Sister Adella Diederich
1928-2007
When Sister Adella was growing up in California, her mother often told people, "Adella wants to be a missionary in China." Though Adella read about China and often visited the Asian Museum in Seattle, Washington, it was not until the last six years of her life that for a time she was able to realize her dream.
She came into the world on November 28, 1928, in Bakersfield, California, the daughter of Fred and Mary Bernadine (Bens) Diederich. The family numbered six children: Mary Katherine, Adella, Teresa, Marjorie, and twin brothers (Ronald and Donald) who died in the first year of their lives.
Mary and Fred Diederich were both of German ancestry and devoted Catholics. They gathered the family together for the daily Rosary, and took their children to Mass and devotional services. The family enjoyed trips to the mountains, where attention was directed to the beauties of nature provided by God. Mary Diederich was devoted to Mary and to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, and her prayer life inspired her children. She prayed constantly that God would call one of her daughters to religious life.
The Diederichs were members of St. Francis Parish in Bakersfield, but their children were educated in the public school system. They, however, attended parish catechetical classes conducted by the Tacoma, Washington, Dominicans. Grammar school years found Adella at Hawthorne School and Emerson Junior High School in Bakersfield. A school must have opened at St. Francis Parish, for her high school years were spent at St. Francis High School, from which she graduated in 1946.
Love of study was a characteristic of Sister Adella. She wrote:
Mom and Dad laid the foundation in me for a love of study, which I have never lost, and a Dominican Sister sparked my interest in theology during a religion course in my senior year of high school. Both of these interests have stayed with me throughout the years.
After graduation from high school, Mary Katherine, Adella's older sister, studied nursing for two years. Both she and Adella were interested in entering the service of the Church as Dominican sisters, but they were confused as to which congregation would be best. Mary Katherine wanted to be a nurse, and Adella wanted to teach. A Jesuit priest, who was a friend of the family, advised them to enter the Everett Dominicans, since that congregation operated both hospitals and schools. Although both of them admired the Tacoma Dominicans, they took his advice, and entered the postulate at Everett, Washington, on September 12, 1946. Mary Katherine was nineteen, and Adella was two months short of eighteen.
Both received the habit and their religious names on August 4, 1947. Adella became known as "Sister Louis Marie" and Mary Katherine as "Sister Maryanna." Both professed their first vows on August 5, 1948.
For three years after profession, Sister Adella was assigned to study. After two years at the College of St. Teresa in Winona, Minnesota, and a year at Seattle University, in 1951 she received a Bachelor's Degree in Chemistry from Seattle University. Her assignments during the following years of her teaching ministry alternated between elementary and secondary schools.
For the following year, 1951-52, she taught at Holy Angels High School in Seattle. For 1952-53 she was assigned to St. Benedict School in Pittsburg, California, as a sixth grade teacher, then spent three years at St. Peter Martyr, also in Pittsburg, on the junior high level, in addition serving as bursar of her local community.
In 1956 she traveled to Miles City, Montana, where she taught at Sacred Heart High School for four years and served as local superior the last year. She returned to Seattle in 1961, taught eighth grade at St. Luke School, and served as local superior the first year. She had been studying during the summers, and in summer 1964 St. Louis University in Missouri, awarded her a Master's Degree in Chemistry.
Beginning with 1964, she served for three years on the junior high level at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Everett, then continued on the same level and as local superior at St. Joseph School in Chehalis. After three years, she returned to Holy Angels High School in Seattle, as teacher and counselor. From 1972-74 she served at Holy Names High School, also in Seattle. During the summers, she had been studying theology at St. Mary College in Moraga, California, and in 1974 the College awarded her a Master's Degree in Theology. She then spent two years as a science teacher at the Seattle Prep School.
In 1976 she returned to Everett and served at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish in religious education and as a parish minister. She also began her ministry on the Tulalip Indian Reservation, and continued this ministry full-time from 1981 to 1984, during which she and another sister lived on the Reservation. She described this ministry as "mutual evangelization with Native people on Tulalip Reservation, both among the community at St. Anne Mission and among the greater Tulalip community."
She took a sabbatical year in 1984 that she spent in California, then ministered for a year at San Diego Community College in the Adult Basic Education Department. In 1986 she became coordinator of adult religious education at Our Mother of Confidence Parish in San Diego, and held this position for eight years. She then returned to Seattle and spent three years as coordinator at Assumption Convent. In 1997 she began her ministry at the American Cultural Exchange in Seattle, where she taught English as a second language.
She had learned about a volunteer program for teachers willing to travel to China and teach English as a second language. To minister in China had always been her dream, and she seized this opportunity. Before she left to take up this ministry, a prayer service was held at Rosary Heights Motherhouse on September 13, 2001. The introduction to the prayer service is quoted:
We gather this evening to ask God's blessings on our Sister Adella as she prepares to travel to China to minister as a teacher of English. Long has Sister Adella cherished a dream to be a missionary to a foreign land, and now her prayer has been answered in God's own time. May our prayers for her be strengthened by those of our Brother Dominic, who also yearned to become a missionary.
At the age of seventy-three, Sister Adella made the long trip to China and spent four years at Wuyi University in Jiangmen City, Guangdong, teaching English as a second language. There were, however, opportunities to share her Faith. In her congregational annals for 2005 she wrote:
My blessings and challenge have been to share the Good News of Jesus by example and by words. I interact with the Chinese teachers and students in my apartment, in classes, and in other sites. All the students had been taught to disbelieve any talk of God or the supernatural. They, however, were curious and wanted to know what I believe.
In June 2003 the Edmonds Dominican Sisters merged with the Adrian Dominican Congregation, and all of the Edmonds Dominicans became Adrian Dominicans. A month later two of the Adrian Dominican Mission Chapters, Pacific West Mission Chapter and the Southwest Mission Chapter, also merged, and became the Dominican West Mission Chapter. Sister Catherine Olds was elected Prioress of the new Chapter. Many of the sisters in Washington were members.
Sister Catherine said, "I personally remember receiving an email from her in 2003 from China right after being elected, asking to belong to our new Chapter and how could she do this from China!" A way was found, and Sister Adella became a member of the Dominican West Mission Chapter.
Illness had come upon her, and in 2005 it was necessary for her to return to Seattle for treatment and recuperation. In addition, the death of her sister, Sister Mary Katherine, in 2004 had been a blow to her. In February 2006 she went back to Wuyi University, finished the second semester, but returned to Seattle for the summer and realized that China was now off limits for her because of her health. She was fighting cancer. But she had ministered for over four years in China, fulfilling the dream that had been with her for so many years.
She had become a member of the Rosary Heights Mission Group, and wrote, "I find membership in the Rosary Heights Mission Group to be a blessing for me. The group supports each other and pursues topics of global importance."
She was present in Adrian with the sisters celebrating Jubilees in June 2007, and enjoyed the time.
In 2002 she had written about herself:
I love reading-non-fiction, novels, poetry, comic strips. Enjoy puttering, experimenting with recipes, visiting museums and art galleries. Walk at own pace. Night owl, trying for years, without success, to change. Marvel at God's beauty and variety among plants, insects, and ourselves.
Have lived in local communities of various sizes and alone, content with both. Like prayer of reflection, meditation, and song. Working at understanding Jesus as man, Mary as woman. An introvert, better at listening than speaking out in groups. Interested in saving the environment and helping the poor.
Approaching 74 with good physical and mental health. Grateful for graciousness shown us by Dominicans in Adrian. Looking forward to meeting more of them.
These descriptive statements give us greater insight into her personality.
For the last year of her life, she lived at Assumption Convent in Seattle. In her annals she wrote:
It is a blessing to live at Assumption Convent with a group of sisters who truly share faith and life together, respecting each other's differences in life style, prayer, and beliefs, and actively supporting one another.
God took Sister Adella to eternity on October 7, 2007. She died at Mount St. Vincent Hospital in Seattle.
Her wake-remembrance service and funeral liturgy took place in St. Joseph Residence Chapel in Seattle on October 11. On that same day, a Mass for Sister Adella was offered in Adrian. At the Washington service, Sister Catherine Olds, her Chapter Prioress, extended sympathy from Sister Donna Markham and the Adrian Congregation, and welcomed those in attendance: Sister Adella's niece Mary Ann, her cousin Marie, and many Dominican friends.
Sister Catherine summarized Sister Adella's life and ministry, and spoke of her seventy-eight years of life, sixty lived as a Dominican Sister. For fifty-six of those years she had been a Dominican Sister of Edmonds, Washington, and for the last four years as a Dominican of Adrian. She also spoke of Sister Adella's last years and the battle with cancer.
Sister Adella lived this time fully-quickly returning from China to have surgery, then chemo, returning to China for closure with the people she loved, returning home and continuing to make choices for quality of life and death these past months. She had quickly flown home the year before her own diagnosis to be with her sister, Sister Mary Katherine, who was dying of cancer. Little did she know what the future held for her.
Her reflection in our 2007 Lenten booklet was on the reading of the Prodigal Son. In her reflection, she talked about Rembrandt's portrait of God where in the hands of God he shows God's love as a father's as well as a mother's-one hand is masculine and the other feminine. He is holding and she is caressing. She also quoted Henry Nouwen, who invites us to unconditionally and compassionately love and embrace all.
As Sister Catherine reminded us, it is difficult to capture a sister's life in words. Sister Adella will live on in the hearts of those who loved her-each with a special story of "walking with her."