Sister Mary Faith Glendening
1924-2008
Geraldine Felling Walsh, a former member of the Class of 1962 at St. Joseph Academy in Adrian, sent a long testimonial to Sister Faith Glendening’s wake. In her busy life with her husband and children, Geraldine found time to visit Sister Faith fairly frequently. These are paragraphs from her tribute.
When I arrived I was a 14-year-old. Students and teachers were still living in Madden Hall. I was assigned to an eight-bed dormitory, the largest, with my sleep area adjacent to a white curtained-off section that was Sister Mary Faith’s ‘bedroom.’ Morning and night, I heard her quiet movements, watched her glide in and out in full habit for nightly showers down the hall, realized she never got enough rest, and seriously wondered why she had chosen this life. I then slept soundly in the comfort of her gentle, dependable, and nurturing shadow. We never again lived that close to one another, but in our hearts, minds, and spirits, we had already melded for a lifetime.
Sister Faith entered my life at a critical point. I was a typical impressionable teenager, ready for life’s launch. My next fifty years would have been enormously different, profoundly less developed, without Sister Faith’s exceptional modeling, encouragement, prayers, and love.
Sister Faith, in her lengthy and interesting autobiography entitled “Under the Shadow of His Wings,” wrote about her heritage. Her father, Joseph Glendening, was of Scotch descent and born in Winnipeg, Canada, of Protestant parents, who were also anti-Catholic. The family later left Canada for the United States, and settled in Lake Orion, Michigan. The parents emphasized the importance of education and a worthwhile profession to their five children and Joseph became a pharmacist. His three brothers also listened to their parents. One was a chemist, another was an optometrist, and the third was a lawyer. His sister married a bacteriologist.
Sybil Zbanek, Sister Faith’s mother, was of Bohemian and German ancestry, and grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. When Sybil was a baby, her father was killed in an accident. Her mother, a nurse, found employment in a hospital, and a Catholic neighbor cared for Sybil. With permission, the neighbor had Sybil baptized in the Catholic Church. Sybil had no further contact with the Church, until she was a junior in high school, when one of her friends persuaded her to attend St. Joseph Academy in Cedar Rapids. There she was instructed in the faith, and made her First Communion. Upon leaving school, she attended a business college in Detroit and found a secretarial position in that city. The office was near St. Aloysius Church, and she began attending daily Mass.
Joseph Glendening had found employment in Detroit. He was working as a pharmacist in a drug store near the church. He and Sybil met and eventually decided to marry. He professed no religion; and, although he knew that his family would disapprove, he agreed to be married by a priest in the rectory. The couple made their home near Joseph’s family in Lake Orion, which Sister Faith described as “an anti-Catholic town,” and parented four children: Douglas, Faith (the future Sister Mary Annette), Fern Elizabeth (the future Sister Mary Faith), and Vernon. Fern was born on April 6, 1924.
At the age of three, Fern contracted scarlet fever, which left her with a weak heart. From that time on, she was forced to abstain from strenuous activities, such as running and sports. She and her older sister Faith became fast friends and spent much time together. They lived across the street from St. Thomas Chapel, where Masses were celebrated infrequently except during the summers, when Mass would be required for people from other areas who owned cottages near Lake Orion. Sybil Glendening took on the care of the church, and her two daughters would often go with her, sitting quietly until she finished. It was there that Fern made her First Communion. Sister Faith wrote that when Masses were held, “my sister would play the organ, my mother would sing, my younger brother would serve, and I would do the praying.” Sometimes there would not be many other people present.
Since there was no Catholic school in Lake Orion, the Glendening children attended a public school. When Fern was in third grade, they moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where they attended a public school for a year. Then they moved back to Lake Orion for a short time. They had their first contact with religious sisters, the IHM (Immaculate Heart of Mary) Sisters, when their pastor made arrangements for them to travel by bus to St. Frederick School in Pontiac, Michigan, fifteen miles from Lake Orion. After a short time the bus broke down and could not be repaired. When they returned to a public school, they had moved to Oxford, Michigan. Sister Faith wrote:
Our religious education came from the prayers our mother taught us, the Bible stories that she read to us each night, her own beautiful example, and the Catechism classes we attended on Saturdays. Our father would drive us to Mass and to Catechism, but would never join us. We prayed that some day he would have the gift of our Faith. Influenced by his non-Catholic family, our father left us when I was in the seventh grade, but we continued to pray for him.
Contact with him must not have been lost, however, for she wrote about seeing and visiting him, and of his conversion to Catholicism before his death in 1974.
When her husband left, Sybil Glendening moved her family to Detroit, where she found work and enrolled the children in St. Theresa School. It was there that both Fern and Faith met and admired the Adrian Dominican Sisters, and soon began to think of joining them. Faith entered the postulate at Adrian in 1940. Fern, however, greatly admired St. Therese of Lisieux and St. Theresa of Avila, and the idea of becoming a cloistered nun had entered her mind. She finally consulted one of the priests, who advised her to go to Adrian. She took his advice, and entered the postulate on June 22, 1941. She was seventeen years of age.
She received the habit and her religious name on December 30, shortly after the outbreak of World War II. At about this time, to Sister Faith’s delight, her mother accepted the position of school secretary at St. Theresa High School, which she held for eighteen years. Douglas served during the war, but returned home safely. Sister Faith considered these blessings answers to prayer.
After profession of vows on December 31, 1942, she was kept in Adrian as a full-time student at Siena Heights College (now University) for the second semester of that school year. In August 1943 she was on her way to Sacred Heart School in Bad Axe, Michigan, where she taught third and fourth grade for two years.
Her next two assignments sent her far away from Michigan. The first was to Rome, Georgia, as a middle grade teacher at St. Mary School for eight years. This was a new school which was not quite ready to open. During the interim, she was assigned to help at St. Joseph Academy in Adrian.
After spending two weeks sewing names on uniforms, giving little children their baths, taking study, dorm, and dining room duty with noisy children and rather bold high school girls, I prayed that I would never be assigned to teach at the Academy. I felt sorry for the sisters who had to be there a whole year.
Both she and Sister Annette were assigned to Rome, and she wrote of their years there as “happy, grace-filled years.” These years were different from what they had previously known. The Civil War was still alive in the minds of many of the people, and the black people were completely segregated. Both Sisters Faith and Annette made final profession in Rome. They saw the first graders graduate from eighth grade and a large increase in enrollment.
Sister Faith’s next assignment was to Jacksonville, Florida, as a third grade teacher at St. Matthew School for three years. Here there was a new convent with every modern convenience. Sister Annette was at Assumption School, also in Jacksonville, and the two were able to see each other occasionally. Both sisters taught at Barry College during some of the summers. In 1956 Sister Faith returned to Michigan, and taught for two years at Dominican High school in Detroit.
She was willing to serve wherever she was sent, but in 1958 what she dreaded came to pass—she was assigned to the high school section of St. Joseph Academy in Adrian. She, however, found the assignment a happy one. The sisters with whom she lived and taught were very helpful, and the girls in her classes were friendly and cooperative. She came to realize that “not all the Academy girls were loud and bold but potentially lovely young women who were simply growing up.” Her ministry during her fourteen years there was sometimes difficult, but she cherished many good memories from her experiences. A sad occasion during this time was the death of her beloved mother in September 1969.
During the summers Sister Faith had been studying theology and Scripture, and began to think of leaving St. Joseph Academy. In 1972 Sister Annette, who had been teaching at a high school that closed, had accepted a position as music minister at St. Joseph Parish in Adrian, and there was an opening for a parish minister. Changes were taking place in the Congregation at this time. The habit had been modified, and the sisters were finding their own ministries, rather than being assigned. Following Sister Annette’s suggestion, Sister Faith applied for the position at St. Joseph Parish, and the Parish Council chose her to fill the need. This began her thirty years of service to the people of St. Joseph Parish. She was also given time for more study, retreats, and to make a pilgrimage to Rome and its environs. She wrote of accompanying Sister Brigetta McDonough to the Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia, and of how much she enjoyed the trip. But, most of all, she loved her ministry—visiting the sick, conducting retreats, directing the RCIA, giving private instructions.
In 1977, both Sisters Annette and Faith were injured in an automobile accident while on a Communion call to a dying parishioner who was in the Morenci, Michigan, hospital. They had broken bones and many cuts and bruises. After six weeks of recuperation, they were able to resume their duties.
In 1999 both retired, but continued to offer their services to the parish. Both sisters left St. Joseph Parish in 2002, and moved into the Dominican Life Center, at first in a Regina apartment, but later into the Maria Building. Sister Faith wrote in 1993:
Lately we have both begun to feel the effects of the aging process… I don’t know how many more years God will add to my life, but this I know. He will always be with me, love me, and help me through every minute of every day that is left for me. He has always been faithful, generous, kind, compassionate, merciful, and gracious to me. May I always be the same to Him.
The time that God allowed her ended on January 20, 2008. She was eighty-three years of age, and had been a Dominican for over sixty-five years.
Sister Faith’s wake-remembrance service was held on January 22 in St. Catherine Chapel. Sister Annette was present, as were her niece Beth and husband Robert Wronski, and her nephews Douglas and his wife Gerry, and Gregory and his wife Amy. Her brother Vernon and his wife Beverly were unable to attend. Sister Joan Sustersic, Prioress of Holy Rosary Mission Chapter, opened the ceremony, extended sympathy to the family members who were present, as well as to Sister Faith’s many Dominican friends, and summarized Sister Faith’s life and ministry. She spoke of the last few years of Sister Faith’s life. “God was always with her … but her physical problems increased. As her health continued to fail, her heart, weakened in childhood, gave up.”
Gertrude Walsh shared many memories from her Academy days. Among them:
My best friend, Penny Kelly, and I noticed that Sister Faith went weekly to the laundry to drop off items and collect her freshly pressed habit, her laundry, and her sheets. With great delight we took on that small task… Sister Faith never, EVER, stopped thanking us, as late as this October, for those laundry duties and our other small kindnesses.
Judy Fuller Morris, also a member of the Class of 1962 at St. Joseph Academy, sent a message telling of the frequent visits that she, her husband, and children made to Sister Faith, and how proud Sister Faith was of her. “She would ask me to sing for her and all the staff and sisters.”
We also took Sister Faith and her sister, Sister Annette, to their favorite restaurant. This was a Chinese restaurant, where all the employees knew them. But they always knew what they wanted to order. But the funniest part, they would both make sure they brought their “plum” sauce. Then they would enjoy taking their “doggie bags” home and figure out how many snacks they would have left over. Bless their dear hearts!
It was always a pleasure to visit Sister Faith. No matter how bad she felt, she would never complain, and she loved all the staff that took care of her. I used to call her every weekend, and always thanked her for caring for all of us girls. How deeply I will miss her!
Sister Faith’s funeral liturgy was celebrated on January 23, 2008. Father Roland Calvert, OSFS, was the presider and homilist, and Father Jim Lothamer, a previous pastor at St. Joseph Parish concelebrated. He is now pastor at St. Agnes Parish in Fowlerville, Michigan. Kathie Frank from St. Joseph Parish led the singing beautifully.
Gertrude Walsh ended her testimonial by applying a saying of St. Catherine of Siena to Sister Faith: “She was in God’s Love and God’s Love was within her.” There, with her Beloved, Sister Faith rests for all eternity, together with the loved ones who preceded her.