Living a long life of grace and no regrets

She's lived in Albany, Oswego, Amsterdam, Schenectady and Cohoes; she's studied at a handful of colleges from D.C. to Dayton. She's taught six-year-olds and helped college students get financial aid; started food pantries, created school systems and visited hospital patients.

"Don't you think there would be someone out there who would like a life like that?" Sister Geraldine Kennah, CSJ, says persuasively.

This year, Sister Geraldine celebrates her 50th anniversary as a Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet. The energetic senior laughed as she recalled her roller-coaster journey through religious life -- but said she wouldn't change a thing.

Vocation

Sister Geraldine is a native of the Albany Diocese, born and raised with her brother and sister in St. Ann's parish in Albany's South End (now merged with St. John's). While she hesitated to sound "Pollyanna-ish," she said she always knew somehow that she would enter religious life.

Some may think of the convents of the 1940s as forbidding or restrictive places, but Sister Geraldine remembers them as welcoming and cheerful.

"We were very close to the sisters," she said of her childhood teachers at St. Ann's. "The convent was a very comfortable place for us to go."

Activities

She recalled one teacher helping her and her classmates to sew cheerleading uniforms and choir robes. The future sister was an active student, taking part in glee clubs and minstrel shows and dating several boys.

But when she got a Missal for Christmas in seventh grade, she added another activity to her schedule: daily Mass.

"God was always there with me," she explained. "I knew this was what I wanted to do, so this was what I did."

Name game

Sister Geraldine was just 17 when she entered the Sisters of St. Joseph. She boasted that of 100 students from her school, nine ended up in her order within a couple of years of one another. One was her own sister.

Sister Geraldine laughed as she told the story of when each of them took their vows: Her own baptismal name is Mary Anne, but she was given the religious name of Geraldine; when her sister Geraldine took vows two years later, she was given the name Marianne!

Like countless members of her order, Sister Geraldine was trained to be a teacher, expecting to teach junior-high students. But her first assignment was first grade -- all the way out in Oswego.

"I loved it," she admitted, noting that her favorite part was preparing her small charges for First Communion.

Moving around

The teacher ended up sticking with first-graders when she was moved to three different schools, including St. Mary's in Amsterdam. Later, she switched to teaching third and fourth grade at Cathedral Academy in Albany, where she met the future Bishop Howard J. Hubbard.

"We've been friends ever since," she added.

St. Joseph's in Schenectady, Bishop Scully High in Amsterdam and a principalship in Syracuse were next. Along the way, Sister Geraldine added more degrees to her resume, getting a bachelor's in math when her community needed math teachers and becoming one of the first women (and women religious) to get a master's degree from Union College in Schenectady. She joked that the latter was "good for their bookkeeping."

Combination

One of the sister's most unusual jobs was in the late 1960s, when she was responsible for consolidating the six Catholic schools in Cohoes into one three-school system.

"It was a challenge, but I didn't mind it at all," she stated. "I was young, still in my 30s -- and this was part of being part of a religious community."

In fact, she said with a chuckle, she even got to act in variety shows put on by all the schools together, an unusual event for an entire town. Sister Geraldine was also the first woman to serve on the Cohoes Housing Authority, pushing to integrate public housing there.

New directions

By the 1970s, she turned more to administration. She oversaw admissions, financial aid, student activities and other areas for St. Mary's School of Nursing in Amsterdam, then worked in the business office and as director of academic advisement at The College of Saint Rose in Albany in the '80s.

"I had taken courses all along. You never stop studying when you're a sister," added the teacher, who at last count had studied at the University of Dayton, Catholic University of America in Washington, LeMoyne College in Syracuse, The University at Albany and Union College, in addition to pastoral-care courses.

Sister Geraldine wasn't done yet: Her career then turned to chaplaincy at Villa Mary Immaculate nursing home in Albany, followed by an eight-year stint as pastoral associate at St. James parish in Albany, where she visited hospital patients and homebound seniors, started a food pantry and a clothes closet, and boasted of her active Christian service committee.

"I have so much energy!" she ruminated as she neared the end of her job litany. "I never looked back -- I never had time!"

Last stop?

A few years ago, Sister Geraldine accepted a position in her order's treasurer's office. She still shares an Albany apartment with a fellow sister but commutes every day to the Provincial House in Latham.

There, she often bumps into second-, fourth- and sixth-grade teachers she had when she was a child. They are now retired St. Joseph sisters living at the Provincial House. On a recent morning, she stopped to scold one for wearing sandals on a winter day and chatted with another who told The Evangelist Sister Geraldine was a good student.

"You wouldn't believe it, but my true self is introverted!" the outgoing nun confessed, laughing. "I would love to just spend a lot of time in prayer, solitude and quiet. But that's not what I was called to -- and that's what religious life is all about, following the call."

Changing times

The golden jubilee of her religious life led Sister Geraldine to consider how times have changed for religious orders. When she entered the convent, she said, sisters reaching their 25th anniversaries no longer had to answer the door or the telephone, because there were so many younger sisters to take on that responsibility.

Today, senior sisters routinely staff the front desk at the Provincial House. Sister Geraldine is saddened at the decline in vocations, but she hopes that women reading The Evangelist will see her life as the kind they want, as well.

"Young women do not see what a wonderful grace it is to be part of a religious community," she explained. "You can love and serve God anywhere; but in community, you have the support of your sisters."

When asked if she has any regrets, the jubilarian shook her head. "Not really," she said, then stopped: "Do you want me to make something up?"

(Contact the diocesan Vocation Awareness Council at 453-6670.)

(3/20/03) [[In-content Ad]]