Sister Marjorie Myers, SSND

In the final minutes of the feast of Pentecost, our beloved Sister Marjorie (Mary Benjamin) Myers, SSND, 90, died peacefully at 11:55 p.m. on Sunday, June 9, 2019, in Notre Dame Health Care, Good Counsel Hill, Mankato, Minnesota. She had grown steadily weaker over the past few weeks and sisters had been praying with her during the last several days.

The funeral liturgy, with Father Eugene Stenzel as presider, will be held Friday, June 14, at 10:30 a.m. in Our Lady of Good Counsel Chapel. A prayer service of remembrance at 9:00 a.m. will precede the funeral liturgy. Burial of her cremains will follow at a later date in the Good Counsel cemetery. We extend our sympathy to Sister Marjorie’s sisters-in-law, nieces and nephews and their families, her friends, colleagues and former students, and her sisters in community, the School Sisters of Notre Dame and SSND Associates. She was preceded in death by her parents, Thomas and Agnes (Hoffman) Myers, her sisters Audrey Humbert and Constance Ogden, and her brothers Robert, Benjamin and Thomas.

Sister Marjorie, the fourth child of six, was born March 13, 1929, in Lisle, Illinois. On March 31, she was baptized by her great uncle, Father Victorine Hoffman, O.F.M., at St. Joan of Arc Church in Lisle. In 1935, she started first grade at St. Mary’s School, Joliet, Illinois, and received her First Holy Communion toward the end of that year. The next year the Myers family moved to Minneapolis, where Marjorie attended St. Thomas School through eighth grade. Her teachers there were Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet (CSJ). Marjorie continued her education with the CSJs during her high school years at St. Margaret’s Academy in Minneapolis, graduating in 1947. Describing her call to become a sister, Sister Marjorie wrote in her autobiography: “Desiring to be a lay teacher in a Catholic school, I then went to the St. Paul Diocesan Teachers’ College. The second day, we had a science class from Sister M. Eileen [Lorang], SSND. After class I asked my companions, ‘What kind of a sister was that?’ We soon found out, and were very much attracted to learning more about these ‘strange’ sisters. During Christmas vacation three of us visited Good Counsel and spent a day with the candidates. Two days later I had the first inkling of a ‘call’ to religious life. It had held no attraction before, but now the desire to become a religious grew more and more.” In February 1948, she made the decision to enter the candidature at Good Counsel in August. She found her first year as a candidate to be “a wonderful, profitable year.” As a second-year candidate, she did her practice teaching with fifth graders at SS. Peter & Paul School, Mankato. At reception in July 1950, she was given the name Sister Mary Benjamin, chosen for her older brother who died during World War II in November 1943. She later returned to her baptismal name. Following profession of first vows in July 1951, Sister Mary Benjamin began her ministry of teaching elementary, junior and senior high school students during the school year and student sisters during summer school classes for over thirty years. Her first mission was St. Francis, Buffalo (1951-54) where she taught grades three and four and had charge of the children’s choir, young ladies’ choir, and music pupils. Her teaching ministry, often accompanied by some type of church music, continued at Sacred Heart, Heron Lake; St. Mark, Shakopee; St. Anthony, Lismore; SS. Cyril and Methodius, Minneapolis; St. Anne, Bismarck, North Dakota; St. Dominic, Northfield; and Sacred Heart, St. Paul. She also served as director of resident students and teacher at Good Counsel Academy in Mankato. She earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Mount Mary College in 1956 and a master’s degree in geography from St. Louis University in 1965. From 1966 through 1979, she taught geography to sisters during summer sessions at Good Counsel. A highlight of the class for both students and teacher was a three-day class field trip to Minnesota’s North Shore of Lake Superior. Following a sabbatical time in the final months of 1980, Sister Marjorie taught geography for three semesters at Mount Mary College in Milwaukee. In the fall of 1982, she began working with Sister Barbara Brumleve in the Interprovincial Heritage Resource Project, which laid the foundation for renewed interest in SSND heritage and led to the establishment of formal archives in all the North American SSND provinces and regions. According to a 1983 article in Soundings, the two sisters visited over 150 SSND foundations, past and present, talked with sisters and hunted for heritage materials in such diverse places as “dusty basements, hot attics, hidden storage cupboards and rectory vaults.” After six months on the road, they were “back in St. Louis cataloging parish histories, newspaper articles, letters, notes and taped oral histories.” They also prepared a questionnaire for each sister that asked for basic information and a ministry history. The information gathered became the basis for the present SSND personnel database. Sisters Marjorie and Barbara met with heritage and archives personnel from each province and together developed a common filing system for SSND heritage materials. From 1982 until 1994, Sister Marjorie was instrumental in the design of the SSND Grassroots Heritage summer workshops and often worked with Mother Georgianne Segner in their presentation. Sister Marjorie continued in the Interprovincial Heritage Resource Project until 1985. For the next two years she lived at the St. Louis motherhouse and studied liturgy and organ. In 1987 she became the liturgist, organist and archivist at the Good Counsel motherhouse. She was deeply involved in the 1992 Mother Caroline Friess centennial celebration in Milwaukee and the local celebration in Mankato. She also directed several retreats based on the writings of Mother Caroline. One retreatant commented, “This retreat could have gone longer for me. I enjoyed Marjorie’s input ever so much. I thought the topics and correlation to Mother Caroline were superb.” In 1988, a small group of sisters from each of the religious congregations with motherhouses in Minnesota met to begin collaboration on a project that resulted in the book, They Came to Teach, which was published in late 1994 and told the story of teaching sisters in Minnesota. Sister Marjorie was the SSND representative in this project and she wrote, “Our group met twice yearly through 1992, praying together, sharing histories, providing data, noting our many similarities and few differences, rejoicing in the gifts of women religious and each community charism.” In early 1993, Sister Marjorie used her archival and SSND historian skills in a new role as a senior clinical research assistant to Dr. David Snowdon from the University of Kentucky’s Center on Aging. His research work was also known as the Nun Study. Dr. Snowdon was looking for someone with an SSND heritage background and connections who could be a resource person for the Nun Study and who could help researchers understand SSND life as they processed information from the study. She also helped to set up the archives for the study. In late 1994 Sister Marjorie began work as an assistant to the “SSND ambassador,” Sister Carmen Burg in Mankato. Recognizing her communication skills, the North American SSND provincials appointed Sister Marjorie coordinator of the North American Major Area (NAMA) communications in 1998, a position she held until 2001. From 2001 until 2004, she researched and eventually wrote the history of SSND on Guam. Beginning in 2004 she provided community service at Good Counsel in a number of ways, especially as an organist and as an “ambassador” in her own right. Sister Marjorie served on the Mankato Provincial Assembly and many SSND committees including Peace and Justice, Fine Arts, Women’s, Organ, and Theological Development, as well as several planning committees. She was known as a gentle person with a strong love for SSND and her family. She was an avid reader and had a great love of music. May Sister Marjorie, who wholeheartedly celebrated her 90th birthday a few months ago, now fully “Rejoice in her Beloved!”