(1948-2025)

It was at twelve noon on Saturday, November 13, 1948, that I made my entrance into this world. I was dark haired, olive complected and all of eight pounds six ounces at birth. That’s on record at the hospital in Detroit. However, my father insists that he stopped at a traffic light, heard a baby crying and rescued me from a snow bank.

This lighthearted paragraph begins Sister Donna Baker’s autobiography, which goes on to trace her family’s history and her grandparents’ roots.

Her paternal grandparents were both born in Newfoundland and met while working on a fishing boat, where he was a fisherman and she was a cook. When the town was destroyed by fire, the family migrated to Nova Scotia, where Sister Donna’s father, Patrick, was born. Her grandfather came to Detroit in 1923 to find work, and the rest of his family joined him later that year.

As for her other set of grandparents, they met and married in Bremen, Indiana. Her grandfather, a Jitney driver, was killed along with almost everyone in his vehicle when he stopped at a rail crossing to let a train pass but did not see that another train was coming in the other direction. Her grandmother eventually remarried, but until she did, she had to work to support her children, and so her sister helped raise them. Two of the three children – Sister Donna’s mother, Virginia, and Virginia’s sister – spent a year at St. Joseph Academy.

Patrick, who was twenty-one when the Great Depression began, spent much of his early adulthood traveling the country by rail and car, working odd jobs. Finally, at age thirty-two, he felt ready to settle down. He and Virginia met outside a shoemaker’s business in Detroit, courted, married, and settled in the Detroit suburb of Redford.

Donna was the couple’s second child of nine: four boys (Bill, Dennis, Michael, and Patrick) and five girls (besides Donna, there were Sharron, Colleen, Linda, and Mary). Redford was a place of wide open spaces for the children to play, and Sister Donna wrote in her autobiography of playing baseball in the street and croquet in the yard, making tunnels out of cardboard boxes, piling leaves waist-high in which to jump, and most especially, taking Sunday rides to the ice cream parlor.

Read more about Sister Donna (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)

Vigil and Funeral Recordings

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 Donna'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 Donna'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.