Notre Dame. The day she consecrated her life entirely to God, my dear mother consecrated me to His Heavenly Mother, and Dad was quite satisfied in having me receive the name of his sister in baptism. So the name Dorothy Marie Tholkes went down for the second time in the baptismal records of St. Leo Church." Dorothy began first grade at St. Leo School when she was six years old. She received her First Holy Communion on April 26, 1932. For this occasion, Sister Mary Leo sent a letter that said, "The 26th is the feast of Our Lady of Good Counsel, the patroness of our motherhouse in Mankato. Probably some day you will be a sister up there." Sister Anne Marie added, "Little did I realize at the time that that statement would come true." She continued her education at St. Leo, graduating from eighth grade in 1936. For another year and a half, she attended St. Leo as a high school student and later told how she came to attend Good Counsel Academy: "During my sophomore year, on Sunday, December 19, 1937, our much loved Superior, Sister M. Johanna (Graffe), died. Because of her death and the shortage of sisters, our high school teacher, Sister M. Petra (Mettler), took over the teaching of seventh and eighth grades, and arrangements were made for the 12 high school students to attend school elsewhere." It was arranged that the girls become boarders at Good Counsel Academy, but only two were able to leave home to do this. Dorothy was one of them, and the following fall, she joined the aspirants for her junior and senior years. Following graduation in 1940, she entered the SSND candidature on August 27. As a second-year candidate, she taught first and second graders at Mater Dolorosa School, Madelia. Dorothy was received into the novitiate on July 21, 1942, and given a form of her mother's name, Anne Marie. After profession of first vows in 1943, her first teaching assignment was at SS. Peter & Paul School, Mankato, where she taught first grade for two years. At first she found teaching challenging but was soon able to say, "Now classroom work has become appealing and interesting, thanks to the guidance of a kind and loving Superior." She continued teaching primary grades at St. Francis, Buffalo (1945-1950); St. Dominic, Northfield (1950-1951); St. Michael, Morgan (1951-1954); Assumption, Cresco, Iowa (1954-58); St. Casimir, Wells (1958-60); St. Peter, New Haven, Iowa (1960-62); Immaculate Conception, Gilbertville, Iowa (1962-68); and Sacred Heart, Heron Lake (1968-69). During those years she felt especially privileged to prepare children to receive their First Holy Communion. She earned a bachelor's degree in elementary education from Mount Mary College in 1955. In 1969, Sister Anne Marie began teaching primary grades at Holy Rosary School, North Mankato. With the exception of a sabbatical year in 1983, she spent the next 19 years in Mankato Catholic schools and parishes in a variety of ministries. At Holy Rosary, she was first a primary teacher and then a teacher's aide. She also did parish visiting and was a member of the parish social concerns and liturgy committees. Sister Anne Marie taught religion classes to children with special needs and became involved in ministry to deaf and mentally handicapped children in the Mankato area and in the diocese of New Ulm. She was a member of the National Catholic Association for the Deaf. During the summers, she was on the staff at Community Weeks for the Deaf, a program that she also helped organize in Iowa and Indiana. When Sister Anne Marie's father was a resident at the Minneota Manor Nursing Home, she began volunteering there during the summer. Her pastoral ministry there included distributing Communion, helping plan both Catholic and Protestant services, working with Bible Study, leading the Rosary, visiting the bedridden, and writing letters for the residents. She also helped residents in the occupational therapy rooms. Sister Anne Marie moved from full-time teaching to teacher-aide work at Holy Rosary in 1976. In 1983, her hearing loss and rheumatoid arthritis caused her to give up classroom work and become the school librarian at St. Joseph-St. John School in Mankato where she stayed for five years. With this move, she ministered in her third Mankato Catholic elementary school. During her years in the Mankato schools, she shared her love of collecting postage stamps with students and began a stamp club for them. The Mankato Postal Employees recognized Sister Anne Marie in 1988 for "her outstanding efforts towards promoting stamp collecting as a hobby," and the recognition was published in the Minneapolis Division Postopics, a newsletter for postal employees. She developed many creative ways for arranging and displaying stamps, and long after her retirement from the school scene, she welcomed young (and old) collectors to Good Counsel to see her stamps. She also had a ready supply of cancelled stamps to share with collectors. In 1988, Sister Anne Marie became the convent librarian at Good Counsel, a position she held until 2001. She was noted for her attractive library displays. After a year of community service, she retired from active ministry in 2002, which gave her time to pursue her hobby of stamp collecting as well as other creative interests such as making pressed-flower cards. She remained close to her family and was often visited by family members. Gratitude marked her life, and she often expressed appreciation for kindness to her. As an educator, she helped children know the love of Jesus, especially when preparing them for the sacraments. May she now know this love eternally and experience the power of Christ's resurrection - with restored hearing and ease of movement!