Sister Betty Foster
1921-2011

In the last paragraph of her autobiography, Sister Betty wrote that she wanted to be remembered as somebody who was intensely interested in the poor. Her record reveals that she was not only intensely interested in the poor; she worked hard to help them, especially battered women and the homeless. As Sister Jo Gaugier said so forcibly at the wake, Sister Betty’s accomplishments sometimes “astonish and stun” us!

Both of Sister Betty’s parents were from the Peck, Michigan area. Marie McNulty was an only child, grew up in Yale, Michigan, and had spent her early years at St. Mary Academy in Notre Dame, Indiana. She cherished an Irish heritage. Howard Foster came from a family who owned the Peck State Bank, and in his adult years he headed the bank until its close during the Great Depression.

When Marie McNulty and Howard Foster married, their marriage was called “mixed,” since he was not Catholic. Fifteen children were born to them. Betty was their second child. She came into the family on November 5, 1921. Four of the children died at early ages. Betty wrote, “Eleven of us went on. . . . My youngest brother is twenty years younger than I.”

Although Howard Foster professed no religion, both he and his wife wanted their children to attend Catholic schools. There were, however, no Catholic schools in the Peck area, so Betty and her older brother James attended Peck Elementary School. Betty spent two years at Peck High School. Her last two years of high school were at St. Joseph Academy in Adrian, “with great financial sacrifice to my large family.” She graduated in June 1939. When the Peck State Bank closed, Howard Foster found a good position as sales tax auditor in St. Clair County, and the family moved to Port Huron. There he was able to send his younger children to Catholic schools.

During her two years at St. Joseph Academy, Betty decided that she wanted to enter the Adrian Dominican Community. Her father asked her to attend college first, and she registered at the University of Detroit where she spent three years and obtained a teaching certificate. Her desire was to pay back some of the money that had been spent on her stay at the Academy. She returned to her home in Port Huron, and found an elementary teaching position in a nearby suburb. At the wake, her younger sister Grace told an amusing story about that time.

During the first year that she was teaching, I was in third grade and she was teaching fourth grade. When she invited me to visit her classroom, I was so excited. She told me to sit in the back row, and said sternly to me, “If you want to talk to me, you call me ‘Miss Foster.’” I sat in the back row thinking, “Not on your life!” I didn’t talk to her.

Betty was able to fulfill her desire to join the Dominicans in 1945. She arrived in Adrian on June 29 at the age of twenty-four, and received the postulant’s veil. Since she had teaching experience, she was immediately assigned to spend some of her time in a middle-level classroom at her alma mater, St. Joseph Academy. On January 4, 1946, she and her group received the habit and their religious names. Betty became Sister Jerome Marie. In June 1946, she was delighted when Siena Heights College (now University) awarded her a bachelor’s degree with a major in English and minors in history, French, and Latin. During her novitiate year, she also tutored some of her fellow novices who had not finished their high school work before entering. She and her group professed their first vows on January 5, 1947.

Within a short time she was on her way to Detroit, where she became one of over forty sisters who lived and taught at St. Theresa School. During her five years there, she taught on all levels, from primary to junior high. In 1953 she was assigned to Dominican High School, where she taught religion, English, and Latin for five years. In her file is a picture of her with her two sisters who were at that time, summer 1953, in the Adrian Dominican novitiate, Dorothy (Sister John Ann) and Marilyn (Sister Thomas Howard). In June 1954, as a result of summer study, she received a master’s degree in English from John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio.

She received a surprise in 1958, when she was appointed principal and superior at St. Basil, a new school that was just opening. The convent was also new. She wrote, “It was gorgeous!” School began with 300 children, but when she finished her six years there were 800 children and all eight grades, plus 1,000 in the religious education program. Her next assignment was again on the high school level, Hoban-Dominican High School in Cleveland, Ohio. There she taught English and religion and also served as assistant principal.

In 1968 she was once more a principal, this time at St. Ambrose High School in Detroit, which closed in 1971. In that year also, she underwent a period of grieving with her siblings when they buried their father, and in 1972 when her sister, Sister Dorothy, died. When the high school closed, she remained at St. Ambrose as a member of the religious education staff until 1974. She wrote, “I was becoming more and more interested in Justice and Peace education work, which I was quite determined to do.”

From 1974 to 1985 she lived with sisters of other communities in “a big old house” in the inner city of Detroit. During this time she and her siblings underwent another period of sorrow at the death of their mother in 1980. Sister Betty became very much interested in Network, an organization in Washington, DC, with Sister Carol Coston as first director. “I spent a year attempting to integrate Network to the Adrian Dominican Congregation,” she wrote.

Then a Mercy sister, an IHM sister, and I set up together and staffed a Michigan adaptation of Network called Groundwork for a Just World [an intercongregational peace and justice program of Region VII of the LCWR.]. Although our early days were confused and uncertain, Groundwork grew and endured for thirty years. Many people joined and contributed substantially to its effectiveness. [Groundwork came to an end in 2004.]

In 1979 she joined Women-in-Transition, a program dealing with battered women. “It was a totally black community in which I worked, and I liked that.” She spent four years with this organization, and was the Assistant Director and Director. The facility cared for about eighty women. It closed in 1983; and, realizing that  she needed something new to enable her to continue her work among the poor, she attended the Elsa Cooper Institute in Southfield for court reporting while supporting herself by teaching in the public schools and at Marygrove. Sometime during these years she, with Sisters Nadine Foley and Janet Kurtz, SSJ, gave a workshop at Weber Center in Adrian. Its topics were: Women in the Church, women and advertising, women and ERA, the battered woman, and the displaced home maker.

From 1985 to 1993 she continued her work with the poor and provided her living expenses by being an adjunct lecturer in writing at the University of Michigan in Dearborn. She started work on a doctorate but did not finish. She did not see that this would help her in working for the poor. “I lived in the inner city. I was called to be there. I belonged there. I loved all those people. If you want to find real people, that is where you go!” She saw murders and rapes as part of her life, but that did not decrease her determination to work with the poor and disadvantaged. She described herself as “a tough old lady.”

At some point, realizing that she had never traveled much beyond Cleveland, she took a trip to Ireland, where her mother was born, and England with her good friend Sister Nadine Foley.

She volunteered her services in Detroit from 1993 to 1999. These services consisted of visiting people in the inner city, seeing that children attended school, and fundraising. She worked at Barat House, a division of Child and Family Services, and taught. From 2002 to 2006 she lived alone, seemingly retired, but still helping at a battered women’s shelter and a homeless shelter.

In 2006, eighty years of age, she returned to Adrian, and lived in the Dominican Life Center/Regina Residence for a short time. Then the state of her health made it necessary for her to transfer into the Maria Building, where she remained until her death on February 27, 2011, at the age of eighty-nine.

Sister Betty’s wake-remembrance service was held on March 4 in St. Catherine Chapel. Sister Jo Gaugier, Prioress of Holy Rosary Mission Chapter, welcomed all present and extended sympathy to the members of Sister Betty’s family and friends, including her many Dominican friends. She summarized Sister Betty’s life and ministry, and added:

In these last five years here [at Maria] she has been content with her avid reading, doing crossword puzzles, her walks and talks with birds and nature, her companionship with others, her acceptance of limitations of memory and energy.

Sister Mary Pat Dewey read a remembrance from Sister Janet Kurtz, CSJ, who was a co-founder and worked with Sister Betty at Groundwork. She wrote in part:

Sister Betty was a lively, challenging co-founder, strongly committed to living out this mission, not only with her words but with her actions. . . . She worked tirelessly for the passage of the Equal Rights Act. . . . . Another passion was her work for the passage of law that would make domestic violence in all its forms a crime. She lobbied statespersons, attended hearings at the State Capitol, and encouraged women to speak out at these hearings regarding their lived experiences. Besides these and other issues, she did a lot of the office nitty-gritty, such as balancing the books. She left us a legacy of keeping the Gospel alive in word and deed, especially when we will never see their fruits in our lifetimes.

Sister Mary Pat also read an expression of sympathy from Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan. Senator Stabenow wrote in part:

As a devoted member of the Adrian Dominican Congregation, [Sister Betty] set an amazing example of faith in action. Her deep commitment to peace and justice was reflected in her advocacy on social issues such as domestic violence and poverty. I know her ministries have touched many lives.

Sister Nadine Foley, a good friend, said in part:

In 1949 I was assigned to St. Theresa in Detroit. We all sat in the chapel and refectory and at recreation according to our status, our age in religion, and I was always sitting next to Sister Betty. That was the beginning of our friendship that has lasted until now. I stayed one year. She stayed longer. . . . She taught between sixty and seventy little children. . . . She was an exceptional teacher, elementary, high school, and university level.

She accompanied me on my home visits twice. In the first year of Network, there was a national meeting, and we traveled together to that. . . . We went to Ireland for two weeks. She just wanted to take it easy, visit, and not be bothered with anything else. I was driving. . . . On one occasion, we came to an intersection and I told her to look at the map to see whether we turned right or left. She couldn’t be bothered. That’s how we got to Northern Ireland. It wasn’t intentional.

Sister Betty’s younger sister, Grace Hill remembered

I thank you for your compassion and prayers. She was great. . . . She was grown and out of home when I came along. She would never let me forget that she was the oldest sister and that I had to do what she said. One time she took me to see “The Yearling.” I cried my eyes out. Afterwards she said to me, “There are more important things to cry about than movies.” But it didn’t stop me from crying at sad ones. She has always been an example to me, and she’ll be an example to me for the rest of my life.

John Hill, Sister’s brother-in-law, also spoke. He said in part:

In the last five years, it was such a treat to visit her because she was so up on things. It was hard to keep up with her. And she had a wonderful sense of humor. One time, when we left the lunchroom, she was using her walker. There were several other sisters with walkers, and they were all trying to get where they wanted to go. She said, “It’s like being in a race.”

A while ago I called her and told her we were coming on Sunday. I said that we might bring cookies, and she said, “You’d better!” But we didn’t expect what happened. She was something special, and I consider it a privilege to have known her.

Sister Betty’s funeral liturgy was celebrated on March 5. Rev. Robert Kelly, OP, Motherhouse Chaplain, was the presider and homilist. Some thoughts from Father’s homily are:

In her own story, Sister Betty writes about her hunger for God. She also writes about her desire to be an Adrian Dominican Sister. She satisfied her hunger for God through her teaching ministry, work with adults, and her social ministry. She worked with others, to feed others, for the poor who lived near her in the City of Detroit. Retirement did not keep her from helping others. Her volunteer work was all with the poor. Sister Betty was the salt of the earth and the yeast of the kingdom.

Sister Betty wanted to live her life as an Adrian Dominican Sister, and that she did. She wanted to work with the poor, and that she did. She left us as she would have wanted, doing it very much in her own way—suddenly. As Sister Nadine said, “When we meet again it won’t be at an intersection and we won’t need a map.”