Sister Dorothy Johnson
1912-2009

Sister Dorothy was given the privilege of dying on the date celebrated as the birth date of the Blessed Virgin Mary, September 8. In her autobiography she wrote:

The Adrian Dominican Congregation has given me a life that I never had expected. Naturally, all was not easy, and when I entered Sister Angeline Marie [Dockal] told me, “Remember, it is not all a bed of roses.” As true as that statement is, I have found not too many thorns among my roses.

On December 6, 1912, William and Mary Agnes (Girardot) Johnson of Chicago rejoiced in the birth of a daughter and baptized her Dorothy. Two more children followed her into the family, a boy who died in infancy, and a sister Virginia. She wrote that her sister took care of their parents until their deaths and finally, in 1974, on her fifty-sixth birthday, married a “fine Polish man.”

William Johnson was from Hammond, Indiana, and came from a German heritage. Mary Agnes Girardot was from Garrett, Indiana, of French lineage. They met and married in Chicago. Sister Dorothy wrote, “My only sister and I received much love and understanding from them, and they always encouraged our creativity and independence within reason.”

Sister Mary Aquinas Girardot, an Adrian Dominican who died in 1971, was her mother’s youngest sister. Dorothy loved her aunt and missed her very much when she died. “She was my idea of a perfect person.” Dorothy’s vocation was born at the age of seven when she attended her aunt’s reception in Adrian. She credits other Dominican sisters with “fanning the spark,” and some in heaven to whom she had great devotion: the Trinity, the Blessed Virgin, and St. Thomas Aquinas.

Dorothy and Virginia attended St. Laurence Grade School and progressed to Aquinas High School, from which Dorothy graduated in June 1931. In her autobiography she does not say what she did for the next year, but she arrived in Adrian and entered the postulate on July 2, 1932. A month later she was sent to St. Gabriel School in Detroit, where she spent the 1932-33 school year with third grade children. She returned to Adrian in summer 1933 and began her novitiate. She was part of Sister Mary Philip Ryan’s first group of novices.

She received the habit and her religious name, Sister Ann Dorothy, on December 27, 1932, and professed her first vows on August 9, 1934. Almost immediately she was on her way to St. Mary School in St. Clair, Michigan, where she taught middle grade students for four years. The next three years were in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula with middle grade students at Sacred Heart School in Munising. She described this area as “the Land of Hiawatha.” In June 1941, as a result of summer study, Siena Heights College (now University) in Adrian awarded her a bachelor’s degree with a major in history and minors in French and English.

In August 1941 she was sent to another school named Sacred Heart, but this time it was located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. There she taught first grade. She wrote that she was in an area “steeped in Spanish-American culture, including the great traditions of the Indian tribes still living in the area.” World War II had begun with the bombing at Pearl Harbor, and exploring of the region was limited. She was, however, able to visit Santa Fe and the Sandia Mountains. The sisters visited town frequently, where they watched the Indians weave beautiful rugs and make turquoise and silver articles to be sold. She described her classroom: “A pot-bellied stove in the back of the room removed the morning chill and roasted those unfortunate enough to sit too close.” She found the children charming—highlights of her life at the time.

After two years she was one of the group sent to Santa Cruz, California, to open Holy Cross School. There she taught middle grade students. Because of the war, sightseeing there was also limited. But the sisters at Sisters Hospital “were a great comfort and a buffet supper in their backyard was a relief to many a trying day.” Their backyard was in view of the ocean, and Sister Dorothy considered seeing it a delightful experience.

After two years she returned to Sacred Heart in Munising, Michigan, with middle grade and junior high students. She had been studying at De Paul University in Chicago during the summers, and in August 1950 she received a master’s degree in education. She loved the Upper Peninsula, and wrote her graduate thesis on “The History of Education in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.” She also wrote, “That study taught me much about the area and its people and gave me another heavenly advocate—Bishop Baraga.” It was also in 1950 that she and her sister lost their beloved father.

Beginning with 1951, she spent two years on the junior high level at St. Edmund in Oak Park, Illinois.

In 1953 her assignment was somewhat of a shock. She was again in the Upper Peninsula, but as principal and superior at St. Agnes School in Iron River. She wrote of her six years there as “growing years, learning what it means to live in a mining community—especially at a time when most of the copper and iron ore had already been removed from the hills.” It was also in 1959, at the end of her term, that she and Virginia mourned the loss of their mother. St. Agnes School closed a few years later.

At the wake, Sister Mary Kathleen O’Neill spoke of those years.

Did you ever meet someone you had never known before and who made a difference in your life? Fifty years ago, that’s what happened to me. That’s when I met Sister Ann Dorothy.

I was changed at Christmastime to Escanaba in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It snowed and snowed. Whenever I would have my students doing something in the front of the room, I’d be crying in the back of the room. We saw very few people. One day a very important letter came from Sister Ann Dorothy. She invited all the sisters in the UP to come to Iron River, and everyone went. Fifty of us. We enjoyed one another. It was a wonderful experience. She was a super-hostess. This made it possible for me to go back to the UP the following year. She really made a difference in my life at that time.

When her term at St. Agnes ended, Sister Dorothy was sent to Loves Park, Illinois, where she taught grades six and seven at St. Bridget School. She then spent four years in Chicago with junior high students, a year at St. Kevin and three years at St. Columbanus. Beginning in 1965 she taught junior high students for four years at Santa Maria del Popolo in Mundelein, Illinois. In 1967 Siena Heights College in Adrian awarded her a certificate in theology.

Her ministry changed in 1969 when she was appointed coordinator at Maria Hall in Adrian, a position that she held for three years—years of “great joy and sorrow.”  She wrote:

It was a time of growth for me in many ways. When the time was almost up, I decided to choose a career other than teaching. Something in the medical field other than nursing seemed to draw me—but what? Thinking that in the future Maria Hall would need some medical recordkeeping, and after taking an aptitude test and meeting with personnel and the Medical Records Administrator of Bixby Hospital in Adrian for a few hours each week, I decided to enter into that field.

When she left Maria, she took a course in medical records, was accredited by the American Medical Records Association as a medical records technician, and took a position as medical records clerk at Bixby Hospital in Adrian. In time she became Assistant Director of Medical Records. At the wake Sister Jean Hitzeman said:

One of the side effects of going into open placement was that some of us landed in an environment in which there was little Catholic presence. We were the first religious sisters that our confreres had ever met. [At Bixby Hospital Sister Dorothy] assumed the fruitful but challenging ministry of building a community there by establishing relationships with each member of her department.

Sister Dorothy was sixty-five years of age in 1978, which was mandatory retirement age at Bixby Hospital, and so she was forced to leave, although she had greatly enjoyed her work there. She wrote, “It was a good feeling to work for an institution that was helping our sisters when they needed excellent medical care. My Bixby family meant a great deal to me.”

Her next ministry was as medical records clerk at Dominican Santa Cruz Hospital in Santa Cruz, California, a position that she held for ten years. There again, as Sister Jean Hitzeman called to the attention of the assembly at the wake, “the quality of her relationships endeared her to the staff in medical records.”

In 1988, seventy-six years of age, she retired and lived at Dominican Oaks in Santa Cruz for eight years, volunteering her services. She loved her apartment, and wrote, “My apartment is a holy place where I pray and contemplate the beauties of nature.” She volunteered her services in several places, served as a Eucharistic Minister and lector, crocheted, painted, enjoyed music, read, and attended classes and lectures of interest.

She returned to Adrian in 1996 and lived at Regina Residence for almost a year, then in Roncalli for over a year while Regina was being remodeled. In 1998, however, because of health problems she had to move into the Dominican Life Center/Maria where she remained until her death in 2009 at the age of ninety-six.

Sister Dorothy’s wake-remembrance service was held on September 11 in St. Catherine Chapel. Sister Jo Gaugier, Prioress of Holy Rosary Mission Chapter, opened the ceremony, extended sympathy, and welcomed those present: Sister Dorothy’s cousin Patricia Finnegan and several other family members, and her many Dominican friends. Sister Jo summarized Sister Dorothy’s life and ministry, and spoke of her last years.

She had a wonderful sense of humor, and enjoyed painting and crocheting. Diabetes took its toll on her, and she had a number of complications that brought her in 2005 to the third floor of Maria where she could receive more care. It was difficult to see her, who had been such a talented woman, lose a great deal of her memory.

Cinda Walton, who worked with Sister Dorothy at Bixby Hospital, said:

She always referred to me as her superior. However, we were co-workers, except that I was on a slightly higher rank.

We always admired Sister Dorothy. And we heard of her experience in learning to drive a car. Her sister provided the car. Sister Dorothy was sixty-five years old.

What she loved about medical records was coding. Every process has a number that goes with it. She became an expert at applying that code with the records. She has always been a special person to me. (She read a composition adapted from a poem, entitled “Sister Dorothy Johnson Was Special.”)

Patricia Finnegan, Sister Dorothy’s cousin, shared remembrances:

Sister Dorothy and her sister Virginia were special parts of our family. When we were growing up, she was really an icon in our lives. We always wanted to know what she was up to. It was nice to hear her stories. We always knew that her history was colorful.

We went to visit her in Santa Cruz. She was happy and retired, and she showed the community to us with such pride. I remember sitting in a restaurant with her. She told us about being there in 1943 and what it was like in California during World War II and the blackouts. That’s just an example of the history that she brought to our family.

My mother loved her very much. They were both special women to us, and that’s why we’re here tonight. We know that they’re happy together in heaven.

Sister Dorothy’s funeral liturgy took place on September 12. Father Robert Kelly, OP, was the presider and homilist. Following the liturgy, she was laid to rest in the Congregational cemetery.

She wrote in 1993 that her goal was to study and live the Vision Statements as best she could, as well as to live a meditation that she used:

He asks that I look with an eye of compassion, listen with a sensitive ear,
Touch with a gentle hand, walk at another’s pace,
Enjoy another’s good fortune, cry with another’s pain. 

This is what the Lord wants: that I act justly, live tenderly, and walk humbly with my God.

It is plain to see that, in the ninety-six years of life that God allowed her, she succeeded quite well.