By Gretchen Keiser

Sister Teresa Termini, C.S.J., has spent her 50 years of service as a Religious around God’s “favored ones,” the homilist said at her special jubilee Mass May 14.

For the first 30 years as a Religious, Sister Teresa worked with children as a teacher, as a live-in presence in homes for boys in Chicago and St. Louis, MO., and then as an administrator of such facilities. This work brought her to Atlanta in 1969 as administrator of the Village of St. Joseph in southwest Atlanta. Then for the last 10 years, after “retooling herself,” she became, at the request of her superiors, skilled in work with the elderly. She gained a nursing home administrator’s license, studied and worked in facilities for the elderly, and directs that work for Catholic Social Services.

Children and the elderly are special concerns of God, noted Father Patrick Bishop at Sister Teresa’s jubilee Mass at the Village of St. Joseph. “You hang around His favored, and that must be a blessing,” Father Bishop said.

Her inspiration to Religious life came from the example of her mother, Clare, who was widowed when Sister Teresa was three years old; and from the example of Sisters of St. Joseph who taught her in elementary, high school and junior college. The daughter of Italian immigrant parents who married in the U.S., Sister Teresa grew up in Kansas City, Mo. When her father, George, died her mother was left with seven children. She later remarried and the family grew to nine children.

“We were poor, but boy did we have the love” in our family, Sister Teresa recalled. Her immediate family of brothers, sisters, spouses, nieces, nephews and grandnieces and nephews includes 114 people. She believes that the example in her family of sharing and caring for each other assisted her in Religious life, in both difficult times and happy times.

Sister Teresa entered the community in September 1937 and was received as a sister on March 19, 1938, the 50^th anniversary of which she marked this year. Out of 21 sisters who entered when she did, 18 are still members of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, a sign of the unusually persevering commitment of her generation.

After teaching for a year and a half at St. Bridget’s School in a poor neighborhood of St. Louis, Sister Teresa was asked to go to St. Joseph’s Home as a teacher and child care worker. Still in her early 20s, she taught fifth and sixth-grade boys and lived in a room off the dormitory, supervising the boys who came into the sisters’ care because of family difficulties. After eight years of work at St. Joseph’s Home, she was transferred to a Chicago facility run by the order, called at the time, St. Joseph’s Home for the Friendless. This home helped children found on the streets or in the city’s train stations. Although they provided emergency care for the children, the sisters also taught school for them as much as circumstances permitted.

After eight years there, she returned to the St. Louis home as administrator of it, an unusually young superior, and completed a six-year-term. She was then asked to return to the Chicago facility and assisted in the modernization of care there, which included a renaming of the facility to St. Joseph’s Carondelet, Child Care Center and the initiation of work with families and counseling for the residents.

Father Jocob Bollmer, director of Catholic Social Services, and her religious superior asked that she come to Georgia to become administrator of the Village of St. Joseph, which was also in the process of restructuring care for children to include counseling and family therapy. Since coming to the Village in August in 1969, she has served as administrator for seven years and has lived at the Village continuously even after beginning work with the elderly.

Known now as program director of Services to the Elderly at Catholic Social Services, Sister Teresa has fully embraced this new ministry, which she was asked to assume in 1976. For a year she went back to school, obtained a nursing home administrator’s license, and trained in facilities for the elderly. She began CSS outreach to the elderly which included a telephone reassurance program, transportation to doctors’ offices, hospitals and emergency appointments, visitation of the poor and housebound and an information network. Her outreach workers for many years were Sister Marcella Meyer, C.S.J. and Sister Roberta Joseph Sutton, C.S.J. The work has expanded and is now even seen by a parish outreach coordinator.

The first of three archdiocesan personal care homes for the elderly, Marian Manor, was opened in 1984; the other two are under construction or in the planning stage.

At her jubilee Mass, Father Bishop commented upon the commitment of Religious in her generation, a commitment that seems unusually strong in comparison with those of succeeding generations. Sister Teresa said the viewpoint of her generations was, “We had committed ourselves for life.”

Difficult times were endured “through prayer and through a determination that I was going to make it, no matter what” and through community and family support, she said. At her 50^th jubilee, she said, “I feel great. I don’t feel any older than I did for my 25^th. I feel as active as some 40-year-olds.”