Sister Helen Therese Mayer, OP 1935-2021

Sister Helen Therese Mayer, OP
                            1935-2021
                            The melting pot that was Detroit in the early decades of the 20th Century
                            may have no better examples than Helen Simon and Matthew Mayer.
                            Helen was born in Hattingen, Germany, in 1907, and came with her
                            family to Detroit in the 1920s. Matthew was born in Milltown, New
                            Jersey, in 1908 to Yugoslavian parents who returned to their homeland
                            shortly after his birth, but then emigrated once more to the U.S. after
                            World War I. After living first in Washington State and then in California,
                            the family came to Detroit because there was work there.

Helen and Matthew, a sheet metal worker who eventually owned his own business, met at a dance
and married in July 1930. Five years later, on July 17, 1935 – Helen’s birthday – the couple
welcomed a daughter, Eleanor Therese. Their son, Matthew, followed two years later.

With the help of friends, the Mayers weathered the Depression, and when Eleanor was four years old
the little family was able to move into a home that her father built on Somerset Avenue on Detroit’s
east side. Eleanor went to kindergarten at Arthur Elementary School. Since she spoke mostly
German at home, school was a tearful experience for several weeks until she got more comfortable
with English. But she loved school, and that love for learning continued throughout her early life.

When her brother was ready for first grade, both children were enrolled at St. Matthew School where
they were taught by the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM) Sisters. The Sisters were excellent teachers,
and Eleanor’s experience with them first sparked her interest in religious life.

Eleanor’s years at Dominican High School cemented that desire, but her parents opposed the idea,
so after graduation she attended Marygrove College for a year until her parents changed their minds.
She entered the Adrian Dominican Congregation in September 1954 and was immediately sent to
teach – along with another postulant, Mary Ann Ennis – at Resurrection School in Lansing, Michigan.
The two young women spent the entire 1954-1955 school year at Resurrection and then returned to
Adrian for their canonical novitiate year.

Sister Helen Therese, as Eleanor was now known, was professed in August 1956 and missioned to
St. Patrick School in Brighton, Michigan, where she taught third and fourth grade as well as music,
and was the parish music minister as well. She was there until Christmas vacation in 1958, when a
phone call from Mother Gerald sent her to St. Joseph School in Marblehead, Ohio, to change places
with a Sister teaching there. This put her in front of first- and second-graders; she wrote in her
autobiography that this was a challenge right on Day One, after having just gotten the knack of
teaching somewhat older children:

      I had no idea of how to teach these little ones, got their reading groups all mixed up, etc.
      and they sorely missed the Sister I’d replaced. We finished all our work early, of course.
      So we all bundled up (it was January) and went out for a long walk to Lake Erie which
      was a couple blocks away. It was great sport for them to be out in the neighborhood and
      the neighbors enjoyed seeing Sister with 30 six- and seven-year-olds in tow. It did pass
      the time but we didn’t continue with that plan for long.

Sister Helen Therese was in Marblehead for a year and a half, followed by four years (1959-1963) at
St. Joseph School in Rockdale, Illinois. During this time, she completed her bachelor’s degree in
French at Siena Heights College (University), followed by summer study in that language. She then

taught French for nearly thirty years at the following schools: Regina Dominican High School,
Wilmette, Illinois (1963-1966); Aquinas Dominican High School, Chicago (1966-1967 and 1970-
1973); Bishop Muldoon High School, Rockford, Illinois (1967-1969); Siena Heights (1969-1970);
Montini High School, Lombard, Illinois (1973-1987); and Mother McAuley High School, Chicago
(1987-1995).

Several opportunities to study French came her way over the years, including in Montreal and in
Paris, and in 1970, while on the Siena Heights faculty, she completed her master’s degree in French
at the University of Michigan. This was followed in 1991 by a master’s in pastoral theology from
Loyola University (Chicago).

When French enrollment declined at Mother McAuley High School, Sister Helen Therese found a new
job at Queen of Peace High School in Burbank, Illinois, and taught there for two years (1995-1997)
before switching to office work there. In all, she spent eleven years at the school, and “it became very
special to me,” she wrote. “I really formed many good friendships during those eleven years in
Burbank.”

Then, in 2006, she became an office assistant for the Dominican Midwest Chapter office, and
remained in that ministry for three years before retiring from active ministry. She continued to live in
the Chicago area until 2016, when she returned to Adrian to live at Weber Center.

“Being an Adrian Dominican has been such a blessing,” she wrote to conclude her autobiography.

       Our women are truly special and I am so grateful that God put me where I am. I have
       learned much from the Sisters with whom I’ve shared community. I truly have enjoyed
       living in community, sharing good times, good laughs, and most of all, prayer. Our
       greatest gift is one another and the talents each Sister brings with her. I have been very
       lucky.

       Psalm 139 says it so well: I give you thanks for this wondrous life; all your works are
       wonderful. Your eyes observed my smallest growth, and all was written in your book.
       Each day was formed before it came to be.

Sister Helen Therese died in Adrian on August 18, 2021, and received a “green” burial in the
Congregation cemetery the next day. She was eighty-six years old and in her sixty-sixth year as an
Adrian Dominican Sister.

Among those providing remembrances at her Ritual of Remembering were several of her co-workers
from Queen of Peace, including the principal who hired her, Patricia Nolan:

       I could see it right away – she was a pistol. She said all the right things in the interview,
       but I could tell. She was a proud Dominican of Adrian. She was a seasoned educator.
       She was a lover of language and music and literature. And she was a pistol. It was one
       of the many reasons I hired her immediately.

       … Helen celebrated inclusive community and the leadership of women. She gravitated
       to strong women. She herself was a strong woman, fiercely independent and private,
       hard-working and most certainly not a whiner. Even as her body betrayed her and her
       skeleton constricted her lungs, she described her condition just as a matter of fact, not a
       matter of complaint. Helen exuded a positive spirit, encouraging, humble and kind, and I
       will miss her wide smile, her sparkling eyes, her ready laugh.

Sister Nancyann Turner, a student at Resurrection High School when Sisters Helen Therese and
Mary Ann Ennis taught there as postulants, wrote about the life-changing impact both women had on
her:

      [They] exhibited such joy – and each woman had such a deep calm and peacefulness
      that their presence made me think more deeply about religious life. Being closer to my
      age, I was able to talk to each of them more easily. Their presence and goodness at my
      school all year long certainly deepened and strengthened my own call to religious life.

Pamela Allen, a friend for more than fifty years, wrote in her remembrance:

      Helen introduced me to Chicago, which I love to this day. She took me to my first opera.
      I took her to her first Cubs game. We were in the Loop to celebrate the Picasso statue’s
      twenty-fifth birthday. We lunched at the Berghoff many times. I treated her to lunch at
      Jacques’, a trendy French restaurant. We could be quite posh upon occasion! We
      visited the Art Institute time after time. She never tired of showing me the wonders of
      Chicago.

      … My passion for so many things began with Helen and have been integral parts of my
      life since. Helen loved life and reveled in all it had to offer. I was always ready to go
      along!

      … She was a profound blessing in my life.

Eleanor, the future Sister Helen Therese Mayer, as a small child; at the piano in 1946; and at graduation from Dominican
High School, Detroit.

Reception into the Novitiate, and Sister Helen Therese Mayer with her parents, Matthew and Helen Mayer

Left: Sister Helen Therese holds a conference with parents at Regina Dominican High School, Wilmette, Illinois, 1966.
Right: Sisters Carol Coston, left, and Helen Therese Mayer at the Motherhouse

From left, Sisters Kathleen Buechele, Anastasia McNichols, Helen Therese Mayer, Joan Weithman, Joyce Banks, and
Mary Rita McSweeney, Maggie Valley, North Carolina, March 2000.

Enjoying a meal together in Scottsdale, Arizona, are, from left, Sisters Jeanne Burns, Helen Therese Mayer, Kathleen
Gaynor, Maureen Comer, Carol Fleming, and Janet Wright.

Members of the 2015 Diamond Jubilee August Crowd are: back row, from left, Sisters Marilyn Winter, Rose Celeste
O’Connell, Carol Coston, Helen Therese Mayer, and Rita Rose Sieg and front row, from left, Sisters Mary Ann Ennis,
Barbara Ann Stanek, Frances Mary Fitzpatrick, and Therese E. Allgeyer.