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(1939-2025)
Just as five-year-old Rosalie Esquerra was getting ready to start kindergarten in her hometown of Kingman, Arizona, in 1944, the Adrian Dominicans arrived to start a school at St. Mary Parish there. The experience of being taught by the Sisters very quickly set Rosalie on her path to entering the Congregation.
Rosalie was born on July 25, 1939, to Raymond and Eva (Torres) Esquerra. She was the third of the couple’s thirteen children; her siblings were Roger, Raymond, Donald, Richard, Mary Louise, Regina, Robert, Roland, Rebecca, Randolph, Ronald, and Rachel.
Raymond was a native of Parker, Arizona, while Eva was born in Kingman. Her mother, Luisa, was a talented artist who, according to Sister Rosalie’s autobiography, was often referred to as “The Grandma Moses of Arizona.”
Raymond and Eva met while he was visiting cousins in Kingman. After the pair married, they settled there, living in a house that Raymond, who worked as a contractor, built next to Eva’s mother’s home.
Rosalie had a happy childhood filled with extended family, many family friends, and music. Raymond played the guitar and loved to sing, and there were regular neighborhood parties – in Spanish, pachangas – at which the group would sing and dance the night away.
Once Rosalie entered school, she found the Sisters at St. Mary School “so joy-filled, gracious and loving,” and from the very beginning of her education she wanted to be like them. “I would often dress as a sister, wearing one of my mother’s skirts as a habit and a towel as a head covering,” she wrote in her autobiography. “One of my greatest thrills was to be selected as a seventh grader to crown the Blessed Mother during our May Crowning ritual, an honor usually reserved for an eighth grader.”
In January 1955, while she was still only fifteen years old, she wrote to Mother Gerald asking to be admitted to the Congregation, and at the end of May, after completing her freshman year at Mohave County Union High School, she headed for Adrian accompanied by members of Sister Madonna Marie Black’s family, two of whom were also entering the Congregation at this time (in all, three of Sister Madonna Marie’s siblings also became Adrian Dominican Sisters, but she was the only one who remained in religious life).
Read more about Sister Rosalie (PDF)
Memorial gifts may be made to Adrian Dominican Sisters, 1257 East Siena Heights Drive, Adrian, MI, 49221. Funeral arrangements are being handled by Anderson-Marry Funeral Home, Adrian.
Sister's Memorial Card (PDF)
Note: To view recordings with closed captioning, they must be viewed on our public video library rather than through the links below.
Recording of Sister Rosalie's Vigil Service - After clicking the link, download the recording by right-clicking on the video choosing "Save video as." Worship Aid (PDF)
Recording of Sister Rosalie's Funeral Mass - After clicking the link, download the recording by right-clicking on the video choosing "Save video as." Worship Aid (PDF)
Leave your comments and remembrances – if you don't see the comment box below, click on the "Read More" link.
(1928-2025)
When she enrolled in the University of Detroit Law School in 1981 – at the age of fifty-three – Sister Shirley Cushing was intent on making a difference in the lives of those who could not afford legal services on their own, especially the elderly poor.
Almost thirty years later, in 2009, when she completed twenty-five years of service in Macomb County, Michigan, as an elder law attorney, the county Board of Commissioners marked the occasion with a resolution summing up the ways that Sister Shirley had done exactly as she had intended.
She had chaired an Elder Law Committee, served on the county and state pro bono committees and on the State Bar of Michigan Senior Justice Committee, and overseen the Legal Assistance Program in the county Department of Senior Citizen Services, which to that point had served 39,173 individual clients and made 111 Community Legal Education presentations to 4,392 seniors.
“[I]t is fitting and proper that such outstanding and dedicated service to others should be recognized,” the resolution continued.
Even though it happened at the midpoint of her life, in becoming an attorney, Sister Shirley was following in the footsteps of her father, Frank, who had been a lawyer in Wayne County, Michigan.
Read more about Sister Shirley (PDF)
Recording of Sister Shirley's Vigil Service - After clicking the link, download the recording by right-clicking on the video choosing "Save video as." Worship Aid (PDF)
Recording of Sister Shirley's Funeral Mass - After clicking the link, download the recording by right-clicking on the video choosing "Save video as." Worship Aid (PDF)
(1931-2025)
Every now and again, God graces us by sending someone into our lives who is simply guileless. And this would be Charlotte. She didn’t necessarily see the world through rose colored glasses, but she didn’t view the world with suspicion, either. As a spiritual director, Charlotte generally saw people as good, as promising, and as having potential for greater goodness. Thus, she was always willing to invest herself in their growth, and to continue walking with them over the long haul.
This was Sister Carol Johannes’ description of Sister Charlotte Hoefer, founder of the Dominican Center for Religious Development (now called Dominican Center: Spirituality for Mission) in Detroit, in her homily for Sister Charlotte’s funeral Mass.
Sister Charlotte was born on August 3, 1931, in Lafayette, Indiana, at St. Elizabeth Hospital, the facility where her paternal grandfather worked. She said in her autobiography that he and some Franciscan Sisters had come from Germany to found the hospital, and he managed the hospital farm for years.
Her parents, Joseph and Marie (Reuter) Hoefer, actually lived in Chicago, and as soon as their new baby – who was their first child – was able to travel, they returned home. Over the next four years, the couple welcomed two more children, first Rita and then Joseph, who was born the day before Charlotte’s fourth birthday.
“My parents remarked that he was my birthday present,” she wrote. “They also gave me a large doll cradle which I thought they had given me to take care of my baby brother. I was greatly relieved when I realized my mother was caring for him.”
Their last child, Michael, came into the world not long after Charlotte became a novice in 1947.
Read more about Sister Charlotte (PDF)
Recording of Sister Charlotte's Vigil Service - After clicking the link, download the recording by right-clicking on the video choosing "Save video as." Worship Aid (PDF)
Recording of Sister Charlotte's Funeral Mass - After clicking the link, download the recording by right-clicking on the video choosing "Save video as." Worship Aid (PDF)
(1930-2025)
Few people in either the secular or religious world can say they spent fifty years working in the same place, but Sister Marion O’Connor seems to have taken a page out of her father’s work history and then some: Fifty-three years of her life in ministry, from 1964 to 2017, took place at Regina Dominican High School in Wilmette, Illinois.
When she was to be honored by the school at the fifty-year mark in 2014, the school wrote in its announcement of the event:
It is not the longevity of S. Marion’s career that makes her deserving of recognition; it is the way she fulfills her desire to make education come alive for her students by infusing values and relevancy into the curriculum. She has had an extraordinary influence on hundreds of young women. As an Adrian Dominican Sister, teacher, department chair, class moderator and role model, Sister Marion has been a priceless gift to Regina Dominican.
Marion Rita, as she was baptized, was born on June 17, 1930, in Chicago to Jeremiah Joseph and Mary Bridget (Stack) O’Connor. Both Jeremiah and Mary were immigrants to America from County Kerry, Ireland; they met at an Irish dance in Chicago, immediately began dating, and married in 1927.
Jeremiah worked for the New York Central Railroad almost as long as his daughter was at Regina Dominican, serving as a clerk there for fifty years. Mary was a stay-at-home mother to her daughter, who was “an only child that grew up in a loving home filled with laughter and joy,” Sister Marion said in her life story.
Read more about Sister Marion (PDF)
Recording of Sister Marion's Vigil Service - After clicking the link, download the recording by right-clicking on the video choosing "Save video as." Worship Aid (PDF)
Recording of Sister Marion's Funeral Mass - After clicking the link, download the recording by right-clicking on the video choosing "Save video as." Worship Aid (PDF)
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