Sister Anthonita Porta
1933-2009 

Sister Anthonita Porta died the day after the sixtieth anniversary of her entrance into the Adrian Dominican Congregation. She entered the postulate on September 8, 1949, and died suddenly and unexpectedly on September 9, 2009, at the age of seventy-six. On the day of her death, a group of consultants was meeting to plan a celebration of her sixtieth year as an Adrian Dominican, and to work toward establishing the Sister Anthonita Porta Legacy Trust to continue her commitment to helping Montessori teachers and the children of the poor.

Sister Anthonita came from German and Irish ancestry. Her paternal grandparents left Germany and settled in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where they parented thirteen children. After her grandmother died, her grandfather remarried and fathered sixteen more children, bringing the number of his children to twenty-nine. When her maternal grandparents left Ireland, they also settled in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and became the parents of seven children. It was in Altoona that Anthony Porta and Mary McGrinn met and married. After their marriage they moved to Detroit, where they also brought a large family into being, twelve children, three of whom died at early ages. Sister Anthonita, their fourth child, was born on March 9, 1933, and baptized Dolores Ann. Her brother Gerard was killed in Vietnam in 1968. All of her surviving brothers and sisters married, and Sister Anthonita had thirty-six nephews and nieces.

Dolores began her education at Holy Redeemer School with the IHM (Immaculate Heart of Mary) Sisters. After two years, she transferred to St. Herman School, but two years later returned to Holy Redeemer, where she also attended high school. She found school difficult and wrote that it was never one of her favorite places; but that she was greatly influenced by her teachers, especially by a young, attractive sister by the name of Sister Anthonita. As a freshman, Dolores felt a very definite “call” to become a religious sister, but the IHM sisters told her to wait until graduation. This, however, was not to her liking.

She was sixteen years of age when she and her father rang the bell at the door of St. Alphonsus Convent in Dearborn. Sister Martin Therese [Grantham] answered the door. Within two weeks, Dolores was ready to enter the postulate of the Adrian Dominican Sisters, and she did so on September 8, 1949, the day celebrated as the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary. On August 8, 1950, she received the habit and her religious name, and on August 9, 1951, she professed her first vows.

Within a short time she was on her way to Chicago, where for two years she taught third grade at St. Nicholas School. She had a great desire to teach first grade, and during her third and last year there she taught sixty-six first graders. In 1954 she taught first grade for seven years at St. Henry in Cleveland, Ohio, then spent nine years in Michigan with first graders: six years at St. Isidore in Mount Clemens and three years at St. Margaret in St. Clair Shores. During these years she worked with teenagers in religious education classes, and also became interested in the Montessori method of teaching.

In 1963, as a result of summer study, she received a bachelor’s degree from Siena Heights College (now University) in Adrian with a major in home economics and minors in English and Spanish. She spent the 1970-71 school year as a full-time student at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, and earned a master’s degree in education with a concentration on the Montessori method. The next year, joined by Sister Leonor Esnard, she returned to Adrian, and set up a Montessori School at St. Joseph Academy with eighteen students. Enrollment grew each year, and in 1975 they opened two classrooms, two sessions a day, with eighty-six children. The program eventually numbered 190 children, and she opened a satellite program in Tecumseh and a toddler program. She wrote, “It seemed that whatever I began grew in quality and numbers!”

In summer 1972 she began teaching at Siena Heights University, and became active in the American Montessori Society, teaching in five different Montessori Teacher Education Institutes around the country, as well as directing the Adrian Dominican Montessori Teacher Education Institute. In 1974 she became a school consultant, an accreditation visitor for schools and teacher education groups, and served on the Board of the American Montessori Society. She and her siblings sorrowed when their father died in 1982. In 1988 she helped to found a Montessori School at St. James Cathedral School in Orlando, Florida.

In 1990 she left the classroom and became a full-time administrator, taking on more work with adults. Shortly after that her nephew Paul D’Arcy joined her and Sister Leonor in their work. Sister Anthonita became aware of the poor and marginated, and wanted to find a way to take children from that group into the Montessori Children’s House. She began raising money, in order to establish an “At Risk Scholarship Fund.” The money came from the Adrian Sisters and from foundations in the area. She wrote in 2001 that there were twenty-four children in the program, and that a Scholarship Foundation had been established. “Our goal is to raise enough money so that the interest will pay the tuition for children at risk to attend Montessori for years to come.” Income from the certification program for Montessori teachers that she began, as well as from lectures, seminars, and workshops, also added to the foundation fund.

In 1999 another period of sorrow entered her life when she lost her beloved mother.

Through the years, she received many awards. She was honored with the Alumnae Award from both St. Joseph Academy and Siena Heights University in 1990; an honorary doctorate from Siena Heights University and the Athena Award from the Adrian Chamber of Commerce in 1991; the Educational Leadership Award from Barry University in Miami, Florida, in 1994; and the Living Legacy Award from the American Montessori Society in 2002-2003. She also received much newspaper publicity. Pictures and accompanying articles appeared in the Adrian and Tecumseh newspapers, several Montessori publications, and in Michigan and Florida Catholic papers. She wrote:

My personal goals are, and have always been, to serve God through my work with children and adults as long as I have energy. The children will form the world of tomorrow. The teachers and parents will influence their children. The attitudes toward life, the poor, all peoples, justice, etc., will change because of early education and exposure to a more just way of thinking.

Sister Anthonita’s wake-remembrance service was held on September 13 in St. Catherine Chapel. Present were her sister Ann D’Arcy, her brother Michael, many nieces and nephews, several colleagues, and her numerous Dominican and other friends. Sister Mary Ellen Youngblood, Prioress of the Adrian Crossroads Mission Chapter, welcomed all present and extended sympathy. She summarized Sister Anthonita’s life and ministry, and concluded with:

Sister Anthonita died as she had lived, quickly and decisively. She is where she had been heading for her whole life. It is the rest of us who must catch up to what has happened. If we stopped for just a moment to think of what we will miss because of her absence, our list will go on forever.

Amelia McTamaney, a Montessori colleague, said in part:

We met more than twenty years ago. . . . I was very proud to call her my friend. . . . As I shared the news of Sister’s passing with my family, associates, and friends, I heard comments like I have never heard before about any other person. People were thankful that they got to attend and hear her words through her many presentations. Others felt so honored that they were able to meet her, even briefly. . . . One of my friends said that she was glad to have met a saint in her own lifetime. That acceptance of people is just one of the many gifts that Sister Anthonita gave to the Montessori community. She educated and inspired so many of us to accept children entirely as we find them, to make the children’s experience the best it can be, and to pause and appreciate every minute of that experience.

Sister Anthonita’s students were different. I had the chance to interview her students both here in Adrian and many others that took training from her and then from another program. The comments from the students who experienced Sister were like no others that I have ever heard. Sister accepted them, corrected them when needed, but always respected and encouraged them to continue on the mission. They know that they had been in the presence of a very special person, and they will carry that experience with them for the rest of their lives.

Amelia’s daughter Catherine wrote a remembrance that Amelia read. Catherine wrote in part:

Sister Anthonita taught me more lessons than I can count, but maybe the most important one for me as a teacher and mother is in the rejoicing she offered other people. . . . Whatever your status, your age, your faith, your certainty, or your doubt, Sister Anthonita celebrated you. Because she was sure of the presence of God in this world, she saw God’s fingerprints in every person she met, and helped us to see them in ourselves.

Sister Patricia McCarty said in part:

Sister Anthonita was a deep and profound human being who has left a lasting imprint on those of us gathered here tonight. . . . She was a seeker and this gift was most apparent in her personal quest for the living God. She was a charismatic, unusual woman, filled with the gifts of the Spirit, well prepared to take on the task that would be given her.

She began the monumental task of starting the school for the Montessori children, as well as their parents and the staff. The school and her staff, and most especially Sister Lee Esnard, became known and appreciated all over the country. She has traveled around the world, even to Korea, to speak on behalf of Montessori education. . . . Besides her passion for education, she loved her family dearly, especially her nephew Paul, who has worked with her these past years.

Sister Teresa Disch, a spiritual director, also spoke. She said in part:

“How beautiful are the feet of the one who brings glad tidings, announcing peace and bearing good news.” These words from Isaiah were the entrance antiphon of the Mass on the day that Sister Anthonita died. In reflecting on my thirty years of cherished friendship and also my experience of her as a spiritual directee and retreatant, I realized that this scriptural passage, which we use as foundational for our Dominican charism of preaching, is the best one to describe the Anthonita that I knew and loved. I never heard her describe herself as a preacher . . . [but] she preached, not from a pulpit, but I believe every day to everyone she encountered . . . by her presence and words that were grounded in an intense and deep relationship with God.

Ann D’Arcy, Sister Anthonita’s sister, reminisced.

Two of the most endearing qualities of my sister were her humility and guilelessness. She often said, “I’m not a smart person. I always struggled in school. I’m very mediocre in my abilities, but just look what God has accomplished through me. It’s amazing! Really! But it is so God!” . . . My sister was childlike, and certainly a person who spent her life receiving children in His name.

She spoke of accompanying Sister Anthonita to her high school reunion because Sister felt uncomfortable about going alone; to a Montessori conference in Washington, DC, where she discovered how much in awe people were of Sister; and about the gift of a candle snuffer that Sister brought her from Korea which turned out to be a heroin pipe.

Mary Ann Stackpoole, a former Adrian Dominican, also shared.

Sister Anthonita was my first teaching partner when I arrived, newly professed, at St. Henry in Cleveland in December 1959. There were three first grades with approximately fifty students in each room. Sister Anthonita took me under her wing. . . . Needless to say, I learned more than how to prepare lessons. . . . Her passion, her enthusiasm, her childlike joy, and her dedication were contagious. . . . Her goodness greatly impacted my life.

Sister Nancyann Turner sent a remembrance. She wrote in part:

I was her Provincial, then Chapter Prioress, for twelve years. But she and Sister Leonor have blessed my life for nearly forty years. I don’t think Sister Anthonita ever had a mean thought in her head, or a mean bone in her body. She was a delight. She was pure joy, faith, and hope. Her passion for children and for the Montessori method of education spilled over to many others. It is one of the reasons that I felt called to serve the children of Detroit. . . . I have chosen to create a peaceful afterschool program for high risk, low income children. This decision was greatly influenced by Sister Anthonita.

Sister Anthonita’s funeral liturgy took place on September 14. Father Roland Calvert, OSFS, was the celebrant and homilist. Father mentioned the web site of a woman who calls herself “Montessori Mamma,” a web site for sharing ideas about teaching and parenting. “She is clearly a student of Sister Anthonita, and quotes her often.”

Sister Anthonita brought early education, Montessori education, to new heights, and she was highly respected throughout the country. She will be greatly missed.