New Beginnings

Every year when September 8 comes around I remember the first day that I came to the monastery, the feast of Mary's birthday. There were four others who came that day, so we joined a class that already had two who came in June, and five others who had entered August 15. The next week on Sept. 15, another feast of Mary, three more postulants arrived. We were a class of fifteen, the largest group to enter in one year in our community! Those were the days when religious vocations flourished. Our group filled the entire Communion railing in our chapel.

I remember my mother fighting tears that day, telling me that she felt a promise she had made to our Blessed Mother on December 8  before she was married, had been fulfilled. I kissed her Good-bye, together with Daddy, and my younger brothers and sisters. (I was the first of ten children born our family.)

I remember the feeling I had when we came into the chapel, with the Blessed Sacrament exposed, and began to join in the Latin chant of the Sisters. I thought, "This is it! I am going to be here forever and ever!" I was so happy that day.

It was the beginning of a new life for us postulants! I soon began to feel at home with all the Sisters who had taught me in grade school and high school who were still living.  I was part of them!

On the following March 21, ten of us fifteen postulants who had persevered became novices, in a beautiful ceremony. We were dressed as brides and given a new name along with the white veil and habit of a Benedictine Sister. We no longer use this symbolism in the reception for new novices, but I am so glad that it was there for me. It sealed my relationship with Christ, which has strengthened  my perseverance and stability in the seventy years that have followed. In the 60’s and 70’s I grieved as my classmates were leaving, and  was constantly asking myself, “Why am I still here?” There were only two of us remaining  to celebrate silver and golden jubilees; then Sr. Marilyn died, so I remain, the only one of that class.

But over all those years, new beginnings kept occurring: my first profession and the teaching career that lasted fifty years in several parishes and our academy as well as serving as organist and choir director throughout Vatican II and all the changes in the liturgy and its music, and in religious life itself.   

Opportunities to study at CUA in Washington, D.C., Cuernavaca in Mexico, and Vienna in Austria, as well as a Benedictine Renewal program in Rome gave me a global perspective that enrich my teaching  and my life. I have been so blessed!

In this past year of the pandemic, I began to make new adjustments such as teaching piano students with Zoom, and the reality of retirement and aging.

What plan does the Lord have for me now? I keep my thinking positive: the best is yet to come!                  Sr. Mary Carol Hellmann

Discovering My Dramatic Roots

During the past six months I have discovered Henry Louis Gates’ show on PBS, Discovering Your Roots. The show not only introduced me to the scholar, Henry Louis Gates, but also made me interested in genealogy for which I never had much interest. On the show Gates, with his staff of back-up researchers, talks with some celebrity guests about their ancestors and their interesting experience. Gates usually finds that with African-American celebrities, their ancestors were affected by slavery and with immigrant ancestors, theirs lives were affected by the Holocaust. There are usually surprising and dramatic finds in people’s pasts.

When I had a chance for a 14-day trial on Ancestry.com, I thought I would look at my roots. I expected them to be interesting but not surprising or dramatic. And what did I find? My grandfather killed a man was tried for murder!

It took place in a small town in Eastern Kentucky. Newspaper articles at the time quoted witnesses. On June 16, 1913, my grandfather confronted a wealthy business owner whose sheep had gotten on to my grandfather’s farm and trampled and ate some corn. My grandfather (who was a tenant farmer of the sheep owner) demanded damages but the sheep owner thought the demand was too high and offered a lower fee. The story according to witnesses is that after some sharp words, my grandfather pulled out a knife and stabbed the sheep owner twice. My grandfather then fled. He was apprehended two weeks later and declared he was defending himself even though most witnesses said it looked as if he stabbed the sheep owner deliberately.

My grandfather was tried for murder in court December 5, 1913 and was acquitted on the grounds of self-defense. It isn’t clear when my grandfather moved to Michigan but it must have been shortly after he was acquitted. He was also a farm laborer in Michigan and on December 2, 1917, at the age of 34, he died of a skull fracture in a farm accident. A local newspaper in Michigan said “he was a most industrious young man and well liked by all who knew him. The family moved here from Kentucky and lived in the village a few months but worked most of the time as farm tenants.”

After I had gotten over the shock of finding a dramatic and sad story about my grandfather, I decided that all I could do about it was offer him and other family members up to God’s mercy. He was a poor farmer whose future was not hopeful. If he had lived, he probably would have been a tenant farmer all his life. After his death, my grandmother moved back to Eastern Kentucky. The story of my grandfather’s stabbing and killing another man was a family secret which I had never heard. Telling the story now reminds me how blessed I have been and a large part of that blessing was my grandfather.