(1936-2025)

Sister Marilyn Francoeur ended her autobiography with this paragraph:

The Land continues to draw me and I find great grace and peace in gardening and being close to the earth. Is this not my Indian heritage, my father’s legacy and longing to know more about this great cosmos that is part of everyone’s heritage? I trust that God will lead me in new pastures for “The Lord is My Shepherd.”

Sister Marilyn’s agrarian roots shaped her life’s story. She was born in Adrian on July 1, 1936, and grew up on her parents’ farm just outside the city. 

Her father, Noel, was born in Martinton, Illinois, to a French-Indian family; his mother was one-quarter Potawatomi, giving Sister Marilyn one-sixteenth Citizen Potawatomi Nation blood. Her status as an enrolled member of the tribe was something of which she was very proud.

Noel came to Adrian when his parents, tired of renting farmland, bought a farm on Townline Highway in Adrian using the proceeds of his mother’s sale of the land in Oklahoma that she had been allotted as a Native American. He met his future wife, Ruth McKee, when he was with some baseball friends (he had his own semi-pro team, the Francoeur Eagles) who met up with their girlfriends at the Adrian movie theater where they worked – and where Ruth also worked.

After their 1935 marriage, Noel and Ruth lived in Adrian for a time before moving to their own 149-acre farm on Country Club Road. It was a difficult transition for a “city girl” who had never pumped her own water or used an outhouse, and to top things off, Ruth remembered the summer of 1936, when Marilyn was born, as the hottest on record.

The couple had five children; after Marilyn came Larry, Herline, Douglas, and John. All five of the children went to a one-room schoolhouse, and “I loved my time in the country school,” Sister Marilyn wrote, recalling field trips to the woods where the children identified flowers and birds and collected gunnysacks full of milkweed pods for the war effort (the pods were used as the stuffing for life jackets); being the only girl on the fifth-grade baseball team; and the one-room schoolhouse method of education, where children learned by hearing the lessons repeated over and over and by helping each other.

Read more about Sister Marilyn (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

Recording of Sister Marilyn'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 Marilyn'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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