San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Nun dedicated her life to service for 85 years
When the Second Vatican Council in Rome decided in the 1960s that nuns were no longer required to wear habits, Sister Euphemia O’Connor opted to ignore the papal decree.
For 85 years, she put on the black tunic and wimple whether she was teaching school at Sisters of the Presentation in San Francisco or riding the Greyhound bus cross-country to a seminar, usually making friends along the way.
Among the 30 residents of the Motherhouse on Turk Street, she was the last to wear the habit as she quietly moved from her spartan room on the second floor to the infirmary on the third floor. It was there that Sister Euphemia died on Jan. 17. She was 103.
“She committed her whole life to being an educator and to learning from life’s experiences,” said Sister Rosina Conrotto, President of the Sisters of the Presentation. “She wore the habit for its witness value — so that people knew she was available for comfort and advice, no matter where she was.”
Sisters of the Presentation is an order that came to San Francisco from Ireland in order to educate the children of immigrant miners during the Gold Rush. Sister Euphemia followed that path as the daughter of immigrants from County Kerry, Ireland.
Euphemia joined the order in 1937, and her younger sisters Kieran and Michaeline both followed her there. The three sisters of the Sisters were made to last. After long teaching careers, all three retired to the Motherhouse, where Michaeline died in 2019 at 96. Kieran died in December at 101.
“They were all three dedicated persons and great conversationalists,” said Sister Kathleen Curtin, whose room in the Motherhouse is just a few doors from Sister Euphemia’s. “It was amazing to live with them because of their ages and how positive they were about their lives.”
Kathleen often helped Euphemia address envelopes for her letters with former students and friends. She corresponded with hundreds of people, as far away as Ireland.
“She never lost contact with the outside world,” Kathleen said.
Like many sisters, Euphemia bounced between the schools where she was assigned to teach. Even when she only taught for a year, she left an impression.
“Here we are, 60 years later and I can still see her roaming the classroom,” said Joe Di Prisco, a former student at St. Joseph in Berkeley and founder of the New Literary Project to promote reading and writing. “She surpassed any caricature about nuns or the Irish but you got the sense that she cared. She was full of love.”
She was born Marion Cecilia O’Connor on Sept. 11, 1919, in San Francisco, the sixth of nine children. Her parents, Tom O’Connor and mother Ellen Mulvihill, both emigrated from County Kerry and met in San Francisco. Tom worked for the Municipal Railway while Ellen kept the home and looked after eight kids. The eldest died as an infant.
The family lived in the Marina district, and Marion attend
ed St. Vincent de Paul in Cow Hollow and graduated from Academy of the Presentation, the nowclosed high school adjacent to the University of San Francisco campus, in 1937. That year she entered the novitiate, the female equivalent of the seminary for priests. At the end of her first year, she became a novice and was issued both a habit with a white veil and the religious name Sister Mary Euphemia.
Her sister, Kieran, entered the novitiate in 1939 and Michaeline in 1941. Another sister, Carmelita, was an outlier. She joined another Catholic order, the Daughters of Charity. Peggy was the only one of five sisters who did not pursue the religious life.
In January 1940, after earning her bachelor of science degree, the Mother Superior assigned Euphemia to teach first and second graders at St. Mary’s Elementary, a boarding school in Gilroy.
One of her first-grade students, Camille Conrotto, remembers her as being tall and looking even taller in the headpiece she wore.
“She was very kind to the boarders because many of them came from troubled backgrounds, and she instilled in us a love of reading,” said Conrotto, who ended up following her first-grade teacher’s example all the way to Sisters of the Presentation.
After seven years at St. Mary’s Elementary, Sister Euphemia went through a series of parish school assignments, including St. Anne and St. Agnes, both in San Francisco, Nativity School in Menlo Park and St. Joseph in Berkeley.
“With Sister Euphemia what you got in the classroom was someone who was smart and funny, very droll and charismatic,” said Di Prisco, who had her for seventh grade. “She made learning a pleasure. It was fun to go to school.”
Her postings were as far flung as Albuquerque and Seattle. During summers she would attain grants to attend seminars on the East Coast or in Texas. She never flew, preferring to travel for three or four days on the bus. It was always a conversation starter when she boarded wearing her habit.
Her longest tenure was 20 years teaching social studies at Bellarmine Jefferson High School in Burbank. When she retired in 2006, she was 87, but she still had had more work to do in Los Angeles, so she spent four years doing volunteer work with seniors at the Hotel Dieu, a residence for older adults operated by the Daughters of Charity. She finally returned to the Motherhouse for good at 91.
Both of her sisters were already there. They lived on separate floors, but made a point of eating together in the dining room every Sunday evening. In their habits it was hard to tell them apart, though by then only Euphemia was still wearing hers. One place she wore it was around the corner to the Epiphany Center, a facility for women in addiction recovery. Many of the residents are off the street or out of jail, and Euphemia volunteered to teach American history for those pursuing their GED.
“She was very outgoing and approachable and the women responded because they knew she cared,” said Sister Betty Marie Dunkel, executive director of the program. “When the women saw her in her habit, there was a sense of trust and comfort.”
When Euphemia wasn’t teaching she was reading or listening to the audiotape of “The Greatest Generation,” by Tom Brokaw. There were moments in history that she needed to reference, so she had an entire set of the World Book Encyclopedia brought up from the convent library on the first floor so she’d have easier access. She also read the newspaper daily.
“She knew exactly what was going on in Ukraine or with the 49ers,” Sister Rosina said. When Sister Kieran died on Dec. 28, Sister Euphemia had a premonition that her own time was coming, and began calling her friends all over the country to thank them for their support and prayers. She was still working through her handwritten address book and dialing from a landline, when she was moved to the infirmary.
Her premonition was right. She died 20 days after her sister. A funeral Mass was held Jan. 27 in the chapel at the Motherhouse. Sister Rosina delivered the closing remarks.
“Goodbye, Sister Mary Euphemia. I won’t say ‘rest in peace’ because that would not be in your nature,” she said.
“So I’ll say, be open to all the marvels, knowledge and understandings that are now revealed to you as God welcomes you to your final reward. Well done good and faithful servant.”