Nun recalls 75 years in order

"I was always impressed with the sisters," began the feisty 94-year-old, who is celebrating her 75th jubilee as a Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet. "When I was a little girl, I always wanted to dress up like a nun -- and I did!"

Born Philomena Grasso of St. Anthony's parish in Albany's South End, Sister Teresa also recalled attending Catholic schools in the early days of the 20th century, before uniforms were mandatory. The third of four girls whose parents came to America from Italy, she was raised by an older sister after her mother died when Philomena was four.

Role model

"She was really great," Sister Teresa remarked. When the time came to decide what to do with her life, she decided to follow in her mentor's footsteps.

"I thought I should do something besides be a nobody," Sister Teresa joked of her vocation. "I'd never heard the word `Carondelet'!"

First steps

It was a necessary step, she said: Another nun even had to help each new nun dress, since the floor-length habits of the time were so complex.

"We didn't know the front from the back," she remembered. "First, we had to put on a cap, then the coronet," the band around the sister's forehead. Then came the long black robe and "guimpe," or cape. Until they got used to their new style of dress, laughed Sister Teresa, "we couldn't even eat! We couldn't move our jaws!"

She also remembered the near-military haircut that went along with the habit: "They just zipped it any old way."

New name

Bishop Edmund Gibbons was responsible for assigning each sister her new name. As the nuns knelt at the altar rail, said Sister Teresa, "He said my name with such emphasis -- and I thought he said, `Teresa of Babylon'! I thought, `Oh, how am I going to live with that?'

"Later on, Mother [Superior] was asking us if we liked our names, and I said, `Well, I like the first part....'"

She was relieved to learn that she'd misheard the bishop.

Classroom years

"I didn't care where I went, and I kept going farther west," she recalled.

Sister Teresa's favorite assignment was in Mechanicville, where she spent 15 years. "It was a small town and everybody knew everybody," she explained. When she left -- with little notice, as was the custom for women religious then -- she was too emotional even to say goodbye.

Tough times

"In Little Falls, when I was there in '29, a lot of the children were poor," she said. "Every morning, we would bring some food for some who we didn't think would have breakfast."

The sisters themselves fared little better; Sister Teresa remembered eating rice instead of potatoes for years, because it was cheaper.

But the students made any hardship worthwhile. Once, said Sister Teresa, a first-grader figured out that his teacher was crossing herself with the wrong hand. She had done it deliberately so her young charges wouldn't get mixed up as they watched her, but she had to admit he was right.

Changing world

"We loved the habit," she said. "We felt badly when we had to change."

Sister Teresa retired in 1976, but to this day, her former students are foremost in her mind. "I remember them," she said firmly.

A fellow Sister of St. Joseph affirmed this. "My mother came for a visit from Syracuse and brought a friend who's 74," boasted Sister Mary Rose Noonan. "She said, `Sister, you taught me' -- and Sister Teresa said right away, `And I taught your sister Pat'!"

Long-term commitment

She joked that one of her secrets for happiness is to "be flexible. If people say the moon is green, I'll say, `Oh, you think so?'"

Sister Teresa groaned at having to make a guest list for her jubilee celebration; she has so many nieces, nephews and grand-nieces and -nephews, she can never invite them all.

But she was especially concerned about another list: that of her fellow jubilarians. If their names didn't appear in The Evangelist, Sister Teresa said with a giggle, former students "would probably think [we're] dead!"

(The other jubilarians for the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet whose home parishes are within the Albany Diocese are Sister Mary Alma Shea, 75 years; Sister Alice Marie [Eileen Joseph] Welch, 70 years; Sisters Barbara Hesler and Adelina St. Hilaire, 60 years; Sisters Francis Anne Gilchrist, Marion [Blanche] Varley, Mary Brigada Lombardi and Mary [Dismas] Rehfuss, 50 years.)

(03-22-01) [[In-content Ad]]