Sister Therese Craig
1926-2008
Sister Therese Craig began the story of her life two generations after her Scottish and Irish ancestors arrived in eastern Canada. Her future parents, George Walter Craig and Rose Monica Brennan, were hockey fans, and met at a rink in London, Ontario. George Craig had been brought up a Presbyterian, but became a Catholic at the time of their marriage. He was working for the Canadian Railroad System, but a few years later the Craigs moved to Detroit, where he found a better job with the U.S. Railroad System.
In time they were blessed with five children: Melvin Ambrose, Maxwell Patrick, John Walter, Katherine Mary, James Joseph (who died as an infant), and, thirteen years later, Virginia Therese. She was an early Christmas gift, born on December 13, 1926. Her older sister Katherine was allowed to name her. Sister Therese’s mother explained that Katherine named her little sister “Virginia” for her best friend, and the parents gave her the name “Therese” because of their devotion to St. Therese, the Little Flower. “Mom and Dad made a monthly pilgrimage to the shrine of the Little Flower when it was built. Those monthly visits were happy times in my life.” Rose Craig disliked nicknames. The baby’s older brothers soon began calling her “Ginny,” so the mother decided that the baby would be “Therese.” Before long the boys dubbed her “Teddy.”
Soon after Therese’s birth, her father left the railroad and became a traffic manager with a cartage company. Then he had time to play with his little daughter. On Saturdays they would go to the airport and imitate the planes, swooping and gliding to the hangar. Those days were filled with fun and laughter. “Little did I know that he was preparing me for years of teaching Creative Dramatics to and with children.”
Therese began her education at St. Edward School, then at St. Anthony School, and graduated from St. Matthew School’s eighth grade. Her high school years were spent at Dominican High School. In January 1938, when she was eleven years old, her father died of a stroke at a family gathering. At his wake, Therese was upset when she heard laughter, and her cousin tried to explain Irish wakes to her. She said indignantly, “My dad is a Scot!”
After the death of her husband, Rose Craig went out to work. These were the years of World War II, and two of her sons were in the army, but they obviously returned home safely. By the time Therese was in high school, her older siblings were all married and had left home. Her niece, Janet Craig Wolohan, said, “She graciously babysat for me, I gave her the chicken pox, and she missed her prom.” Therese and her mother shared their home with various relatives, even caring for some who were ill until their death. Sister Therese wrote lovingly of her mother as a wisdom woman and model.
When Therese graduated from Dominican High School in June 1944, she enrolled at Siena Heights College (now University) in Adrian. “At that time my aim in life was to be a radio announcer or a blues singer.” But one morning, during daily Mass, a strange thought came into her mind. “Stop fooling around and get over to the Angel Factory where you belong.” “Angel Factory” was the name that the college girls had given to the Novitiate that housed the Dominican Congregation’s postulants and novices. Rose Craig was delighted when she was told of her youngest daughter’s decision.
On June 29, 1945, at the age of eighteen, Therese arrived in Adrian and accepted the postulant’s veil. She received the habit and her religious name (Sister Rose Terrence) on January 4, 1946, and professed her firsts vows on January 5, 1947. Almost immediately she was on the train for Chicago, where she taught in both fourth and second grades at Our Lady of Good Counsel. In January 1948 she was brought back to Adrian as a full-time student at Siena Heights College, and she received her bachelor’s degree in June with a major in English and minors in Spanish, history, and speech. Her niece said, “It was the first time I heard ‘Magna cum laude.’ My father explained it to me.”
From September 1948, until November 1950, Sister Therese taught in fourth and sixth grades at Our Lady of Sorrows in Farmington, Michigan. From that time until January 1951, she taught second grade at St. Paul in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. From January through summer 1951 she was assigned as a full-time student at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, and resided at the Adrian Dominican House of Studies. In August 1951 the University conferred a Master’s Degree upon her with a major in drama and minor in English. Sister Shirley Cushing said, “Father Hartke, OP, head of the Drama Department, called Sister Therese ‘the young Dominican genius.’ She didn’t like that. She attributed her accomplishments to ‘hard work.’”
Sister Therese spent the next fourteen years in Detroit: five years at Dominican High School and nine years at Rosary High School, teaching English, verse choir, and religion at both places. In 1965 she was assigned to Siena Heights College in Adrian as a teacher of English, speech, drama, and theology. Sister Shirley Cushing said, “She was appointed to revive the speech and drama department… Siena Heights awarded her their prestigious St. Dominic Medal in recognition of her creative accomplishments in that period of her teaching ministry.”
In 1971 Sister Therese studied for a year in London, England, under the ICUM Kellogg Fellowship. Sister Shirley Cushing said, “She went to England for special improvisational work with world-renowned teachers.” Sister Therese considered that year a great privilege, and valued what she learned. When she returned from England, she was again assigned to Siena Heights College, where she taught for three years. During the summer she toured Canada and wrote, “When I returned from my tour around Canada interviewing children’s programs and troupe work, I gave the necessary three years required by the Kellogg Fellowship by creating a children’s troupe using Siena students.”
She discovered that the chair of drama at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, was open, applied for the position, and obtained it. She ministered there for the next fourteen years, spent a sabbatical year visiting Australia, New York City, and the University of North Carolina, then returned to the University of Alberta for another two years. She had been a bit fearful about being alone in Canada, but this did not come to be. Several Adrian sisters visited her, and she taught classes and prayed with Ursuline and St. Joseph Sisters. For a time, she shared her apartment with a sister who had been living in poverty while studying at St. Joseph Seminary outside of Alberta. Among her relatives still in Canada was her cousin, Gertrude Sullivan, whom she grew to love. Through Gertrude, she came to an understanding and appreciation of hockey. She joined the Koinania Mission Group in Detroit, and received tapes of their meetings. “They became my life line to the Congregation.” While in Alberta, she earned a doctorate in 1984.
She left Canada in 1992 and returned to the States where she lived in Harper Woods, Michigan, taught extension courses for Siena Heights College and at Sacred Heart Seminary, and took the two-year training program at the Dominican Center for Spiritual Direction. When she returned to Adrian in 1995, she served as a spiritual director on the Weber Center team for almost a year. She continued ministering as a spiritual director until sickness came upon her. She wrote, “Even the ‘desert times’ were times of growth for director and directee who both knew that God was there in the desert as well as on the mountain top.” Death came to her on September 11, 2008. She was eighty-one years of age, and had been a professed Dominican for sixty-one years.
Sister Therese’s wake-remembrance service was held on September 15 in St. Catherine Chapel. Sister Joan Sustersic, Prioress of Holy Rosary Mission Chapter, opened the service and welcomed Sister Therese’s family and friends: her nieces Mary Donahoe Kinkema, Patricia Donahoe Norman, and Janet Wolohan; her cousin Mary Jo and husband Michael McEvoy; her good friend Gertrude (Trudy) McSorley; and her many Dominican and other friends. Sister Joan summarized Sister Therese’s life and ministry, and spoke of her last days.
When the word came that the doctors could do no more for her heart, she thought she might have two years left. As she weakened, it became apparent that she might be on the much shorter end of that time… On Sunday, August 31, once again the oxygen level inched up and the breathing became more difficult. She chose to stay at the Dominican Life Center and be kept comfortable, rather than going into the hospital… She visited with friends and kept her sense of humor. She didn’t fear meeting the God whom she loved.
Trudy McSorley, Sister Therese’s friend, spoke for Fred Keating, who had worked with Sister Therese at both Siena Heights and the University of Alberta. He wrote in part:
Sister Therese modeled involved, interested, and invested learning for her students, and they took that mission into their own careers and schools and, literally, raised the academic achievement of thousands of students and the province as a whole… Sister Therese Craig’s impact led her to be acclaimed as one of the one hundred most influential arts educators in Alberta’s one hundred-year history in 2005.
In Edmonton the hockey team—the Edmonton Oilers—loved Sister Therese Craig, an avid fan in her team jersey, wildly waving the blue and gold pennant at every opportunity. At her departure party, one of the team’s stars made a special effort to come by and surprise and delight her by giving a bit of a speech thanking her for her support and the divine intervention she may have brought to some of their championship games. For the first time in decades, Sister Therese was speechless for several days.
Another friend, Susan Burghardt-MacNeill, had also sent a testimonial that was read. Sister Therese was her daughter’s godmother. She wrote in part:
Sister Therese was a huge gift that the Dominicans loaned to us in Edmonton, Alberta. She took us all by storm… She built a mighty army of superb educators and thinkers… Her students learned to be visionaries and people of action. … She was an exceptional educator, mentor, and spiritual advisor. … I have been so blessed by my life in the presence of Sister Therese. She was a humanist with a strong sense of purpose. She was a Dominican. She loved life, and she loved to have a good laugh, to have fun together. Wow, what a powerful package she was!
Sister Nancy Murray sent a fax that was read. She wrote in part:
Sister Rose Terrence was my first college drama teacher… I learned as a very young Sister to love my students as if they were my own brothers and sisters. Sister made the class and its projects fun for all of us.
Through the years, Sister Therese Craig became more than a teacher. She became a friend. Her ministry also changed. She now taught me the need to develop the interior self also. As I would pass the door in Madden Hall and see that she was in Spiritual Direction, I felt proud of her and lucky for those she was now mentoring.
Sister Therese’s niece, Janet Craig Wolohan, spoke of her love for her aunt.
Aunt Therese was an adventurer, a pioneer. She was one of the first to take off the habit and go out into the community to live. That was the way she wanted to reach out to people… My best memory is how close she stayed to the family, especially through prayer. She was a bridge in our family… Through the years I felt close to her and to all of you. No matter what problems arose for us, all I had to do was pick up the phone and she would assure me that her prayers and your prayers would be with us.
When Aunt Therese was dying, she assured me that she welcomed death. I said, “I can tell that you’re filled with anticipation.” Of all the gifts that she gave us, perhaps the greatest was in those months when she taught us how to die—with total trust, total faith, total confidence in the God who made and sustained her.
Sister Jeanne O’Laughlin, previous president of Barry University in Miami, Florida, brought love and memories from several sisters. “She had a curriculum that led her to communicate, to love, and to live the way of a true educator.”
Sister Shirley Cushing said, “The skill Sister Therese taught me was the importance of critical thinking… It has held me in good stead to this day.”
Katherine G. Burke also praised Sister Therese.
After I attended my first Therese-directed Progoff workshop at Weber, I returned several times. It would have been easier for me to attend similar programs at the Fullerton Cenacle, which is literally right down the alley from my home in Chicago, but I kept coming back to Adrian for the workshops because of Sister Therese’s superb facilitation.
On September 16 Sister Therese’s funeral liturgy was celebrated by Father Thomas Helfrich, chaplain at Siena Heights University. Sister Carol Johannes was the homilist. She said in part:
Sister Therese studied and read voraciously, was full of vitality, interested in everything, from theology to politics to the Edmonton Oilers, and taught with energy and enthusiasm every level of student from the tiny tots in the children’s theater groups to the graduate students at the University of Alberta… She always put her immense personal talents and resources totally at the service of others.
As Sister Shirley said, “Teacher par excellance, we shall miss your presence among us!”