Internationally known sister retires (sort of) to Albany

Sister Mary Rose McGeady's bed at the Daughters of Charity Provincial House in Menands is a microcosm of her life.

The room the newly retired CEO of Covenant House just moved into is small and quiet, but its narrow twin bed is busy with belongings:

* a blouse she left behind in Rome after attending the Pope's silver jubilee ceremony in October as part of a U.S. delegation; she marvels at the hotel's generosity in sending it back;

* a packet of information in the pile just arrived by Federal Express: background material for the upcoming board meeting of Ascension Health, the Daughters' national healthcare system;

* stockings she has yet to put away;

* a book about life in China recommended by a friend;

* medication for a severely damaged nerve in her leg, suffered in a fall last May from which she's still recovering. The cane she uses, much to her annoyance, lies across the top of the heap;

* a card from a former troubled teen who lived at Covenant House, which arrived along with a box of chocolates. Now a cab driver in Dallas, he's written to wish her a happy 75th birthday.

Sister Mary Alice Roach, DC, a friend, peeks her head in the door, saying, "I brought you an amaryllis." Sister Mary Rose looks around the room helplessly and says the inevitable: "Put it on the bed."

Time to rest

After 13 years running Covenant House, an international agency that rehabilitates street kids, Sister Mary Rose considers this phase of her life "taking it easy."

She used to spend a third of her time on the road, visiting Covenant House's 15 U.S. sites to encourage the staff and teenage residents; now, she's bought a computer to keep in touch electronically.

She's a far cry from the teenager who used to volunteer at St. Ann's Infant Home in Washington, D.C., caring for abused and abandoned children. By the time she entered the Daughters of Charity in 1946, she'd already been "marked" as a sister who should work with kids.

After a first assignment at Nazareth Child Care Center in Boston, the young sister came to Rhinebeck to work with Sister Serena Branson (see sidebar) at the Astor Home and Clinic for Children -- and got a crash course in working with emotionally disturbed children.

Learning on the job

Looking back, Sister Mary Rose recalls being frightened at first. Holding down a disturbed child who's having a violent tantrum is accepted technique now, but it was new when the Astor staff began to use it.

"There was no one to teach us how" to manage the children, said Sister Mary Rose. "Serena taught me to be patient, to deal with these kids one day at a time. Serena had this fantastic ability to talk to a kid."

One of Sister Mary Rose's most valuable lessons was learning to take some time between a crisis and her reaction to it. The children often acted out badly, but Sister Serena taught her to respond with, "What you did was a very serious thing, but we're not going to deal with it now. We'll deal with it tomorrow."

"It gave me distance from the crisis, and the kids would be so anxious about what was going to happen tomorrow that they would come to me and apologize!" Sister Mary Rose remembered, chuckling.

She used that tactic throughout her career, even in her work with teens at Covenant House. Most troubled children, she explained, come from families that don't have the skills to back off and analyze a situation, reacting instead by punishing or beating the child.

"Back away from the event of today and give the kid a chance to reflect on what they did," Sister Mary Rose counseled.

New assignments

The sister's path took her to New York City when she began working with children with mental retardation at the Kennedy Child Study Center. From there, she turned to administration, eventually becoming associate executive director of Brooklyn Catholic Charities.

Transitions were never easy.

"I would get word that I was transferred, and I cried my eyes out," Sister Mary Rose said simply. "I thought this was terrible. And yet, every time I was transferred, I would move into a new position where I learned more about what I was supposed to do and be."

Moment of crisis

In 1990, Sister Mary Rose's faith in that theory was severely tested. Covenant House, a well-respected New York agency founded by Rev. Bruce Ritter in 1969, was shattered when several young men accused the priest of sexual abuse.

As Father Ritter defended himself, improprieties in the agency's finances were also discovered. He resigned in the midst of the scandal -- and Sister Mary Rose was asked to take over as director.

"Going to Covenant House was a tremendous act of faith for me," she said. "I was 62 years old. I was working for Brooklyn Catholic Charities, and I loved my job. I went away and prayed for three days."

She decided the job was "a call from God. I went -- and I found Covenant House filled with people who were there because they loved the work, but they were exhausted. They had been through 62 days where the place was negatively in the media."

Restoring Covenant House

Sister Mary Rose started her work slowly, getting to know people and giving talks "just to show the place was still in existence. Father Ritter had done a wonderful job of creating Covenant House, and then he was disgraced. But the place was still there. [The work] he had started still needed to be done. I looked upon myself as a healer. I said, `God, if you want this place to go on, you do it' -- and He did."

After two years of speeches, candlelight vigils, and continuing to help runaway and homeless teens get off the streets, Sister Mary Rose happened to mention the crisis to a woman she met.

"She said to me, `Did something happen?'" the sister recalled. "It was a signal to me that the crisis was over."

Growing again

As Covenant House recovered, it also began to expand, doubling the number of children it was able to help. Sister Mary Rose credits the staff and donors for saving the institution.

"I'm not shy," she remarked. "I was a good public face for Covenant House because I was credible; I had been working with kids for 40 years." But "I say to the staff that the most valuable thing we had going for us was that they loved the kids. It was the day-to-day handling of the kids by the staff that made it all worthwhile."

Over the next decade, telling the world about Covenant House became more and more of a passion for Sister Mary Rose. She spoke to politicos and graduating college students, media outlets and passersby. She also spoke to the kids the agency served.

"It was very important to keep in touch with the kids, because I was talking about them all over the country," she explained. "I wanted to know them by name."

Graduate

It was thus that she met "Anthony." While visiting a Covenant House branch in Los Angeles, she got a bunch of kids together in the lounge and asked about the drug trade in the area.

Anthony spoke right up: "Well, Sister, it depends on what you want to buy. Give me 20 minutes, and I can get you PCP; an hour, and I can get you heroin. It takes a few hours for me to get you good cocaine."

Disturbed, Sister Mary Rose explained that she wanted to learn about drugs, not buy them. She sat with Anthony after the meeting and asked how he ended up at Covenant House.

Anthony said he was 14, and he'd been making $400 a day selling drugs. But most of his friends were already in police custody, and he was tired of looking over his shoulder, wondering when he'd get caught.

"It was good for me to have that direct contact" with the kids Covenant House serves, said Sister Mary Rose. "He had no real family; he'd been selling drugs on the street to get money. He'd go out and buy himself a $70 pair of shoes just so he could brag about them."

Saving children

There are hundreds of children that Sister Mary Rose says she'll never forget.

She can tell countless tales like Anthony's, but "the real, basic story of Covenant House kids is that they were never really raised. There was no consistency in their lives. They went from foster home to foster home, relative to relative, and with the lack of consistency came a lack of love.

"I used to ask who was the most important person in their lives, and it was often a child-care worker or a teacher. Once in a while, it was a cop -- someone who had shown some interest in them."

Settling in Albany

After 13 years of advocating for such children, Sister Mary Rose celebrated her 75th birthday and agreed to "semi"-retire. But the fall that injured her leg slowed her down much more abruptly than she intended.

"My head's still working, but my body's a disappointment to me," she observed wryly. "If I could have gradually slowed down, it would have been nice. It's been a very difficult thing for me, because I've been so active."

As she settled into her new life back in the Albany Diocese -- she lived here during a stint as her order's provincial in the 1980s and enjoyed everything but the snowstorms -- Sister Mary Rose was also trying to settle into what she termed a "different lifestyle."

"I have to be accepting," she mused. "Maybe the Lord is asking me to put the energies of my head to work, better than the energies of my body."

On the go

So far, "slowing down" has still included work trips to New York City, Italy and Chicago. She has also been asked to help the Daughters' current provincial, Sister Mary Francis Martin, with her duties.

"My nephew took me out to lunch last Sunday," Sister Mary Rose remarked. "I said to him, `I'm starting a new chapter in my life. I'm living here in the retirement house; I don't have my own car any more. But I can't be grateful enough for all the opportunities the Lord has given me. He has given me such visible proofs of the call that is mine, evidences of His love and care.'"

Her smile turned impish as she added: "And then I get a little bonus like a six-day trip to Rome [for the Pope's anniversary]! If you're ever going to travel, that's the way to go. We [U.S. delegates] flew on a military jet, and they took care of us first-class. I spent $15 in six days!"

(Covenant House, the largest privately funded international child welfare agency in the U.S., cares for and rehabilitates street children in 12 U.S. cities, Canada, Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. More than two million "homeless, runaway and throwaway" children have been helped with housing, counseling, job placement and other services.)

IDEAS

Recommended solutions for problems of kids

Retirement hasn't stemmed Sister Mary Rose's passion to save the children of this country.

"I consider the worst social issue of our time to be the disintegration of the family," she declared. "My first assignment was [at Nazareth Child Care Center] in Boston, and we had 300 kids in placement, all there because somebody had died, or a parent was in jail for alcoholism or in a mental hospital."

Fifty years later, she said, the situation has astronomically worsened: Orphanages went out of style in the 1940s, creating a trend of putting children in foster homes, and now the foster-care system is struggling.

What's the answer? "I think there are some children who can grow up easier in group care than in foster care -- a really good group home with trained staff who can give consistency and love to the children even as they work with their disturbed behaviors," she stated.

"The need has outstripped the ability of the [current] system to deal with them. I've been to Washington and sat down with senators to talk about this, and they've said to me, `Sister, what do we do?' My answer is kind of overwhelming; we need to do a lot of different things. I'm not sure you can legislate anything; you just have to build the system of support for the family: Help people be better prepared to get married; have employment systems, job-training systems; we need a good daycare system so poor mothers can get help." (KB)

'GOOD BUDDY'

Remembering a mentor

Sister Mary Rose still mourns the death of Sister Serena Branson, one of her first bosses and a mentor whom she called "my good buddy."

The pair hailed from the same parish in Washington, D.C., though they didn't meet until Sister Mary Rose worked for Sister Serena at two children's homes the latter founded: the Astor Home in Rhinebeck and the Kennedy Child Study Center in New York City.

Sister Serena, who went on to become executive director of Catholic Charities for the Albany Diocese, won the 2002 Vision Award from Catholic Charities USA. She died last July at age 90.

"One of the saddest things for me is that she's only been gone a few months," said Sister Mary Rose, just after moving into Sister Serena's last residence, DePaul Provincial House in Menands. "I would have liked to have had the chance to be here with her." (KB)

(12/18/03) [[In-content Ad]]