Antonette Marie Wagner

Mankato Mortuary
1001 N. Riverfront Drive
Mankato, MN 56001
(507) 388-2202

Our beloved Sister Antonette Marie Wagner, 78, peacefully completed her journey with cancer on at 10:10 a.m., Tuesday, May 20, 2014, in Notre Dame Health Care, Good Counsel Hill, Mankato. Her SSND sisters, Monica and Esther, her brother, Clem, and a Poor Clare cousin, Sister Caroline Berres, OSC, were with her when she died.

The funeral Mass for Sister Antonette Marie, with Father Bernard Steiner as presider, will be at 11:00 a.m., Saturday, May 24, in Good Counsel Chapel, Mankato. Burial of her cremains in our cemetery will follow on June 1. A prayer service will be held at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday, with visitation beginning at 8:30 and continuing after the prayer service until the time of the funeral. We extend our sympathy to her sisters, Agatha Farguson; Monica, SSND; and Esther, SSND; her brother, Clem (Linda); her sister-in-law, Mary Ann Wagner; her brother-in-law, Len Meger; her nieces and nephews and their families, her friends, former colleagues and students, and her sisters in community, the School Sisters of Notre Dame. She was preceded in death by her parents, Anton and Antoinette (Lenzmeier) Wagner, her sisters, Theresa Meger, Dolores, SSND, and Judy Wagner, and her brothers, Conrad and Cletus.

Sister Antonette Marie (SAM) was born on the feast of St. Ursula, October 21, 1935, on the family farm near New Market, Minnesota. At her baptism in St. Nicholas Church, she was given the name Ursula Mary. She joined her older sister Theresa in a family that grew to include seven daughters and three sons. In her autobiography, she commented, "We spent many happy hours together at meals, going to church, saying the rosary, doing chores and playing games, especially cards. We learned our numbers quite young!"

When she was five, Ursula enrolled in first grade at St. Nicholas School and was taught by School Sisters of Notre Dame. She wrote, "My youth was peppered with illness from grade two." She experienced severe appendicitis during the summer of 1946, but surgery was delayed due to the polio epidemic. Following the surgery in September, complications set in and she was anointed on the fourteenth. Her parents did not expect her to survive; the baby born on September 18 (Esther) would take her place. She continued, "That never came to be, but the two of us have been called the other many times."

Sister Antonette Marie described her call to SSND: "It was always my desire to be a sister. My mom thought the Notre Dames were too strict and the habit foreboding. She had two younger sisters who were SSNDs. So I became a Benedictine aspirant at St. Joseph, Minnesota, where I had several OSB relatives." However, further complications from her earlier surgery caused her to discontinue at St. Joseph at Christmas time. She spent the next months recovering, and in September 1950, became an SSND aspirant at Good Counsel in Mankato. She graduated in May 1954, and entered the SSND candidature in September. She wrote, "I wanted this more than anything. My parents neither opposed nor persuaded me, but they were very pleased with my decision. The hardest part was leaving my family. We were very close." She was received into the novitiate in 1955 and given the name Antonette Marie, derived from both parents' names.

Following profession of vows in 1956, Sister Antonette Marie began a forty-year ministry in Catholic School education. Looking back, she wrote, "My dream of being a sister was real but I never thought about what my ministry would be. I enjoyed teaching forty years. Mine was the gift and privilege, along with much hard work, to receive a broad education." Her ministry included teaching all eight elementary grades at some point. She started as a primary teacher at St. Francis de Sales in St. Paul (1957-1960) and St. Joseph in Montevideo (1960-63), moved to intermediate grades at St. Francis Xavier in Sartell (1963-65) and St. Joseph in Silver Lake (1965-66), and worked with upper grade students at St. Joseph in Cresco, Iowa, (1966-67) and St. Joseph in Red Wing (1967-69). At St. Mary, Shakopee, she taught upper grades and was principal (1969-70) and continued as principal of the Shakopee Area Catholic School consolidation (1970-72). She taught intermediate grades at St. Bartholomew in Wayzata (1972-76) and upper grades in St. Paul at Sacred Heart (1976-88), St. Peter Claver (1988-89), and Holy Childhood (1989-96). In addition to teaching, she shared her gifts and talents in various roles: sacristan, instructor of altar servers, cook, Sodality moderator, CCD coordinator, painter, home decorator, and needlework artisan. During this time, she earned a B.A. from Mount Mary College, Milwaukee, and an M.S. degree from Mankato State University.

Sister Antonette Marie participated in a sabbatical experience at Wellsprings in Glens Falls, New York, during the 1996-97 year. She described the next stage of her SSND ministry which was defined at this time: "It was during my sabbatical time that our province leased a place for hospitality near the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport [St. Therese Convent in the Highland area of St. Paul